Apple AirPods are still in super high demand, but are they worth the six week wait? Let's revisit Apple's wireless earbuds and see how they've held up!
The last time I made a video about the Apple AirPods, I was comparing them to the Samsung Gear IconX headphones. Overall, a pretty interesting comparison. You guys really enjoyed it. I think the AirPods really took reign on that one because they were cheaper. I think they are more comfortable. But definitely, a different purpose than the Gear IconX, as a lot of you guys actually commented that and I completely understand.
But I really want to give you guys a revisited video about the Apple AirPods because I’ve been using these things almost exclusively as my headphones of choice for quite some time. And they’re still incredibly hard to find so obviously the demand is very big or Apple just doesn’t want to make a whole lot of these. So if you go on Apple’s website right now, it still takes six weeks to get them as of March 18.
So I really want to give you guys a quick revisited video about the AirPods-- how have they held up, do I still like them, do I still enjoy using the AirPods? So let’s go ahead and get started.
So the first thing I want to talk about is the case itself-- how has it held up. It’s still charging my AirPods just fine. It still holds the same charge. I can basically last about two weeks in between recharges so that’s a pretty long time for the AirPods (for me anyway). I don’t really have to worry about them. And because they use lightning, I usually have a lightning cable on hand anyway so if I do run low on power, I can just plug in the lightning cable, charge this whole thing up and then there you go-- I have another 24 hours of continuous listening just in this case on top of the 5 hours additional time that I get with a fully charged AirPod.
The inside of my case is a little dirty, kind of full of lint and stuff, mainly because i have these in my jeans most of the time so small pieces of lint gets in there. But it’s not really a big deal. Those don’t really change the integrity of the AirPods or make it less usable. But it’s just kind of a concern because I don’t want to get that stuff inside the charging contacts, which may cause problems in the future in terms of charging up the AirPods. I’m sure a quick little blast of air will clean that right up.
My opinion about the sound quality of the AirPods really haven’t changed at all because the hardware is the hardware. I can’t really tell a big difference between these and EarPods. They sound exactly the same, perhaps just a slight little bass heavy on the AirPods. So honestly, there’s not really any big difference in sound quality between the AirPods and the EarPods other than an astronomical price difference and one pair gets included with an iPhone and these don’t.
Other things to mention about my use of the AirPods is I basically don’t use Siri at all. I don’t find capping the AirPods a very useful feature. If I want to do anything, basically I would go to my iPhone and adjust volume, change a song, do any of that. So I don’t really use that feature at all. I might be the only one that says that but I don’t also feel very comfortable talking to something in my ear when everyone’s around you and walking around. I just don’t really use that feature so I use my iPhone primarily for any task that I have to do.
But other than that, I still think the AirPods are very expensive. I definitely don’t think they’re essential. I think there are a lot of other wireless headphones solutions that may not be essentially wireless or absolutely wireless like this. But I think Jaybirds are definitely good alternatives, the Freedoms or the X3s, any of those headphones are still very good alternatives to the AirPods and they sound a heck of a lot better. Beats have their Beats X. I’m not really a fan of Beats, but you could go that way as well. They are a little less expensive than these guys I believe. But again, I really don’t think there’s a huge need for these. I mean the convenience feature is a huge selling point of the AirPods and that’s why they cost $160. I really haven’t had any connection issues. I’ve had a couple little glitches but they’ve worked themselves out with future software updates on iOS.
So honestly, I really do think this is one of Apple’s best products and best execution of a product. I just think they are ridiculously overpriced and there isn’t enough of a separation of sound factor or basically how well this thing sounds compared to anything else. If this was around $80 or $100, probably more worth it but at $160 for things that sound exactly the same as the pair of EarPods that come with your iPhone, I still don’t see why some people would really want these. Personally, I bought them for convenience. If you want to do that and you don’t care about spending the extra money for convenience, then I’m not the one stopping you from buying these. But if you’re thinking these are going to be replacing some better sounding quality headphones like Jaybird X3, then you’re going to be very badly mistaken when you pick these up from the store.