Are AirPods Worth It?

AirPods - Worth It?

I'm not usually one to weigh in on products and I don't usually care enough to write about any one item in particular, but something happened to me this week that kind of inspired me to write this review of Apple's AirPods.

Ever since the iPod days, and even before that, back when portable CD walkmans were still a thing, I've always loved having wired headphones with a proper headphone jack. If you guys remember those original Apple iPod commercials where you would see silhouetted people dancing with their earphones; that was all I ever wanted to be!

Like much of the world, I was extremely annoyed at Apple when they removed the standard earphone jack on their iPhones to introduce their lightning cable earphones. How dare they! I now had a bunch of earphones that would no longer work with my new iPhone, and it was extremely annoying to have to carry around two pairs of earphones at all times. One lightning connection pair for my phone to listen to music, and one with a standard headphone bit for my laptop. Yes, I know Apple introduced the Dongle which allowed you to convert your standard earphones into lightning connector earphones, but I have lost at least three Dongles in a span of weeks and eventually gave up on replacing them.

So why am I telling you all this? Because just as I was getting comfortable with having to deal with carrying around my Apple earphones (one with lightning connector and one with a standard headphone bit), I had a pair of lightning-connector earphones stop working. Okay, I might have accidentally broken them by yanking on the wires really hard when they were stuck under a book on my desk, but the point is, they broke.

I went onto the Apple website to see if I could get new earphones, and refused to pay 35$ for a pair of stupid earphones that would only work with my iPhone. I then scoured Amazon for cheap knock-offs, and decided that I was over having to deal with the whole having two pairs of earphones all the time.

This gets me to the main point of this article (finally). I decided to bite the bullet and order a pair of AirPods because I have been told they are game changers by some of my techy friends (I don't have many), and figured I'd once again try to get ahead of the curve on the newest gadgets rather than invest in "older" technolgy.

Immediately, I was flabbergasted to see that the newest AirPods Pro cost a whopping 329$ before tax! Tax in, that's 379$ y'all! Let me repeat that one more time... 379$! I must have been drunk and stupid at the time, because I said, "whatever, I'll just buy them." I immediately regretted spending so much on some stupid ear accessories that I would likely lose in about a week, knowing how often I've lost Dongles in the past.

Fast-forward to today, and I now have AirPods. Do I think they're worth it? Aboslutely not. Are they better than wired headphones? I suppose my answer is, it depends. Immediately, what I found impressive with the AirPods was how easy they are to sync up with your phone and how seamlessly they just work. It's been about a week now, and the simple task of putting in AirPods is enjoyable and much less fussy than having to untangle traditional, wired earphones.

Jogging outside is an absolute pleasure with AirPods as it's the first time I really felt unconfined by my movements and could literally do a carthweel or swing my arms as widely and violently as I wanted to without worrying about pulling on my earphones accidentally.

The liberty of movement is by far the biggest pro with AirPods, so I won't deny them that.

However, there are a few things I do not like with AirPods.

For one, I am someone who talks a lot on the phone, and sometimes for hours at a time. I had a 3.5 hour conversation with one of my best friends using the AirPods, and noticed that by the end of the call, the AirPods had about a 10% charge left. I suppose that's not the end of the world, and I would consider that a pass, but instead, the feeling the experience left me with at the end was annoyance. It was a stark reminder that I now had yet another device that needed regular charging. It also reminded me that like with any device that charges, its battery life would start to deteriorate over time. Great...

The other thing I find annoying with AirPods, and this is a big problem, is that they are uncompatible with PCs in a lot of ways. As someone who works on a PC daily, I was extremely pissed off to see that my virtual meetings on Google Meets would not allow the integrated AirPod mic to work. This just seems like a huge oversight of Apple. How dare they charge so much for a product that in theory, should be universal, much like traditional earphones, and not have them work with PCs!

This brings me to my ultimate conclusion, which is that I STILL have to carry around two pairs of earphones! AirPods for my phone, which I may lose in a week from now, and traditional earphones to connect to my laptop.

I guess I just wanted to write this to vent my frustration, and perhaps express some buyer's remorse. Nonetheless, I've never loved dancing around like a psycho in my living room more, now that I can flail around without wired restrictions.