Apple Airpods – An Audiophile Perspective
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,117 words · ~5 min read
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it's a crisp clear december morning and i've never felt better
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look what i got i just paid over 300 for a pair of
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airpods wireless earphones from some guy on craigslist without having done any
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research whatsoever i don't know what devices they work with
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i don't know what kind of battery life to expect and i don't know if they sound
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good all i know is they're the newest product from apple and i need them
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so let's find out are they air amazing
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or pedestrian
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a new mouse and keyboard check out the cougar gaming attack x3 mechanical
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keyboard and revenge your gaming mouse at the link in the video description
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i've got to give apple this the pairing process with iOS devices is pretty
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magical just pop the lid open on the airpods charging case hold it near your
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phone press the button and you're greeted by a handy dandy battery
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indicator for both the airpods themselves and the charging case
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as a not really apple person macbook pairing was a little less
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straightforward for me the auto pairing through icloud did work
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but apple's instructions simply say select airpods in the menu bar and i
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didn't realize i had to manually enable the bluetooth icon in the menu bar
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before that would work for a non-apple device setup is still
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easy but less magical hold the button
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select them in your bluetooth menu and wait about a second then you can get on
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with your hamilton fix that is unless someone interrupts you
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taking out one side mid playback was my first experience with another magical
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feature of the airpods they're on board accelerometers that let them start and
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stop playback when they're inserted or removed from your ears
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as someone who actually does wear earphones all day
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this design choice smacks of made by
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people who don't do that because i often find myself working with one side in to
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increase my awareness of my surroundings the good news is that within the
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bluetooth menu apple allows this setting to be changed along with the behavior of
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a double tap on the stem which can trigger siri or play pause media
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playback the bad news is that unlike the wired
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equivalents the airpods rely on clunky
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voice control for volume adjustments and
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track skipping voice control that doesn't work without
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an active internet connection for siri and while these settings are stored on
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the airpods themselves and carry over to
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other devices there doesn't appear to be any way to configure them in the first
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place without using an apple device
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of course if they don't offer a compelling balance of portability
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convenience value and sound quality i
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doubt many Android users will be queuing up to buy them anyway
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so how do they fare in this regard the answer is
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okay the charging case is small enough to fit in my pocket much smaller and
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lighter than braggy's aluminum one and smaller than the case i already carry
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for my ie80s and a lightning dongle
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it's bigger than jaybird's charging adapter for the freedoms but that
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doesn't have its own battery on board so it's not really an apples to apples
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comparison with that said you are less likely to
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need a charging case with the freedoms since the airpods dropped 50 percent of
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their battery after working on this video for a few hours listening to them
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only intermittently as for sound quality
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they're sure not worth what i had to pay for them but as bluetooth earphones go
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the auto switching between the integrated microphones in both earpods
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works really well they've got great range even without line of sight to my
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phone with a low enough noise floor that i didn't perceive any background hiss
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and they've got a pleasing enough sound signature that i think most people will
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have no complaints bass is punchy and not overdone mids and
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highs are serviceable and as someone who normally uses iems i actually really
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enjoyed their more open natural sound
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are they as good as audiophile earphones like my daily driver ie80s
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no don't be stupid and i like the fact that
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they fit in my ears more snugly than normal earpods without the weight of the
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wires but i don't think i personally would
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trade away in-line controls and a much lower price for that small benefit
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not to mention that there are literally thousands of earphones out there that
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aren't ear pods then again if you're the type of person
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who treats headphones as a fashion statement
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i don't think they look nearly as weird as my initial impressions when apple
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unveiled them and they aren't priced that outlandishly compared to other
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accessories or even other wireless earphones
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speaking of better lighting we're teaming up with tesoro to give
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away one of their gram spectrum keyboards and one of their zone balance
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gaming chairs the gram features tactile
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low profile key switches all of which are fully programmable and
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which feature 16.8 million color RGB lighting and a braided cable and the
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zone balance features a sturdy steel frame a heightened backrest with
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adjustable armrest and backrest and polyurethane faux leather all you gotta
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do to enter is watch the video and enter through our link in the description
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all right thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit
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that like button and maybe leave a comment letting me know if you prefer
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the more sick Linus sound to my normal
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voice which is what i'm doing right now or if you'd rather i just go back to
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being a yappy little chihuahua in all of my videos also linked in the video
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description i don't think i gave you a link in the video description that's okay is where to buy the stuff we
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featured at amazon and a link to our community forum as well as our merch
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store which has cool shirts like this one now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to
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watch next so click that little button in the top right corner to check out
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my review of the braggy dash
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which has gotten some firmware updates since i did that but it has not fixed
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the bluetooth range i did check that while i was working on this video