Apple AirPods Pro review: The ‘Hearable’ at its best

We are living in an era of “hearables” — earphones embedded with special sensors that talk to our phones. And Apple’s AirPods, those tiny white earbuds that live in a case the size of a Tic Tac box, are leading the trend.

For several years, I have found AirPods to be as convenient as they are useful. When Apple introduced them in 2016, it popularized wireless earphones with a special chip that connected them to an iPhone. When I popped them in my ears, they seamlessly connected with my device. And when I put them back in their case, their batteries replenished.

Now the AirPods are getting smarter — and costlier. The earlier-generation AirPods cost around $150. The latest model, AirPods Pro, is more expensive at $249.

But the new earphones, released about a month ago, offer noise-canceling technology. They use microphones to listen for ambient sound and to generate the opposite sound in your ears to reduce noise, like the roaring engines of an airplane and background chatter in an office.

The AirPods Pro also have a neat new feature known as transparency mode, which you activate by holding down a button on an earbud stem. The earphones then use their microphones to amplify the sounds around you, so you can hear your surroundings more clearly while listening to a podcast or music. This turned out to be my favorite new feature.

How good are the new AirPods for that much money? Compared with other high-end headphones, the AirPods aren’t the best at canceling noise. Yet they are competent and a good overall value, and so far, no one can beat the convenience of their compact design.

For several weeks, I compared the AirPods Pro with Bose headphones and a pair of older AirPods in various situations, including my daily commutes and on an international flight. Here’s how that went.

ON A PLANE

For me, noise-canceling headphones are most useful on a plane. The noises from the engines combined with the conversations of loquacious seat neighbors make it difficult to sleep.

So I wore the new AirPods on a recent 14-hour flight. I found several downsides. For one, the noise-canceling somewhat muffled the noise of the plane engines, but not enough to allow me to sleep. And because the AirPods are wireless, I couldn’t plug them into the screen in front of my seat to watch movies.

On the flight, I preferred Bose’s $350 QuietComfort 35, which are large wireless headphones worn over the ears. They significantly cut down on the engine noise, and they have a cord that could be plugged in to my seat’s audio jack to watch in-flight entertainment. But the Bose headphones are bulkier, though they have always fit fine in my carry-on bag.

As for the older AirPods, I never felt they were adequate to hear music or podcasts amid the engine noise. In the past, I left AirPods at home whenever I traveled.

VERDICT: For frequent travelers, I recommend bigger, more effective noise-canceling headphones like those from Bose.

ON A TRAIN

I wore the new AirPods Pro on several trains on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. With noise-canceling turned on, the earbuds sounded good and did a fine job drowning out the conversations around me. But when the train came to a screeching halt, the earbuds were ineffective at muffling the earsplitting noise.

In similar tests, my Bose headphones sounded great on the train, but they, too, couldn’t muffle loud braking. This is to be expected: In general, noise-canceling technology reduces low-frequency sounds, not high-frequency noises likes screeches or babies screaming.

On BART, when I wore normal AirPods, I could barely hear anything playing from the earbuds. I often didn’t bother to use them on the train.

VERDICT: On noisy trains, the AirPods Pro are just as good as other noise-canceling earphones, and they are much better than normal AirPods.

ON THE STREETS

The new AirPods were great to use outdoors. By turning on transparency mode, I was able to listen for cars while crossing the street and remain attentive while walking around less safe neighborhoods.

In contrast, the Bose headphones lacked a transparency mode (though some other Bose models have the feature). I often just took them off outdoors for safety purposes.

VERDICT: The AirPods Pro became my go-to earphones for running errands like going out to the grocery store and walking my dogs. A bonus: They were easier to grab on the go because of their smaller size.

ON THE PHONE

After some experimentation, I learned that transparency mode was the best for taking phone conversations on the new AirPods. People’s voices sounded loud and clear in the earphones, but just as important, I was able to hear myself better, which helped me be more mindful about enunciating words and made me feel more confident overall.

Whenever I took calls on the Bose headphones, I could hear the person I was calling very clearly, but I sounded muffled to myself, which was jarring.

I also enjoyed taking calls on older AirPods, partly because they connected with my phone quickly when a call came in. But being able to hear myself better in transparency mode on the Pro model made a big difference.

VERDICT: If you talk on the phone frequently, the AirPods Pro make an excellent headset.

BOTTOM LINE

While there are bulkier headphones on the market that do a better job at noise-canceling, the AirPods Pro are adequate in most situations, and their compact size makes them more convenient. They are a major improvement; I hesitate to recommend older versions because the new model is far superior.

Unfortunately, there’s one big thing that hasn’t changed. In my review of the previous AirPods, I noted that after about two years, my first-generation AirPods started dying because their batteries had worn out. They could not be revived because the batteries could not be replaced.

Apple confirmed the batteries could also not be replaced on the AirPods Pro. That’s because, in part, their design involves embedding the batteries, circuit boards, microphones and antennas directly into a tightly sealed, tiny package.

