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AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

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Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#241

Post by initplus »

ryeights wrote: post #136
sfvegandude wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need lossless audio. Seriously. AAC is transparent in all the conditions you’d use these AirPods in. Lossless is a total gimmick and shame on Apple for ever enabling that 24bit nonsense. You don’t have golden ears. You aren’t listening closely while walking around town. Noise cancellation removes some of the frequencies. Lossless would drain battery for literally no gain in quality. Edit: as others have not…

Ctrl-F “lossless”, “24”, “ALAC” on the tech specs page. No results. I am no audiophile, and I don’t really care about lossless audio one way or the other, but it seems deceptive to plaster “Apple Lossless” all over the Apple Music app when no Apple headphones can play lossless audio. All the marketing talk about the audio improvements in the H2 chip seems designed to obscure this fact, and to compensate for the fact…

Judging a headphone by specific codec support just doesn't make sense. Support for acoustically transparent codecs is good enough. Nobody has every demonstrated an ability to reliably distinguish high bitrate mp3 or AAC from lossless.

There are still benefits to lossless from a preservation perspective, but for actually listening to music it really doesn't matter.

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#242

Post by joshstrange »

padjo wrote: post #236
joshstrange wrote: post #6

These will be an insta-buy for me. I've loved my AirPods Pro but the battery life has fallen from when I first got them. I knew that would be the case and I'm not mad about it. I'm excited for the touch control on these as well as the better ANC. Also the case having Find My support will be very nice. I'll finally get the MagSafe case as well since that came out later and I never upgraded.

This is my problem with wireless headphones. They’re cool but basically disposable when the battery degrades, which happens fast because of the usage pattern. Seems like an awful waste, I’ve gone back to wired. They will last me decades.

Ehh, I've used these without fail almost every day I've owned them, just shy of 3 years, for often 4+ hours a day. They feel magical, they work really well, and I love always having them in my pocket (and they never get tangled). So for me they were a really good return on investment. I tried to go back to wired after I lost my original AirPods (not pro) years ago and bought new AirPods within a week after going crazy dealing with the wires (getting caught on things, getting tangled, having to run them up my shirt and even then having them sometimes pull on my ears, etc).

At the end of the day it comes down to what your time/enjoyment is worth, for myself $250/3 years is an easy choice but I get that it's not for everyone. Also I've never had wired headphones last more than a year or 2 (at least the ones I carried with me everywhere), 10's of years seems like a stretch unless we are talking about over the ear headphones or similar and those have a ton of downsides compared to something that can fit in your pocket.

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#243

Post by ASalazarMX »

aqme28 wrote: post #232
8ytecoder wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen people minimize the usability of the AirPods. My dad who’s quite technology-averse, figured it out in 2 minutes while I helped him over FaceTime. The only reason he agreed to even try it was because the wired EarPods broke. Since then he just loves his AirPods.

This is Apple’s strength in general. Much easier for older folks to use.

...with other Apple products. FTFY

Being Bluetooth, technically the Airpods will connect to say, a Dell laptop, but in practice they will have erratic behavior, which you can solve by buying a mac... and teaching said old folks how to use MacOS instead of Windows.

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#244

Post by dijonman2 »

happyopossum wrote: post #223
stemlord wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that intuitive imo. I had to show my sister in law who is in her 50's that she needs to leave the case open with the airpods in it, then press the button on the back, in order to make them discoverable. Like all apple products they do sacrifice some discoverability in favor of a sexier minimalist look

If you buy a new pair of AirPods, you should never have to do that unless you go out of your way to unpair them from your iCloud account. Also, you e over complicated it - just hold the button in the case until it’s reset, then open the lid and they will appear as new. > Like all apple products they do sacrifice some discoverability in favor of a sexier minimalist look And which Bluetooth headphones have a more ‘disc…

The Bose QC35 series 1 headphones are the best, pairing semantics work great with fantastic range. The QC35 II model is a major downgrade.

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#245

Post by initplus »

cpsns wrote: post #150

Quoted post unavailable.

