AirPods 5
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Discussion (237 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
I personally own a pair of Beats fit pros - which are great for running, Zoom calls. But I recently acquired a schiit vestri and I pair these with some old wired seinheisers (HD1). I cannot overstate the drastic difference in quality.
It is quite absurd (but categorically true) that the quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today.
I finally capitulated to earbuds when they started giving them away with the Pixel phones. The "find my" feature basically justifies the pro-prices, to me, because my biggest complaint about bluetooth earbuds in my own use case was how easily they're lost. I've lost and recovered my Pixel Buds Pro 2 a couple of times now. When traveling a lot by train and plane, the convenience of pocket-sized noise-cancelling earbuds has become worth it for me.
But when I'm on meetings, I'm wired in. During the pandemic, I lost track of how many times my colleagues' Airpods would sputter out and die in the middle of a client meeting. Then they'd switch to wired headphones and their Macbook microphone. They sounded better, they could hear better, and there was no battery power sword of Damocles anymore.
Honestly for me the Airpods 4 with ANC are one of the greatest feats of audio engineering ever. For such a tiny form factor they reproduce really great sound, big soundstage, AND they have good ANC without needing a closed earbud seal. They also have internal mics that listen to the response of your ear to adjust the sound profile, which you can hear happen in real time after bumping the earbuds. Obviously you can get better sound if you make different tradeoffs and wear over-ears, but they are absolutely cutting edge for what they are.
Sure, unless you want to do something rare and exotic like, say, have a microphone on your headset. Then you get the HFP/HSP profile, which makes two tin cans linked by a string seem high quality by comparison.
It's an inscrutable mess.
Wires don't have these problems. Plug them in. Use them. Clean the contacts every now and then if/when they get crudded up.
All that to say.. what's best, cheap, no wires, no headaches and happy or expensive, wires, having to download music and make a library etc and always looking for the next high, the next minor improvement?
One of the happiest days of my life was when I listened to my music on a 10$ mp3 player with 2$ earphones after 3 months of not listening to it.
So yeah, you may be right, even though I've tried 3000$ open-ear audiophile headphones, with an amazing amplifier, listening on tidal and it didn't blow me away but even if it did, I'd be stupid to even try, then I'd know what I'm missing and craving a 5000$ setup when I'm already happy with the 1 inch box I can easily carry wherever I go.
The market has spoken. People drastically prefer the convenience of Bluetooth over the quality that comes along with having to constantly untangle wires or having audio cut in and out from failing wires.
On top of that, universal adoption of noise cancellation has resulted in dramatically better quality in practice than what people were using in 2005. Yes, wired headphones with noise cancellation are even better, but not to a point that people are willing to sacrifice the convenience of going wireless.
The early 00's transition from CRT to LCD monitors was similar. The early desktop LCD panels were expensive, had worse refresh rates, worse contrast, and worse colour rendering. To this day, even very good modern displays struggle to match CRT motion rendering.
But LCDs are so much thinner and lighter, and that was enough to overcome the disadvantages.
A 20" viewable area, 1920 x 1440 CRT in the late 1990s? $800 [1] and that was the king of monitors.
A 22", 1920 x 1080 flat screen today? $65 [2] and considered the most basic, mundane screen out there.
And inflation-adjusted? That $800 monitor was $1500 in today's money.
[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/comparison,497.html [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVM2GJCN
Quality is governed by your subjective experience. The HD1s are tuned in a way that, paired with the Vestri and the files, creates the experience that you enjoy better. That's it. It's not about "better quality" and definitely not about "fidelity."
You also paid probably $99 for something that Apple perfected and sells for $10 -- that USB DAC. Which is fine! You should spend money on things that make you happy.
>The quality of audio that folks were generally listening to in 2005 was better than what we are doing today.
This sentence doesn't have enough detail. What is quality supposed to mean here?
I seem to recall most people being perfectly content with 128kbps MP3s on iPod earbuds back in the day. Only audiophiles/nerds (of which there seem to be more now) were into actual headphones and amp setups and there's never been greater market choice in this regard.
All possible but not common
There are many, many people who are even technically minded who would be surprised that their expensive AirPods Max cannot reproduce lossless audio from Apple Music when used wirelessly.
The average audiophile can't either.
Don't believe me? Try it for yourself, bust out your most expensive DAC and headphones, but be careful, you can't unexperience this
https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx
Modern codec at a decent bitrate: inaudible.
