First Impressions of the Third-Generation AirPods

Originally published at: First Impressions of the Third-Generation AirPods - TidBITS

Josh Centers and Julio Ojeda-Zapata team up to give you their first impressions of Apple’s third-generation AirPods.

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I’m ready to try something away from Apple’s AirPods, whether that’s Beats or another brand (the Samsung buds advertised on iMDB look tempting). AirPods are great when they are brand new; but I always have problems a year or two into using them. The long-stemmed AirPods lose either their right or left channel after about a year; the AirPods Pro, after 2 years of use, now have a buzzing sound when I listen to anything at all. I also have another pair of AirPods where the volume is so quiet you can hardly hear what’s playing.

Mine had that and Apple replaced them for free. They were out of warranty, but the buzzing is a known issue and Apple has extended the warranty for that specific issue.

They sent me a postage-paid mailer to return to them and sent them back a few days later all fixed. No problems with them since I got them back.

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Thanks for that info, I appreciate it!

Josh’s experience with Automatic Device Switching resembles mine. It’s nice when it works as advertised — but it rarely works as advertised. It makes trying to use your AirPods with your iPhone a crap shoot when you’re next to your Mac. I’ve had to turn off the automatic switching on the Mac to make it viable at all. Mostly it works fine between iPhone and iPad. But it’s very unreliable.

There’s another option: you can set the AirPods to only announce notifications from your Favourites. If you keep your favourites list well specified, this makes the notification feature hugely useful if cycling or doing something where you can’t look at your phone, but someone in your family might send you a message that you want to receive (and possibly respond to) before you get to your destination.

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I notice that nothing was mentioned about the case design. After this bit from Adam’s comparison of the original AirPods with the Airpods Pro:

I also wasn’t expecting to care about the case design. Because of their shorter stems and silicone tips, the case for the AirPods Pro is shorter and wider than the case for the AirPods. Even rotated 90 degrees, it’s slightly larger in both dimensions, and it’s also a little thicker. It’s not bad, but where Apple got the heft and hand feel of the AirPods case absolutely perfect, the AirPods Pro case feels… slightly off.

I’m sure this varies depending on your hand size, but I find that the AirPods case is an addictive fiddle—it’s like that smooth stone from the beach that you just can’t put down. The AirPods Pro case, on the other hand, is a little large in my pocket and just doesn’t have the same addictive feel.

Similarly, the cover of the AirPods case snaps shut with an absolutely compelling little thunk at the end, whereas the AirPods Pro case cover… well, it just shuts. There’s nothing wrong with it, and you probably wouldn’t notice unless you were switching back and forth as I’ve been doing. But it’s not as good.

I was wondering whether the case for the AirPods 3 was more like the original AirPods’ or more like the Pro’s.