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.
The AirPods 3 surpassed its AirPods 2 predecessor in the battery department, up to 30 hours (six held in the earbuds, plus four complete top-ups in the case) from 24 hours (five in the buds, 19 in the case). Both AirPods 4 models stick to that quoted 30-hour total battery life – nothing wrong with that at all – but the earbuds’ single-charge quoted capacity goes back to five hours. Or just four in the ANC model when noise-cancelling is deployed, which is even harder to turn a blind eye to.
For comparison, the Sony WF-1000XM5 offer eight (buds) and 24 (total), the Bose QuietComfort Ultra six and 18, and the Sennheiser Momentum 4 7.5 and 30 – all of those quoted manufacturer figures when ANC is activated. Admittedly these are slightly pricier propositions than the ANC-toting AirPods 4, but I could just as easily chuck examples of cheaper/same-priced earbuds with better in-bud/single-charge battery lives your way too. The Sony WF-C700, the Cambridge Melomania M100…
Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 hold six hours with ANC on (that's much more like it!) so perhaps Apple has intentionally made battery life one of the few differentiators between its AirPods 4 with ANC and Pro 2 model. I'm sure there is a reason, but whatever it is doesn't change the fact that it hurts them from a practical perspective.
Personally, as earbuds are now worn for longer periods and have become more a part of our daily lives, I would argue that in-bud durability is more important than total battery life. Perhaps one of the most important specs, full stop. The fact that a five-minute quick-charge in the case can handily give the buds an hour of listening or 45 minutes of talk time does help, but only so far (and provided the case has enough charge too). While the AirPods 4 with ANC’s feature/price ratio arguably leads the market, this does strike me as their one pitfall.
It isn’t the only new AirPods model guilty of carrying an inadequate juicepack, either. The AirPods Max over-ears may be one of the best sounding – and again, feature-packed – pairs in its field, but their 20-hour battery was by no means class-leading in 2020 when they arrived and is well and truly trumped by today’s 30-hour-plus class leaders. Unfortunately, the new (softly updated) AirPods Max 2 don’t bump that spec, meaning Apple’s over-ear proposition will likely remain below par in this one aspect for some time to come. I love the Max’s superb sound, design and spatial audio, but I travel a lot and their battery life has single-handedly put me off owning a pair.
Unfortunately for technology manufacturers, especially those who have earned excellent reputations, expectations are always high; you don’t expect products to get worse or even specifications to go backwards. Maybe the brand can afford to fall back on one spec when their headphones offer so much else; this is Apple we are talking about, after all. I just can’t help but feel a smidgeon disappointed about this one.
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