Ironically, it could be the expensive DAC and headphones that helps the codec conceal itself.
That is to say, an audiophile who prefers gear that causes pleasant distortion might hear a difference through that gear, because the codec doesn't account for trying to mask its artifacts through equipment distortion (perhaps distortion in the ear itself only).
Say the codec removes something from the signal on the psycho-acoustic hypothesis that it is masked by something louder occurring close to before or after. That hypothesis is correct under hi-fi conditions, but suppose that the user's distorting tube power amp brings out that something, making it audible. Then removing it is potentially audible!
I have a pair of wired Seinheisers, and they sound great, but 99% of the time, my priority is convenience, and anything that makes sound will do.
Now I just embrace the convenience of Bluetooth and usefulness of noise cancelling.
(But then again, even my AirPods or Sony XM4s are high fidelity compared to what many of the kids these days are listening with, small mono bluetooth speakers or playing music out of their phone speakers)
> Force sensor with volume swipe arrives on AirPods 5, a first for the open-ear form factor, adding the ability to quickly adjust volume by swiping up or down on the stem.
Pure apple marketing juice this one.
> a first for the open-ear form factor
That is being called out as comical.
Miss that a lot. Nowadays it's all touch and I hate it so much because for some reason I have a problem spatially locating them and always end up touching it the wrong way (and yes, I know... ;)
They're not doing anything deceptive or clever.
Cheaper than last gen too.
Would you rather have generation old Pros or brand new standard airpods which have the pro features you actually want.
Do you want open ear (AirPods) or closed (AirPods Pro).
Some people can’t stand having something in their ear. The volume control is a nice feature to have and now it’s available on the cheaper ones. I’ve missed it on my 4s.
Yeah the marketing copy is marketing copy and Apple never references competitors. But if you like the non-pros it’s a nice upgrade.
Because it's a non-feature even the cheapest $30 wireless earbuds have had since forever, often even better, like with physical buttons.
Power steering
Jet engines
Anesthetics
Rubber tires
Flat screen TVs
How grubby of them to take a high end feature and make it more affordable.
I’ve been having to throw away my earphones and getting new ones whenever I needed a new volume setting. Going up and down in the same device is truly a game changer.
/s
I have no idea why Apple has made AirPods harder to handle, impaired mic placement, and limited the battery capacity with shorter stems.
The longer stems offered more room for battery, got the mic closer to your mouth, and were so much easier to handle, manipulate etc.
Can't really fathom why they shortened the stem and made it harder for everyone, themselves and users alike.
The long stem may have been a necessary but suboptimal engineering tradeoff to get the first version out the door. A lot of design tweaks have gone into making AirPods less likely to fall out.
Form vs. function
They looked sleeker and more balanced with the longer stem and in the ear more like jewelry.
I don't want to feel like I'm wearing one of those customer support head mics. I'm ok with shorter stem, and never had a problem.
Or different SKUs. Just saying.
Not that hard for the most profitable trillion dollar company on the planet.
I still have a touch bar MacBook and the keyboard is unusable now.
Same thought as well. It doesn't have to be much bigger, but even 10% longer would be much more useful from mic placement and battery perspective.
I find the “true wireless” form factor finnicky and comically easy to lose and easy to drop. I don’t really see much utility in it either aside from the cool technology flex. If they’d put the modern audio quality and noise cancelling on the BeatsX (and the more neutral AirPods response curve) I’d be first in line.
On the other hand in the past few years I have noticed a lot of people wearing Sony's Wireless headset and Earphones. Apple used to dominate this category when they first launch AirPods. I am wondering what happened they people discovered they could use other brand and Apple's brand loyalty don't quite work.
Thing that only happens in the minds of SV marketing gurus.
This is a weird product feature versioning. Would people pay an extra $20 for these two features specifically? With the AirPods 4 the upsell SKU was ANC which made exponentially more sense.
I prefer the regular AirPods to in-ear. But I still keep an old pair of Pro's around purely because the stem is so convenient for changing volume when I'm walking the dog or out for a run and I'd rather not get my phone out my pocket.
But in the end, it'll be the desire to eradicate the lightning port from my life that forces my hand on the upgrade
[holding two items at a store] "Siri.. which one of these should I buy"
im just so tired.
Let's feel some excitement in your voices!
