Everyone must have got the memo by now: Yes, AirPods Pro fit into the little jeans pocket. Having them available without the discomfort of carrying them in my regular pockets, and certainly, not having to dig my hand deep into my pockets is an integral part of the AirPods experience.

Case Design

As much as AirPods are about convenience, putting them on in the middle of a call was a hurdle. I had to support the phone with my shoulder and upper arm, while taking one of the AirPods out of its case, and being careful not to drop anything, and not to have muscle cramps in the meantime. In contrast to AirPods, AirPods Pro case allows one-handed use. It can rest on its cap and stay open. This helps when you are holding your phone with one of your hands, but it saves your day when you don’t have another hand. Not that I don’t, but accessible design is more than addressing disabilities. Kudos to Apple for being consistent in expanding their scope of accessibility.

The new case design is not an absolute improvement over the original one. Most notably, having the slots towards the outer side makes putting the pair back in difficult. It’s especially difficult to put the opposite pair (right pair when using left hand and vice versa). You better switch hands for that.

Noise Cancellation, Transparency, and Fit

I understood how good an upgrade AirPods Pro were, the first time I tried noise cancellation outdoors. With AirPods, I had to increase the volume to beat the traffic noise. With AirPods Pro, I decrease the volume because noise cancellation takes care of the noise. If you use your AirPods in noisy environments, you should upgrade to AirPods Pro.

Transparency is twin-sibling of noise cancellation. It seems like a nice-to-have feature, but it’s essential. AirPods Pro isolate environmental noise significantly even without noise cancellation. It’s impossible to hold a face-to-face conversation while wearing them. One option is to take them off, but it’s not ideal. Transparency is the feature that lets you take your AirPods Pro off without taking them off.

Everyone has been quick to note that transparency is potentially a great accessibility feature. Apple never rushes with these kind of features. I’m confident that we’ll wait for few generations of hardware or software until users can control transparency.

Contrary to other reviewers, I wasn’t happy with Ear Tip Fit Test. I first did the test with the default medium-sized pair. Result was good. Then I thought that small-sized tips might fit better. They indeed did fit better and tested positive. Then I began suspecting that the test was a scam and tried with large-sized tips. They didn’t fit me, but the test said they did. Ear Tip Seal Test would be a more apt name.

Tap vs Squeeze and Controls

AirPods Pro use a squeezing gesture instead of the tapping gesture in AirPods. When tapping didn’t work, I had no idea if the tap didn’t register, or there was a connection problem to the phone, or the phone wasn’t responding as quickly as it should. I had a habit of triple-tapping, hoping that any two of the three would register as a double-tap. Haptic feedback of squeezing lets you know if you successfully squeezed or not.1 However, squeezing is a more complex gesture than tapping. It requires finer motor skills — accessibility, remember? Occasionally, my squeeze doesn’t register perhaps because I squeeze it wrong. Squeezing is more difficult when wearing a hoodie or gloves. And I hate touching my AirPods Pro when my fingers are dirty in the kitchen. With AirPods, I could tap with my knuckles.

I don’t see why squeezing and tapping have to be mutually exclusive. Each could have different functions. Considering that you can’t customize even squeezing functions (except tap-and-hold), this seems a far-fetched request. I would love to see making different gestures available to apps so that we can navigate podcasts, chapters, change playback speed, etc. That would make AirPods Pro a real pro device.

I wish customizing controls was only a problem of professional use. When you use your AirPods Pro with noise cancellation on, it’s a matter of regular annoyance. 90% of the time, I pause playback because someone speaks to me. I also have to turn transparency on to hear them. The awkward silence until I speak back takes forever. And I reply: “Sorry, I couldn’t hear.” After the conversation, I do the tap-dance again to resume playback and turn noise cancellation on. The worst part is yet to come. Soon after, I need to have another conversation. How did AirPods Pro ship without a solution, when it is as simple as having a single gesture switch between play-with-transparency-off and pause-with-transparency-on?

Conclusion

I’ve spent many words on a headphone review without mentioning sound quality. The reason is two-fold. First, AirPods are much more than a headphone. They are about availability, usability, and convenience. Second, sound quality is so good that it’s not worth talking much about. Compared to AirPods, AirPods Pro sound much better.

If you haven’t got the other memo by now: No, AirPods Pro has no auto-switching between devices.

  1. Lack of taptic engine in AirPods is not an excuse for not having any feedback. An auditory feedback would work as well. ↩