AirPods with Wireless Charging Case • Hacker News Board

Re: AirPods with Wireless Charging Case

#111

Post by simongr3dal » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 3:15 PM UTC

dylanm5 wrote: post #47

How is the audio quality on these? Are they worth anywhere near $200 when compared to wireless earbuds made by actual audio companies?

I only own the original Airpods.

Compared to the Apple Earpods with either lightning or jack-cable I would describe the Airpods as having just slighty more bass in the sound and just slighty more volume. What they lack in audio quality compared to bulkier proper headphones they make up for with their amazing portability and convenience.

I don't know that they are worth $200, I thought $160 was pretty expensive when I got mine. But that seems to be the price range for premium bluetooth headphones.

Personally: I don't find any earbud-style headphone to be very good audio vise compared (my experience with them is also limited) as compared to headphones or speakers. I can wear them for a long time without feeling fatigued. In the first two weeks with the Airpods my ears became very sore after ~30min wearing them, despite being very accostumed to the Apple Earbuds, luckily that is not the case any more.

Re: AirPods with Wireless Charging Case

#112

Post by RandallBrown » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 3:15 PM UTC

bad_good_guy wrote: post #41

Sticking to lightning connector for the wired charging? Guarantees I won't be getting it. Why are Apple delaying their inevitable switch to USB-C, when they've already started the transition with macbooks and ipad pro?

I'd bet that nearly 100% of people that buy AirPods already have an iPhone and a lightning cable. It would be pretty annoying to have to carry two cables to charge your stuff.

Re: AirPods with Wireless Charging Case

#113

Post by andrewksl » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 3:16 PM UTC

robohoe wrote: post #61

canuckintime wrote: post #42

This is a disappointing update. Introducing the wireless charging case at an additional charge without an accompanying release of Airpower is curious. No new color options. More importantly, no new control options. I can't change volume without resorting to my Apple Watch or phone. Hey Siri is a non feature akin to the Bixby button on Samsung phones. The battery on my first gen Airpods has deteriorated but this isn't…

Try Bose soundsports. They’re $200 as well but battery life is great and they tend to really stay in your ear canal.

This is true. However, the build quality is abysmal. Plastic pieces have come unglued and buttons are faulty on both my fiancée's pair and mine. I don't think I can recommend the SoundSports as much as the QC35s.

Re: AirPods with Wireless Charging Case

#114

Post by jclardy » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 3:17 PM UTC

dawnerd wrote: post #101

willio58 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had mine since they were released and have experienced very little deterioration. I even left them outside and out of their case for A MONTH! During summer I was house sitting, left them outside at my house for a month by complete accident, came back home and found them. Once I charged them up they worked like a charm. During this month it rained a few times too.

That’s not really the deterioration people are talking about. Using them every day multiple times will destroy them quite quickly. Seems to be around the year and a half mark.

I've used mine everyday since launch, so a little over two years. They now only hold a charge for about 45 minutes, so I end up doing one ear at a time for longer voip meetings. The case held up fine, I charge that like once every two weeks. I'd say they were generally fine for my purposes until about a month ago when they started cutting out at the end of hour long meetings.

Even still, I ordered the new ones. The convenience is easily worth it for me since I am primarily in the Apple ecosystem.

Re: AirPods with Wireless Charging Case

#115

Post by Bahamut » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 3:17 PM UTC

theonemind wrote: post #20

Daniel_sk wrote: post #5

The issue is that you have tiny chemical batteries inside and they deteriorate with use and time, so it will hardly hold any charge after 3 years (some report much faster deterioration). Does Apple replace those batteries? How much does it cost? And can it be done outside of US? (e.g. in EU countries with no official Apple Store presence). Otherwise it's pretty expensive to pay $200 for a pair headphones and throw th…

I’ve had my AirPods for a while. The battery life has indeed degraded, but they’re pretty good for an hour of listening, and I never really do more. I’d be more disappointed as a heavy user. They’re also the only earphones I can stand while exercising. Before the AirPods, the annoyance of the wire flopping around or on my skin, etc. made me mostly just not listen to anything. So, I don’t really compare them to anythi…

Interestingly, I seem to be one of the few people the AirPods don't work for when it comes to exercising - they don't fit well in my ears, so they'd fall out if I tried to exercise in them :( .

