AirPods 4
The long stem design of the original AirPods is now gone, and the new AirPods 4 are an iteration of the AirPods 3. The original AirPods, launched in 2017 at £159 in the UK, whereas the new AirPods 4 cost £129 – making the entry price much lower. The case battery life has also been boosted to 30 hours.
What’s new with this design is the introduction of ANC (Active Noise Cancellation), meaning there are now two models of AirPods 4 – one without ANC and one with. The ANC model raises the price to £179, but I’m curious to see how well it works. I don’t expect them to perform as well as the AirPods Pro 2, as they don’t seal the ears to create a vacuum, which is crucial for ANC to be most effective. The H2 chip should help with ANC, but I’m not expecting to be blown away.
AirPods Pro 2
Speaking about being blown away, my all time favourite Apple product is the AirPods Pro 2. It just works™. I have had my pair for couple of years, and they deliver excellent quality audio and noice cancellation. I had bought the AirPods Pro when they first launched, but found them lacking in noice cancellation so returned them within the two week return window. The AirPods Pro 2, was better in every single way.
Every WWDC, the AirPods Pro 2 seem to get some sort of great new feature. It’s the product I least expect to receive updates, but Apple keeps surprising me. Even if my AirPods Pro didn’t get any more updates and just continued to work, I’d be perfectly happy, but Apple keeps adding more value. By that, I mean they keep enhancing the product without introducing a new model, instead bringing in great features for a product that’s two years old.
The last thing I expected the AirPods Pro 2 to get were features on ear health: Hearing Test, Hearing Aid, and Hearing Protection. This was the biggest news to come out from the keynote presentation if you ask me – mostly because it did not get leaked. It’s also a genuinely fantastic feature that works on hardware that’s now two years old. This could easily have been a headline feature for a new product, but Apple didn’t tie it to a new model. An older product receiving such an upgrade is almost unheard of. People often claim that Apple holds back features to push upgrades, but this update to the AirPods Pro 2 completely contradicts that view.e antithesis of that argument.
Living in the UK, though, there’s a catch – Apple didn’t specify when these hearing-related features will be available here. I hope it won’t be a long wait.
AirPods Max
The new AirPods Max update feels like a bit of a prank on Apple’s customers. A USB-C port is welcome, but that’s about it. New colours refresh the look, but it still uses the H1 chip and retains that strange case. I wonder if this is just a stop-gap update to add USB-C before a proper upgrade. They’re the most expensive headphones Apple sells, but they have the least impressive internals. It’s been over four years since the last update, and Apple has had plenty of time to make meaningful improvements.
Closing thoughts
As someone who loves technology, I often end up spending money on things I don’t really need. I would have loved to buy a pair of AirPods Max, but I can’t justify this update for £500. I don’t have a need for the AirPods 4 either. I’ll give Apple my money when they release a proper update to the AirPods Pro 2. But for now, Apple doesn’t seem to want my money – yet they’re happy to give me great new features for free, and I’ll take it. As for the money I save by not buying any of these AirPods? That’s going towards another tech purchase – most likely the iPhone 16 Pro Max.