Originally Posted by
lusid1 These aren't bad for a freshmen engineering effort. They aren't great, but they aren't really bad either.
Music streaming is actually quite good. They are closer to wired quality than any of my other wireless headphones. The initial pairing was seamless. Thats the extent of the wins in the good column.
The lack of controls is more annoying than I thought it would be. Asking siri to adjust my volume might make for a good commercial but its completely impractical for normal use.
I was shocked by the terrible battery life. It is at best 2 hours unless you only use them for listening to music. On my first day of real use they died before my second hour of calls ended, dumping me out to speakerphone. I thought they were defective. I had bought into the PR around the 5hour battery life without noticing the footnote. Apparently 2 hours best case is all they are actually designed to do.
Call quality was OK while they lasted. No complaints in the almost 2 hours I got out of them. I did some offline recording tests, so I know they are heavily compressed and tend to artifact around hard consonants, words with s, and sound low bitrate, but so far people have been able to figure out what I'm saying. If I keep them I'll eventually get to try them under less ideal conditions.
The battery life though, wow, thats bad. No wonder they hid it in a footnote.
If all you are doing is phone calls, remember after about 100 minutes you can take one out and continue your call on a single AirPod. Just stick it in the case for about 5 minutes and it should recharge, then put the other one in for five minutes. Personally, I love them for phone calls; they are clear sounding, they don't pick up most background noise, etc.
Unfortunately, the battery is likely one thing that won't improve greatly -- the "weird look" is largely because of the battery it has. It does seem like they could do something better with controls in the future. I mentioned in one of these threads, iOS 11 will bring more controls, as well as the ability to assign a different command to each (both L and R) AirPod -- it will no longer be just a choice between Siri and Pause Play. My recollection is that the choices are Siri, Pause/Play, Next Track, and Previous Track -- no volume option. I also wish they'd include a double tap option.
Being that I’ve only worn them as a pair no more than 5 times or so, I can’t say if better battery life is achieved wearing just one or both AirPods. Having said that, I can have the one pod in my ear for an entire 8-hour shift with a some calls here and there without running out of battery. I’ve done that numerous times when I was working in North Carolina. Wearing them at work here in Orlando is impractical for me right now because if I’m not in a meeting, I’m on a conference call, and if I’m not on a conference call, I’m trying to hurry up and get some tasks accomplished, reply to some emails and Slack PMs before the next round of meetings....
08-11-2017 09:02 PM
