Apple AirPods with the charging case. Photo / Juha Saarinen
Apple AirPods with the charging case. Photo / Juha Saarinen
When Apple announces products, they're usually ready soon after for people to buy. Not so with the wireless AirPods that were launched at the same time as the earphone-jack-less iPhone 7 smartphones in September, but you couldn't buy them then.
Here they are though, just ahead of Christmas and costing $269 including GST. Long story short: if the price doesn't bother you, the AirPods were worth the wait.
They sound great, better than other Apple earbuds in fact, playing audio over Bluetooth using the AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) codec with surprisingly good bass, and great definition. If good sound quality is important to you, the AirPods won't disappoint.
It wouldn't be Apple if the AirPods were just plain vanilla wireless Bluetooth earphones however.
The AirPods arrive in a special case (that does indeed look like a dental floss pack) that acts as a charger with a small battery inside. Charging the case that err, charges the AirPods is done via a Lightning cable. Apple promises five hours of battery life per charge for the AirPods, and 24 hours in total with the case.
A 15-minute charge gives you three hours of AirPod listening time; during the testing, I got 4 to 4 ½ hours, but that's most likely due to my trying out AirPod features extensively, and typical everyday usage should push battery life closer to five hours.
Part of the reason the tiny AirPods last that long is Apple's custom W1 chip that handles the wireless Bluetooth connection to devices.
They look unusual, and you wouldn't think Apple's tiny AirPods would stay securely in your ear, but they do. Photo / Juha Saarinen
Apple has been shy about releasing technical details on how exactly the the W1 works but it makes pairing the AirPods with iPhones, iPads, MacBooks and the Watch wearable dead easy.
Pop up the AirPod case lid and your iPhone 7 and 7 Plus will see the earbuds. On MacBooks it's a little more involved, going to the Bluetooth system preferences panel, but it's still very simple.
It was easy to switch the AirPods from an iPhone to a MacBook for instance, without having to first disconnect them manually in the Bluetooth system preferences. One thing I wasn't able to test is if the AirPods stay with your devices only, or if they're promiscuously connecting to other devices that can see them as well.
The Bluetooth range is pretty good - I was able to listen to music just fine with the iPhone around 15 metres away, and the wireless signal going through gibbed walls.
Thanks to an accelerometer (a fancy word for a motion sensor) hooked up to the W1 chip, the AirPods can tell when they're in your ear and not. Pausing the music is simple: just take out one AirPod bud when your office colleague bothers you with something annoyingly inane. Put the AirPod back into your lughole, and the music starts up again. Genius.
What's amazing though is that the AirPods stay in your ears when moving and even jumping around.
There's also a "voice accelerometer" built into the AirPods that detects when you speak. A pair of beamforming (directional) microphones then filter out external noises to make phone calls more clear.
This works, but if you've been spoilt by for instance the great audio quality on FaceTime connections, the AirPod microphones sound pretty average in comparison. To get an idea of the difference, use the AirPods to record yourself using the Voice Memo app on an iPhone.
The less than impressive microphone audio quality on iPhones might be fixable with an update from Apple: I tried recording sound through the AirPods on macOS' QuickTime app, and got much better results.
I'm not actually a fan of "in-ear monitors" because they're often uncomfortable to wear for longer periods of time, and the sound changes if they move into a different position. Plus, they tend to fall out of my ears when I least want them to.
Not so with the AirPods: they're supremely comfortable to wear, so much so that it's easy to forget they're in your ears. Each AirPod weighs just four grams, which is nothing. Because they're so well-designed, they don't move round much and the sound doesn't change as a result.
What's amazing though is that the AirPods stay in your ears when moving and even jumping around. The AirPods don't fall out, just play audio as comfortably as ever.
That said, they're small and there's a chance of misplacing the AirPods and the crucial charging case. Good news: you can get replacements.. Bad news: they're not cheap, with each AirPod costing $109 to replace. Replacing the charging case costs the same.
Update Apple uses the Handoff feature in iOS and macOS together with the iCloud to automatically pair the AirPods with your devices.
However, there's a little button at the back of the charging case that can be used to manually pair the AirPods with older devices - and non-Apple hardware. Just open the charger case lid, do not take out the AirPods, and press the small button at the back, and you should be able to pair manually.
There's no ducking away from the fact that the AirPods are expensive, but Apple's engineers and designers have come up with an innovative premium product that works pretty much flawlessly.
