When my husband got his new phone it came with AirPods . . . yeah, it was years ago. Anyway, he really liked them. He had gone through a couple of “wireless” earbuds. They usually ended up dying pretty quick because they were not really good with getting wet. Or whatever. I had bought some wireless earbuds and I like them, I bragged about them in Affordable Wireless Earbuds. I like them, but I am not good about charging things when I am not using them, then when I go to use it, it needs to be charged. I also wasn’t finding many occasions to use them. But, being the generous kinda guy he is my husband kept asking me if I wanted some AirPods. I kept saying no because I don’t really like the earbuds/pods and . . . I am not good at charging and I don’t use the wireless earbuds that I have very often. Then they came out with wireless charging AirPods. So my husband asked me if I wanted his AirPods and he would get the new ones (he really wanted the new ones). I kept saying no. Well, he did well NOT buying them until one day he “accidently” 😉 left his AirPods at my dad’s. He couldn’t go a month or two without his AirPods and actually he wasn’t even sure he left them up there. But when we went back up there he found them. So . . . guess what . . . I inherited his AirPods. I put them in my drawer. I forgot about them for a couple of months. Then one day I decided to try them instead of carrying around my Beats Pill.
It had been almost two months since my hubby had given me the AirPods. Not only had it been months since he gave them to me it had been at least a month before that when they had last been charged. But I thought I might as well try them, so I put them in — they worked! I was amazed that after all of these months they still worked. Wow. It had been at least 3 – maybe even four months and they were charged enough to work.
They are kinda cool. The charge lasts a long time. And when it gets low you can pop them into the case and it will charge up to about 80% in less than five minutes. That is very fast. Also while you are using them you can charge up the case so when you want to charge up the AirPods themselves you pop them in and bam! they have juice rather quick. If you want them at 100% you might have to wait a whole 10 minutes (or so). So, charging the AirPods is not as difficult as I thought. It is so quick which is really impressive to me.
It is also cool . . . to me that your phone tells you how much of a charge they have. It also indicates how much of a charge the case has. I find that helpful at times. I do find it odd that the AirPods are not always equal . . but whatever. With noticing the indication of amount of charge for the AirPods, I noticed that my phone does the same thing for my Beats Pill.
So I like that the charge lasts, that they charge quickly, and that the phone indicates the amount of charge, but I don’t like that they don’t have volume control. Not everything is recorded at the same volume and sometimes in the middle of what I am listening to, I want to adjust the volume. They do have four different actions you can choose to set each AirPod to perform. You can talk to Siri, Play/Pause, Next Track, or Previous Track. I have my left one set for Previous Track and my right one set for pause. With Audible you can choose between five different Jump Forward/Back times and the “Previous Track” on the AirPods corresponds to that setting – which is cool. The Beats Pill has volume and pause/play, but not forwarding or reversing capabilities. My husband always laughs as me because when he goes to talk to me I smack myself when I am wearing the AirPods . . . I am activating the pause.
I don’t use them to talk on the phone much . . . but I don’t talk on the phone much. When I am listening to a book and someone calls, I have used them. They work pretty well.
In addition to not having a volume control I don’t like that they stop playing when one is not in your ear. If you take one out of your ear they stop. If you can have them close together they will play, but that is annoying. It is not legal to drive with headphones/headset (both ears covered), so basically you can’t have two pods/buds in your ears. With the airbuds you could just use one and it worked fine but with the AirPods you can’t. Well, I just tucked one of them up on my ear with my glasses holding it and that works. But I find the whole – not working when they are far apart, kind of annoying. I have had one fall out and it stops the play. I would prefer that action to be an option. Maybe volume and an option to stop play when you are only using one could be a next upgrade. That would be cool.
Anyway, I am really impressed by the battery/charging situation. It actually allows me to use them because they charge so quickly.
At first when I would see the case I thought it was dental floss. And now that we have two cases that have the potential of lying around, I fancied mine up . . . hence the blue flowers around it.
So what about you? Do you use headsets? Do you use any wireless ones? Do you have AirPods? What do you think?
Terre Pruitt's Blog 