Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2023
I'm a self-described armchair audiophile, and this would be my first wireless set. I've sampled a few sets in the far flung past to demo, but have never felt compelled to keep them.
Not these. I'm using them right now as I write this review on my pc desktop. Outside of really dedicated audiophile listening, or applications that demand extreme attention to detail such as audio engineering or sound production for high profile projects, they're too versatile *not* to use for the vast majority of daily scenarios, with very decent sound quality to boot.
To start, I don't have to reach for my phone to operate them (remember, this is the first wireless set I've logged more than a few hours on). The closest I had before was volume and playback controls integrated into the wire at the joint on wired sets. Very serviceable, but also finicky in certain situations. If you were, say, leaning over or had your body twisted a certain way, reaching for the controls would pose various difficulties. Worse if you had happened to tuck the wire into your jacket. Having a bunch of different gesture and pinch commands at the stem by your earlobe has been a joy to operate.
The automation is also nice. You can set it so that if one or both buds are taken out of your ears, it automatically pauses content. It auto resumes when the bud(s) go back in. You can long pinch to swap between Transparency Mode and ANC (active noise cancelling), because they correctly predicted that just ANC-off (thereby functioning like $15 earbuds with no tech built into how they handle an external sound environment) is useless.
The ANC is astonishing, but Transparency mode even more so. It's scarily good now that I’ve spent a good week using these at work. I'm in a position (mechanical engineer working in industrial power delivery) where it's safety critical that I can hear my surroundings, and at the same time I'm sometimes exposed to loud machinery for short (less than a couple minutes), medium (5-15 minutes), and extended (hour+) durations. For environments involving loud machines, ANC performs extremely well, cancelling out the vast majority of noise so that it's well within safe levels for my ears, while still letting me hold conversations with shocking ease. I've had colleagues remark at my ability to converse fluidly, without asking them to repeat themselves in deafening environments, whereas they have trouble hearing me shouting into their ears (while they're taking a moment to lift off their earmuffs). I let one of our machine operators demo these and he immediately bought his own pair. That's how good they are. How he'll get around the prying eyes of his supervisor (since we're still in medieval times where seeing earbuds in ears can be misconstrued as a productivity issue) remains to be seen.
Outside of that admittedly niche environment, Transparency Mode has been amazing for regular office use. I literally can’t tell (for non-obvious content like podcasts and talking head YouTube videos) if they’re in. I kept anxiously double checking the other morning that James Hoffman wasn’t actually lecturing our entire office about coffee flavor notes out of the phone speakers. I leave these in throughout the day and, frankly, forget that they're in. The environmental reproduction is unparalleled.
So that’s the big thing about the raw sound quality that the marketing hasn't quite articulated: the soundstage is extremely natural. It’s like open backed headphones, but better (literally like not wearing anything), and they’re shockingly good at integrating media content with your surroundings to the point that unless you’re listening to something that would make it obvious (like loud or highlight/bass heavy music), it’s legitimately hard to tell if the sound is coming out the buds plugged straight inside your ears.
So wearable audio gear comes in 3 broad categories: neutral/open, noise isolating, and noise canceling - the latter being a relatively very recent addition to the list. The 2nd category, noise isolating, relies on mechanical design to prevent external sound from entering the stage. It’s good if you’re, say, an audio engineer and really need to nitpick and correct intricate details, but isn't the best for normal listening. The classic design puzzle here is that the better the mechanical isolation, the more obvious or cumbersome (read: uncomfortable) it is to use the wearable. I usually personally favor the 1st category because those headsets tend to be lighter and easier to wear for longer periods and the natural soundstage just sounds better to me in the vast majority of scenarios.
It's the 1st and 3rd categories that are more interesting - higher end models occupying the 1st category tend to be "open backed" headphones, typically these big cans you wear on your head that are surprisingly lightweight and have a gentle, natural soundstage. They don't have software processing, so any sound produced is natural and unpolluted from the headset. But besides being bulky and wired, they're also infamous for leaking out sound to your external environment, so they're best for personal use cases and aren't appropriate for public or office use.