I used to think like this, but on closer inspection I realized that you create more waste/polution on every trip to the grocery store, or by driving a car for a week, or eating meat. Yes it's a shame that they are designed not to be repairable but there are so many more low hanging fruit in our everyday lives that we don't think about when it comes to environmental issues.

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#246

Post by antipaul »

cube2222 wrote: post #86
hardwaregeek wrote: post #26

It's wild how much money Apple has made from Bluetooth headphones that don't suck. That's literally it. They're portable, pair easily and (somewhat) work with multiple devices. I have top of the line Bose Bluetooth headphones that still, in 2022, have issues with multiple devices. I can't count how many times I've started playing music on my iPhone only to realize that the headphones think my laptop is playing, so th…

Yeah. I remember my reason for switching to AirPods Max. My Sony xm3 kept connecting to the laptop in my backpack - which was asleep - when I was getting on my bike. I had to unpair my phone and re-pair it to force it to "own" the headphones. It was such a pita. That really was the biggest value add of the Apple headphones, and it works absolutely great. It almost (a 99.5%+ kind of almost) always connects to the devi…

I have two versions of Sennheiser Momentum, but I decided to “trial” the AirPods Max by buying them with the intent of return, because they’re over half a grand $$$.

After literally minutes of use, the thought to return them evaporated just as quickly.

Pretty much all because of the seamless connection.

To be fair to the Sennheisers, they are durable: they survived contact with a wall at least twice.

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#247

Post by cpsns »

crazygringo wrote: post #233
cpsns wrote: post #150

Quoted post unavailable.

Millions of tons...? It's orders of magnitude less than that. It's 56.1 grams for both buds and case . For comparison, 2 AA batteries is 46 grams. They're tiny. In terms of e-waste, they're not even a rounding error. In terms of all devices to worry about, they're essentially last on the list. They're roughly the mass of the most popular consumer disposable batteries themselves. (If you want to do the math, they sold…

Millions of tons is hyperbole, but my point remains. As convenient as they are, devices like them aren’t good for the world.

They might be a rounding error, but I’m going to call out rampant consumerism and environmental issues where I see them.

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#248

Post by [deleted] »

jws wrote: post #159
ramesh31 wrote: post #42

Why don't we have Wi-Fi headphones? The only thing anyone can agree on about Bluetooth is that it absolutely sucks. You'd think Apple would be pushing this. I should be able to buy a pair of headphones with built in streaming capability and be able to cast from HomePod or my phone with near gigabit bandwidth over Wi-Fi 6, and have zero concerns about range anywhere in my home.

Your ears have on the order of 1 megabit/sec bandwidth, so anything more is irrelevant, specifically Wi-Fi 6 is 1000 times overkill. Bluetooth uses about half the energy per bit transmitted compared to wifi. So, using wifi would cut all your run times in half or increase your battery size. The data transmission is the dominant power consumption of wireless ear phones.

[deleted]

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#249

Post by puyoxyz »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #243
aqme28 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Apple’s strength in general. Much easier for older folks to use.

...with other Apple products. FTFY Being Bluetooth, technically the Airpods will connect to say, a Dell laptop, but in practice they will have erratic behavior, which you can solve by buying a mac... and teaching said old folks how to use MacOS instead of Windows.

While they don’t have the excellent UX of Airpods with Apple products when used with non-Apple products, I’ve never experienced this “erratic behavior”. They just work like bluetooth headphones with no weird issues. I regularly use them with my desktop on both Linux and Windows, I’ve used them with my Nintendo Switch, etc… and no erratic behavior

Re: AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

#250

Post by jhickok »

neillyons wrote: post #235

For anyone who runs with AirPod Pros I recommend "AirPod Pro Ear Hooks" that you can get on Amazon for like £10. They keep them in your ear really well. Edit: The ones I have https://amzn.eu/d/3ihERHb

Hey that's a cool suggestion and if that works I can get rid of like 2 other pairs of "workout" earbuds. Thanks!
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