Gadgetory


All Cool Mind-blowing Gadgets You Love in One Place

Apple Airpods – An Audiophile Perspective

2016-12-20
it's a crisp clear December morning and I've never felt better look what I got I just paid over $300 for a pair of ear pods wireless earphones from some guy on Craigslist without having done any research whatsoever I don't know what devices they work with I don't know what kind of battery life to expect and I don't know if they sound good all I know is they're the newest product from Apple and I need them so let's find out are they air amazing or pedestrian need a new mouse and keyboard check out the Cougar gaming attack x3 mechanical keyboard and revenger gaming mouse at the link in the video description I've got to give Apple this the pairing process with iOS devices is pretty magical just pop the lid open on the air pods charging case hold it near your phone press the button and you're greeted by a handy-dandy battery indicator for both the air pods themselves and the charging case as a not really Apple person MacBook pairing was a little less straightforward for me the auto pairing through iCloud did work but Apple's instructions simply say select air pods in the menu bar and I didn't realize I had to manually enable the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar before that would work for an on Apple device setup is still easy but less magical hold the button select them in your Bluetooth menu and wait about a second then you can get on with your hamilton fix that is unless someone interrupts you taking out one side mid playback was my first experience with another magical feature of the air pods they're onboard accelerometers that let them start and stop playback when they're inserted or removed from your ears as someone who actually does wear earphones all day this design choice smacks of made by people who don't do that because I often find myself working with one side in to increase my awareness of my surroundings the good news is that within the bluetooth menu Apple allows this setting to be changed along with the behavior of a DoubleTap on the stem which can trigger Siri or play pause media playback the bad news is that unlike the wired equivalents the air pods rely on clunky voice control for volume adjustments and track skipping voice control that doesn't work without an active internet connection for Siri and while these settings are stored on the air pods themselves and carry over to other devices there doesn't appear to be any way to configure them in the first place without using an apple vice of course if they don't offer a compelling balance of portability convenience value and sound quality I doubt many Android users will be queuing up to buy them anyway so how do they fare in this regard the answer is okay the charging case is small enough to fit in my pocket much smaller and lighter than Bragi zaluman 'm 1 and smaller than the case I already carry for my IE ATS and a lightning dongle it's bigger than Jaybirds charging adapter for the freedoms but that doesn't have its own battery on board so it's not really an apples to apples comparison with that said you are less likely to need a charging case with the freedoms since the air pods dropped 50% of their battery after working on this video for a few hours listening to them only intermittently as for sound quality they're sure not worth what I had to pay for them but as Bluetooth earphones go the auto switching between the integrated microphones in both ear pods works really well they've got great range even without line-of-sight to my phone with a low enough noise floor that I didn't perceive any background hiss and they've got a pleasing enough sound signature that I think most people will have no complaints base is punchy and not overdone mids and highs are serviceable and as someone who normally uses IMS I actually really enjoyed their more open natural sound are they as good as audiophile earphones like my daily driver ie ATS no don't be stupid and I like the fact that they fit in my ears more snugly than normal ear pods without the weight of the wires but I don't think I personally would trade away inline controls and a much lower price for that small benefit not to mention that there are literally thousands of earphones out there that aren't ear pods then again if you're the type of person who treats headphones as a fashion statement I don't think they look nearly as weird as my initial impressions when Apple unveiled them and they aren't priced VAT outlandishly compared to other accessories or even other wireless earphones speaking of better lighting we're teaming up with Tesoro to give away one of their Gramm spectrum keyboards and one of theirs own balance gaming chairs the Graham features tactile low-profile key switches all of which are fully programmable and which features sixteen point eight million color RGB lighting and a braided cable and the zone balance features a sturdy steel frame a heightened backrest with adjustable armrests and backrest and polyurethane Follet er all you gotta do to enter is watch the video and enter through our link in the description alright thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button and maybe leave a comment letting me know if you prefer the more sick Linus sound to my normal voice which is what I'm doing right now or if you'd rather I just go back to being a yappy little chihuahua in all of my videos also linked in the video description I don't think I gave you a link in the video description that's okay is where to buy the stuff we featured at Amazon and a link to our community forum as well as our merch store which has cool shirts like this one now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click that little button in the top right corner to check out my review of the braggy - which has gotten some firmware updates since I did that but it has not fixed the Bluetooth range I did check that while I was working on this video
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.