The 3rd category, ANC, uses realtime processing to negate leakage getting *into* your wearable audio gear by canceling any external sounds before you can hear them - basically the "software version" of the hardware-based 2nd category. The challenge here has classically been execution - working with sound involves a lot of advanced mathematics. Remember sine, cosine, and wave characteristics including frequency and amplitude? And how everyone hated them? Well, I've worked with them (still do sometimes), and I can confirm they're the worst. Fourier transforms, ugh, kill me now. ANC is based on these really complicated mathematics, and you have to combine the math - hopefully with very high precision and with no errors - with good software logic, and ON TOP of that you need good hardware like a fast processing chip and responsive speaker design to achieve results with as little time lag as possible. There's a lot that has to come together, and historically the execution/implementation side has been lacking, resulting in random and omnipresent inconsistencies like weird lowkey "hissy" noises you'll catch here and there. At worst, at least for self-described armchair audiophiles such as myself, there's the real concern that poor execution damages the raw sound quality of what you're listening to. ANC has been known to interfere not just the external environment (which is its intended use), but also with the desired audio produced by the wearable (which is really bad), undercutting bass frequencies in headsets that are already poorly optimized for low frequencies in the first place, or negating and partially muting the sparkle of higher registers.
The Airpod Pro 2s are the 1st and 3rd categories simultaneously and insanely good at both. Like, unprecedentedly good at both. And this starts with their frankly astonishing implementation of practically flawless ANC. This has allowed them to get around the design challenge of the first category (the aforementioned leakage issue) by leveraging their superior ANC *in reverse* to also be the 1st category: the Airpod Pro 2s are extremely good at reproducing your sound environment in a way that feels indistinguishable from not wearing them. This opens up a huge amount of usage options - such as walking around the office with zero fear of missing cues from colleagues, or, in my current scenario, using these to play music while writing this review so that I don't bother my sleeping cats with loud music, while still being assured I can hear them if they need to get my attention for anything. On top of that, I don't have to swap away from this window and ruin my rhythm if I need to change tracks or adjust volume.
Another thing - iPhone users have the option to modify Transparency mode to enhance vocals, or boost certain frequency ranges, making them function as very good entry-level hearing aids. This can be done by heading into your iPhone Settings, selecting Accessibility, selecting Airpods, heading into Audio Accessibility Settings, and tapping into Headphone Accomodations. From there you can literally upload an audiogram and from there select "tune audio for audiogram" and voila - Transparency mode is now tuned for your specific hearing shape. Besides that, a good amount of basic control (not having to upload anything and just tweaking menu knobs) is available, from focusing on enhancing vocals and specifying how softly or strongly softer sounds are enhanced. It's very likely I'll be purchasing these for my parents in the near future.
On top of that, as a default feature, they actively monitor your environment for harshly loud sounds and protect you against them in realtime. Drop a pot? Well, sucks for the pot, but it won't be as harsh on your ears. You're walking along and a dog comes barking at you over the fence out of nowhere? Well, you may or may not get jump scared practically out of your socks, but at least the sudden barking will be at the level of, you know, a reasonable conversation.
One nitpick - the stock silicone tips are prone to fall out if you're on the move. They're fine for normal walking and definitely sitting, but I definitely wouldn't trust these to stay in while riding a bike or taking a jog. There are 3rd party options that help with this (I'm currently using a silicone/memory foam tips that already feel much more secure), but be aware I don't really use these outside daily office use and walking between the different production cells at our manufacturing facility.
Quite frankly, these things have been a joy to use for hours every day. I only wish I'd gotten them sooner. Besides being extremely versatile and natural sounding earbuds with cutting edge realtime processing, it's amazing to me that we have commercial access to essentially non-surgical ear enhancements. You know what that sounds like. The future. And you can shove it straight in your ears today.
