Apple’s AirPods line is in a great place. The company has just replaced its five-year-old AirPods 2 and three-year-old AirPods 3 with two new AirPods 4 models that pack many of Apple’s latest features. Its flagship AirPods Pro 2 remain competitive in the premium wireless earbuds market, as do the AirPods Max in the wireless over-ear one (despite their new update being as ‘soft’ as they come).
Spatial audio with head-tracking, adaptive noise-cancelling, some super-smart Apple-centric usability, and an in-ear design as white, agreeable and iconic as Steve Martin – their appeal is plain to see before you even get to the fact that their sound quality is pretty decent too. But while the two pairs of AirPods 4 announced yesterday tick an abundance of boxes, one feature, when I saw it, made my shoulders slump: battery life. And it isn’t just an AirPods 4 issue.
