Reviews and tests of the Apple Wireless Airpods Earphones

I confess, I was completely influenced! A friend of mine posted on Facebook his picture with Airpods, commenting “money can’t buy happiness, but Airpods”. Having been looking at it for a few months, his opinion completely convinced me to buy them

Because contrary to JB who tidies up his earphones by rolling them carefully, I rather tend to roll the earphones and the wire into a ball… to take 5 minutes later to untie the wires, hang them on my hair, my pocket

In fact, I need wireless, 0 wire, and no headphones (too heavy for my little head). So, despite the weird look of these airpods once worn, I decided to buy them anyway

Here in Thailand, Airpods are sold at official resellers. They aren’t available in demo, but are always in stock
6900 bahts, or 176€ as in France, with a VAT Refund of 300 bahts (7,6€)

Let’s go directly to the test

The earphones are delivered in this small case, along with a Lightning cable (but without plug)

Instant Connection

As soon as I take them out of their case, the Airpods are directly recognized by my iPhone. As soon as I connect my iPhone to the Airpods, they change name and become “Airpods of DA” (my name on iCloud)

I know that NFC-enabled headsets do the same thing, but I only have Bluetooth headsets and speakers at the moment and every time, it took me too long to pair everyone

As soon as I put the earphones in my ears, the airpods wake up directly and are ready to play sound, provided of course that my iPhone activates its Bluetooth

The connection worked very well for other phones on Android, but it was a total failure for my Toshiba computer on Windows 10. The computer recognizes Airpods but both fail to connect. and works fine on a *new* Windows 10 computer

I validate!

Autonomy & Loading

And when you open the case not far from the phone, the screen displays directly the battery of the case, and the headphones

I’m always running out of battery power, whether it’s my iPhone, my computer, my Clarisonic, my light therapy machine… it’s a lot to recharge. But I have no doubt that I will always have battery life with my Airpods. Because every time you put them in the case, they actually charge. The case has a capacity to charge the earphones for up to 24 hours. And the earphones charge very fast, 15mn of charge for 3 hours of listening

And the 100% charged earphones have a 5h autonomy

In short, I have to plug the case in a maximum of 2 times a week

Warning: if the case has no battery, the headphones will not work (and Apple never told us that). Both the earphones AND the case must have battery power.

I validate!

The sound

It sounds exactly like my Apple Earpods, very good but not great. Anyway, I don’t need more

For calls (yes because these headphones are a kind of hands-free kit too), no need to shout, you can talk normally, the microphone is excellent

I validate!

We can locate them

I often tend to misplace my things in my small apartment. With the Airpods, you can make them ring. If they aren’t in their case, we can make them ring: they will make a small “beep beep”, louder and louder so that we can locate them in the apartment

However, if you lose them in a very noisy place, you will have trouble hearing the little “beep beep”

I validate half

No buttons on the headphones

Unfortunately, there are absolutely no buttons on these headphones. But you can configure the action that will be performed when you tap twice on one of the headphones

Here are the valid actions:

I keep one earphone to activate Siri, and the other to change tracks. Well, Siri is perfectible, because it isn’t compatible with non-Apple applications. For example, you can change tracks on Spotify when Spotify is already on, but you can’t choose which track to play on Spotify

Likewise, you need Internet access to talk with Siri

And finally, tapping on his earphone still hurts your ears

When you’re in the middle of a phone conversation, there’s no simple way to turn the sound up or down, you really have to do it via your smartphone

To stop the music, for Apple products, simply remove one of the headphones. When you put it back on, the music will play back on its own

For other products (Android, computer…), tapping twice doesn’t activate “ok google”, but it will just stop the music
Removing the earphones when paired with an Android/Windows computer will not stop the music either. In short, these features are much more limited when not using Apple products

I do not validate! At this price, frankly they could have added a few buttons

The look and the size

Airpods, we love or hate them. If someone likes it, it’s usually because the earphones fit the shape of the user’s ears. I’m lucky to be one of them. Because I couldn’t try them at the store (in Thailand anyway, I don’t know about France). Compared to the earpods (in the middle), they are a bit bigger, heavier. A prolonged listening (3h-4h) hurts my ears a bit

Besides, they are so simple to steal that I would never dare to wear them in the subway, in the street
Anyway, everyone looks ridiculous with this thing. I show you a picture of JB to illustrate

On the other hand, if you lose an earphone, you can replace it by buying the lost earphone from Apple, I don’t know the price though

I am valid for home use, but not for outside use

Conclusion

For me, these Airpods are rather a gadget, because the use cases are too limited, because of the risk of loss and theft of the earphones (not to mention the futuristic look)

But for those who spend long hours in front of their computers, it’s more fun to have wireless headphones like this, and light (not headphones). They are particularly suitable for digital nomads, or those who are regularly on the phone (or make calls) because the microphone is excellent

And especially for battery management dummies like me, it’s great this holster system that works like an external battery