The AirPods’ Fine Print

The AirPods are now available for purchase from Apple. I was set to order a pair — their functionality is almost perfect for what I want to use them for — but then I read the fine print.

This is what Apple wrote on their product page:

AirPods deliver an industry-leading4 5 hours of listening time on one charge.3

The fine print for (4) is fine:

Compared to completely wireless stereo headphones.

Point (3) is a bit more worrisome:

Testing conducted by Apple in August 2016 using preproduction AirPods units and software paired with preproduction iPhone 7 units and software. The playlist consisted of 358 unique audio tracks purchased from the iTunes Store (256-Kbps AAC encoding). Volume was set to 50%. Testing consisted of full AirPods battery discharge while playing audio until the first AirPod stopped playback. Battery life depends on device settings, usage, and many other factors.

Taking into account the delays and the test being conducted on preproduction units, this can go one of three ways: they are better, worse, or the same. Looking at Apple’s hardware performance for these past few years, I am (extremely sadly) leaning towards ‘worse.’

The same caveat is used for the following:

And they’re made to keep up with you, thanks to a charging case that holds multiple additional charges for more than 24 hours of listening time.5 Need a quick charge? Just 15 minutes in the case gives you 3 hours of listening time.6

Points (5) and (6) are as follows:

Testing conducted by Apple in August 2016 using preproduction AirPods units and software paired with preproduction iPhone 7 units and software. The playlist consisted of 358 unique audio tracks purchased from the iTunes Store (256-Kbps AAC encoding). Volume was set to 50%. Testing consisted of full AirPods battery discharge while playing audio until the first AirPod stopped playback. The drained AirPods were charged for 30 minutes, then audio playback was continued until the first AirPod stopped playback. This cycle was repeated until both the AirPods and the Charging Case were fully discharged. Battery life depends on device settings, usage, and many other factors.

Testing conducted by Apple in August 2016 using preproduction AirPods units and software paired with preproduction iPhone 7 units and software. The playlist consisted of 358 unique audio tracks purchased from the iTunes Store (256-Kbps AAC encoding). Volume was set to 50%. 15-Minute charge testing was conducted with drained AirPods that were charged for 15 minutes, then audio was played until the first AirPod stopped playback. Battery life depends on device settings, usage, and many other factors.

They’ll probably be fine, but they’re not cheap, so I’ll pass on being an early adopter this time and wait for real-world results.