So if you buy the AirPods Pro, be warned: You will most likely have to pay up all over again in two years.


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Apple jack axe ushers in a voice-driven world

New iPhone 7 ditches the audio jack; offers adapter

The new Apple iPhone has something missing: the small socket millions of us have used for years to plug in headphones.

While some fans opposed the widely anticipated move -- one online petition urging Apple to keep the headphone jack drew more than 300,000 signatures -- equipment suppliers and experts heralded a change in how users will interact with their devices.

Axing the jack, they say, paves the way for discreet, bean-sized earbuds that can simultaneously translate, filter out unwanted noise or let us control other devices by voice -- and drive up the value of the so-called "hearables" market to $16 billion within five years.

It's the vision of the futuristic 2013 movie "Her," where a human has a love affair with a disembodied voice in his ear. But some who follow the industry say it's closer than many think, noting improvements in wireless technologies, materials, artificial intelligence and battery life.

"It's surprisingly close," says Nick Hunn, a UK-based consultant who works with manufacturers and a group defining the short-range wireless Bluetooth standard.

UN-WIRED

Apple justified the removal of the jack as a courageous move to ditch a 100-year-old technology and make more space inside the iPhone. It offered as alternatives a lightning cable earphone and an adapter for the old type, but touted new wireless earphones.

"It makes no sense to tether ourselves with cables to our mobile devices," said Phil Schiller, senior VP of worldwide marketing, announcing the launch of AirPods, Apple's own wireless earbuds using the firm's new wireless W1 chip, and costing $159.

"We're just at the beginning of a truly wireless future we've been working towards for many years," added chief design officer Jonathan Ive.

And that great uncabling has already begun.

Speakers were first: more than 100 million wireless speakers will be sold this year, most of them using Bluetooth, according to SAR Insight and Consulting.

Now it's headsets: spending on wireless headsets overtook wired ones last year, says Steven LeBoeuf, founder of Valencell, a developer of biometric sensor technology for wearable devices.

The next step is to make those earphones smarter.

German wireless earbud start-up Bragi, for example, last week announced a partnership to hook up its earbuds with IBM's artificial intelligence engine, Watson. IBM said users would be able to communicate, monitor vital signs, receive and give instructions and translate from one language to another using Bragi's smart earphones.

Firefighters would be better able to hear and locate victims and colleagues, and co-workers could collaborate using both hands, said Bragi CEO Nikolaj Hviid.

"This is not about making headphones," he said. "It's about taking the user interface from your eyes and hand and having a much more discreet one when needed. It's part of a bigger puzzle."

INTELLIGENT ASSISTANCE

That bigger puzzle includes improving how computers understand human commands.

Apple pointed to improvements in its Siri voice control software, which can be activated by double tapping the AirPod.

Other major technology companies are also making strides, with Amazon.com Inc.'s Alexa software letting you control an Internet-connected speaker with your voice. Alphabet's Google has its own version.

Among China's technology leaders, Baidu is working on improving transcribing speech, and says its Deep Speech 2 system can transcribe English and Chinese about three times faster than a human. It says the number of voice interactions with its products has tripled since the start of last year.

Start-ups, too, are forging a path. New York-based Scarlet, funded by Samsung Electronics, this year launched an intelligent assistant app that briefs the user on relevant information based on weather, outside events and your calendar.

Valencell has focused on putting biometrics in the earbud, such as measuring the user's heart rate. Its technology can be found in over a dozen products so far, says LeBoeuf.

Bragi has worked on solving some of the problems connecting two wireless buds with a device and with each other, and wants to "bring intelligence to wearables," says Hviid.

But there are still teething problems.

Hviid says Bragi's latest earbuds, launched this week, resolve many of the issues that drew criticism in the first generation product. Others say artificial intelligence is still not there, though it's much better than even a few years ago. "Apple's AI is not ready now," says Gonzalo Tudela, CEO of Vandrico Solutions, an enterprise wearables software company.

NO VOICE NEEDED
But many, including some major hardware players, sense the time is near.

Samsung last month launched its IconX wireless earbuds, which include biometrics, while Sony's Xperia Ear promises to deliver weather and message notifications via voice, and to recognize input either by voice or head movements. LG Electronics said last week it was including Alexa in its SmartThinQ Hub, a device used to connect home appliances over the Internet.

And some are already pioneering the next step -- where voice commands are unnecessary.

U.S. start-up Emotiv Systems is selling a $300 headset that allows the user to control software with the mind and face. This, says David Vivancos, an adviser to the company, is part of a shift "to custom apps that learn from your usage. Your app and my app will soon not be the same."

In the "Her" movie, the operating system becomes more and more personal. "There's a case to be made for a hearable OS," says Mari Joller, Scarlet's founder and CEO, "which capitalizes on the combination of sensors, mobility, context and privacy to enable experiences that are in many ways even more intimate and powerful than the smartphone."

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