Apple AirPods preview: Showing us a wire-free listening future

With no headphone socket on the new Apple iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, you’ve either got to go Lightning or wireless. Although the former is found in the box of the new iPhone 7 models, the company is hoping you’ll go for the later.

With that in mind it has launched a brand new product called the Apple Airpods, a pair of wireless in ear headphones.

Pocket-lint

Apple Airpods: Wireless and wirefree

The dinky Apple AirPod headphone are in-ear headphones that are completely wirefree. By that we mean there are no wires that connect to your phone, or connect the two earphones together.

Like the new wave of Bluetooth headphones starting to come on to the market, the AirPods are intelligent enough to wirelessly connect to each other and then to your phone.

The design is simple, white, and typically Apple. They sit in the opening of your ears with a small rod protruding out and down your face. That outer rod is touch sensitive to allow you to engage Siri.

With no connectors the only way to charge the AirPods is via the accompanying charging case, which is itself a battery giving you more juice on the go.

Aside from the concern of what happens if you lose the charging case, you’ll also have the fear of losing the headsphones themselves as for as good as they are small and as good as they are light, we suspect they are also as good as lost within days of getting them.

Sadly there doesn’t appear to be a lost of found feature like Tile.

Pocket-lint

Apple AirPods preview: Connecting the music

With AirPods, setting up and using wireless headphones looks to be incredibly easy. Demoed to us at the Apple Special Event in San Francisco ahead of their availability in October, connecting the AirPods to your iPhone, and in fact any of your Apple devices, is easy. Once you’ve connected it to one device, the AirPods will be available via iCloud to all your devices and automatically know which one you are listening to music on, be it the iPhone, the Apple Watch, or a MacBook.

“Just open the charging case near your iPhone and with a simple tap, AirPods are immediately set up with all the devices signed into your iCloud account, including your iPad and Mac. AirPods are connected and ready to go when you are, just put them in your ears when you want to listen. AirPods can intelligently and seamlessly switch from a call on your iPhone to listening to music on your Apple Watch,” says Apple.

And our demoed proved it was that easy too. Very cool.

Pocket-lint

Apple AirPods preview: One headphone or two?

It’s not just about listening to music in the same old way you’ve always done. The AirPods include a new wireless processor, dubbed the W1, which has some tricks up it’s sleeve. Pop them in your ear and the music starts playing, take one out and the music will pause and then rather than playing in stereo will only play on the one remaining in your ear.

Remove them completely and they automatically pause the music until you pop them back in. It’s very clever.  

You can access Siri with a double tap to your AirPods to select and control your music, change the volume, check your battery life or perform any other Siri task. Yes, there are no buttons whatsoever.

An additional accelerometer in each AirPod detects when you’re speaking, enabling a pair of beam-forming microphones to focus on the sound of your voice, filtering out external noise to make your voice sound clearer than ever before.

In the crowded and noisy demo room it was hard to really put the wireless earphones to the test, but what we could tell from our brief play is that these are one intelligent pair of headphones, that work really well.

First Impressions

With the promise of 5 hours of listening time on one charge, and a case that offers a further charges to give you 24 hours of total listening time on the go, worries about running out of battery are probably moot.

The design won’t be for everyone, but what is clear is that the AirPods show us where wireless headphones could and should go.

This is Apple setting a benchmark in this area and it is very welcomed.

Of course there are lots of questions to answer, like how they sound in a much quieter environment, or what they are like when running, or what happens when you lose one or the charging case.

From what we’ve see so far the results look good and there are some great features. You’re only worry if you do buy them will be how long you can go before losing one.

The new Apple-designed wireless AirPods including charging case will be available for £159 beginning in late October. AirPods require Apple devices running iOS 10, watchOS 3 or macOS Sierra.