Love them in general though, they are good enough for the price & what they do.

Re: AirPods with Wireless Charging Case

#116

Post by alias_neo » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 3:18 PM UTC

Phlarp wrote: post #57

lm28469 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not expected to keep them that long, it's targeted to people who buy the new generations pretty much as soon as they are released. Who's going to pay 30%-50% of a new version to replace his airpods or apple watch battery ? [0] It's the same with all these hi tech gadgets relying on tiny glued/soldered batteries. You can't replace them yourself because it's either proprietary hardware or you need to literally b…

I absolutely agree with everything in this post, but the newest model of QC35s has like 15 hours of battery life. Even if it degrades 50% over 3 years they will be perfectly usable. Airpods don't have enough physical size to overprovision battery that much. Unserviceable laptop and cellphone batteries are terrible and apple is by far the biggest offender. disclaimer: typed from a macbook :(

I have a pair of Sony over-ear Bluetooth headphones, with NFC, about 7 years old now, MDR-1RBT.

I have used them 5 days a week, for ~2 hours a day for almost the entirety of those 7 years, I charge them approximately once per month.

They cost £400 at the time and have been by far the best consumer electronic investment I have ever made. When the battery becomes unusable I'll find a replacement and fit it my self, but I have no plans to replace them until they are deader than dead.

I don't care much for "fashion" and they already have more features than I need (I use the physical switch to toggle off the NFC because I never need to use it), they do high enough quality audio (AAC/AptX) for streaming 320/16/44.1 and the battery life is better than any other battery powered device I own (barring the TV remote) even after all this time.

Re: AirPods with Wireless Charging Case

#117

Post by jmull » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

a-szekely wrote: post #59

What's going on with Apple releasing so many updates without holding a press event? (It's not like they have always announced significant updates at their keynotes.)

With an event scheduled soon, I take the marketing message to be:

"We've got sooo much insanely great stuff to announce these great updates don't even make the cut."

I think the constant stream of updates is to ramp up anticipation for the main event.

Re: AirPods with Wireless Charging Case

#118

Post by graeme » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

dkrich wrote: post #81

I have airpods and a pair of Sennheiser PXC 550's. I use the Sennheiser's on long flights and when I'm working at home and the airpods everywhere else. Both are great for their use cases, but the best feature of the Sennheiser's that I miss on my airpods every day is the ability to adjust the volume and song by swiping on the outside of the ear cup. I realize that there are trade-off's when moving from a much larger…

You do know you can configure the airpod controls, right?

You can’t adjust volume, which is a major limitation. But you can change songs with taps.

I strongly suspect you know this, but the way you wrote it is a bit ambiguous so I’m erring on the safe side and checking.

Re: AirPods with Wireless Charging Case

#119

Post by dwighttk » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

bad_good_guy wrote: post #41

Sticking to lightning connector for the wired charging? Guarantees I won't be getting it. Why are Apple delaying their inevitable switch to USB-C, when they've already started the transition with macbooks and ipad pro?

I bet it's going to be lightning to only wireless, not lightning to usb-c

Re: AirPods with Wireless Charging Case

#120

Post by dethac » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 3:22 PM UTC

lambda_lover wrote: post #82

robohoe wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try Bose soundsports. They’re $200 as well but battery life is great and they tend to really stay in your ear canal.

It's not the battery life per charge, it's the battery life span . Similar to iPhones (which are rated for only 500 charge cycles because gotta pad those profit margins... so good luck using one battery for even 2 years), AirPods experience battery degradation to a point where they last < 1 hour and just shut down randomly because they can't provide enough charge to the buds. In just 2-3 years.

Galaxy Buds might be worthwhile if you're willing to open it up. Supposedly it's not too hard.

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+Buds+Teardown...