Hands-onYes, the new AirPods Pro make sound sound better than the ones from 2020. But perhaps the most special thing is how the caps do when you’re not playing anything: the microphones let you hear the environment perfectly, but with less noise.
Let’s answer the most obvious question first: yes, the new AirPods Pro sound better than the old ones. They clearly have good bass, something the previous version lacked, and a clean, wide range when listening to music. These are the best-sounding earbuds Apple has right now, although we think the AirPods Max headphones have a slightly longer range.
But Apple has not only looked at the sound quality with these earbuds. Just like their predecessors, the Pro caps can be set to the ‘Transparency’ and ‘Noise Reduction’ positions. With Transparency, ambient noise is let through, so that you can hear who you are talking to, for example. And with Noise Reduction, noise in the background is suppressed, so that you can listen to music in a loud airplane, for example.
Like you don’t have earplugs in
The Transparency mode sounded much more natural in our tests than with the AirPods Pro from 2020. Sounds are picked up by the microphones and played in your ears, but that is hardly noticeable. Voices sound exactly as you hear them without the caps, making it almost as if you are not wearing the AirPods Pro.
In this mode, sounds of 85 decibels or higher are now also softened, so that you are less bothered by really loud noise. You can hear your surroundings, including that loud jackhammer in the street, but suddenly it doesn’t sound deafening anymore. A function that we were not yet able to test extensively, but the first impression was already impressive. According to Apple, sound is also adjusted in such a way that its texture is not affected.
The editors of BestGetest put the best wireless earbuds in a row.
Go to a concert with your AirPods
It means you can go to a concert with AirPods Pro, for example, to hear the music exactly as it’s played – just a few decibels lower. The caps normalize sound that is actually too loud for you, making it nice to wear them even when you don’t have music on.
The noise reduction has also been improved, according to Apple, although in our tests it was difficult to hear a difference with the previous AirPods Pro. We found that they were good at filtering out constant noise – but so did the previous AirPods Pro. The new ear tips, which are now also available in a size for smaller ears, are nice.
Control volume
You still operate the AirPods Pro by squeezing the stems, but now there is also a touch panel on both sides. You can swipe over this to adjust the volume – something we missed a lot with the previous AirPods. With that you had to grab your iPhone to change volume, or ask Siri to do that for you.
That touch panel works fine, although you have to swipe again for each volume step. So it takes a while if you want to go all the way up or down – according to Apple, that is to prevent hugely loud music suddenly blasting through your ears.
Preliminary conclusion
We haven’t been able to test a lot yet. For example, the AirPods Pro have a special scan function that adjusts the music to your ears and Apple promises a longer battery life, but both can only be tried as soon as we can review them longer.
But what we saw was more impressive than expected. On the surface, these just seem like better-sounding earbuds, but Apple’s ways of filtering out ambient noise is really special. We actually look forward to wearing these buds when we’re not listening to music – something we couldn’t imagine in 2020.
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