A bit strange for Apple to let fairly popular products just go so long without a refresh. Just the vision component of the new AirPods could have been delayed, not really a critical feature anyway.
Apple Watch seems to be getting pretty good, might finally switch away from Garmin if the Apple one is as durable.
I have a pair of airpod pro 2 and i have to scrape the leads almost every day
would be amazing if they did it thru induction charging (tho i guess thats really slow)
Cheap foam eartips from Amazon are even better than stock for my AirPods Pro but they need to be replaced more often.
That’s for all AirPod Pros, and definitely the AirPod 4 with ANC, not sure about other non pros.
In a multiple of ways: you become disconnected from nature and closed off to environments, and you also reduce safety because you don't know what is going on around you (high % of population live in cities).
Not a uniquely Apple problem though, I suppose.
That said, the masses have had noise cancelling earbuds for years at this point and while there definitely are cases of people getting hurt or killed from being unaware of their surroundings, it’s not really been that big a deal.
Firearms have been the leading cause of death for people ages 1-19 since 2020.
[0]https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761
I live in a city. Nature for me means the squealing breaks of cars and trucks + people trying to get my attention so I'll take their religious flyer. No thanks.
I've seen people with no earbuds be completely oblivious and almost walk into traffic...
Are there non-Apple alternatives that also accomplish this?
https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Sennheiser_Momentum_5
Not all electronic recycling ä works well some non working electronics are shipped to Africa . The "recycler" takes the profit in the pocket. People have put airtags to track where such electronics to goods end up.
Also, landfills work really well. Most recycling doesn't work and pollutes more.
Devialet Gemini earbuds are superior: https://www.devialet.com/en-us/true-wireless-earbuds/
Also, they’re French acoustic experts, so cooler and deeper knowledge.
Like yeah, obviously anyone would understand "Thanks" but come on. Was this part of the discussion of some long meeting? Like if she said a word in Spanish it would imply the Air Pods translate your words?
I'm obviously nitpicking but I just found it oddly funny.
It was Union Station in Los Angeles, one of the busiest and most iconic train stations in the country.
Available starting September 14th, 2026.
Please Apple let me easily swap out Siri for chatGPT voice! Work together .. buy them or something. Their voice conversation tech is superior and can help save lives when driving!
Don’t expect it any time soon.
If you have ever used chatGPT voice for directions you could forsee that super intelligent contextual directions are safer then looking at a screen. I.e. "That new mechanic is across the street from the McDonalds on Dorset," in a locale you are familiar with.
Open-ear is more general cause there are ear-hook and clip-on models now.
the apple tech confirmed it had the issue but it was too long outside of their coverage. Like... if it has a known manufacturing defect with a defined timeline, that means i basically rented the damn things.
their only remediation was like 10% off the latest airpods. which is just a massive slap in the face.
You've mistaken a press release for an article. This is Apple's own site and announcement of Apple's own product. Of course it's an ad.
> One need never pluralize Apple product names. Ex: Mr. Evans used two iPad Pro devices.
https://www.iphoneantidote.com/blog/dont-pluralize/
Which ones are those? I've owned a couple of generations of airpods and dropped them probably hundreds of times (both in the case and out of it) and it has never had any detectable effect on their appearance or functionality. I even had a pair go through the wash and they still mostly worked afterwards (only issue was that the ANC performance was worse and slightly weird).
I don't remember whether my first airpods were the gen1 pros or the gen2 pros, but you may have been a victim of early teething issues. I don't really have anything negative to say about the ones I've owned.
Although that may be in part due to vendor lock in and not sharing some of their connection handling API / tech.
You’d do your case favours by not exaggerating. My AirPods have proven perfectly rugged, I’ve dropped them plenty of times.
You would be fine then, too. My daughter makes a sport out of how often she can drop airpods and even put them through the wash. She's on the hook for buying her own pair next time but the old ones keep on working.
The Pros, completely different story. Maybe a bit pricey but the ecosystem, battery life, comfort, ANC, all of that is great. The difference that little rubber piece makes is wild.
Side note - the "directional" audio (Sounds as if it's originating from your device rather than standard L/R audio), not sure if this is still a thing, but it was super weird the first time I tried it. I literally had to check that I was actually using the earbuds a few times, and refused to use it after. Maybe it was TOO good, super cool tech though.
I'm the opposite, the rubber ones are annoying and give me headaches. Love the open ear feel.
> The Pros, completely different story
You think this is accidental?