"I dropped my wired headphones into a sewer" is likely not a very common occurrence. In fact they have a built-in anti-sewer lanyard... Unlike AirPods which fall out of your ears continually.
I've had my AirPods Pro for 3 years and they have never once fallen out of my ears, but I don't wear them while biking or running or anything like that.
But like I said, they are very nice. I've had probably 100 headphones over the years and these are the ones I enjoy the most. They are indeed a nice product.
There is a lot more to the AirPods than the fact they are wireless. They sound great, good noise cancellation, and very comfortable to wear for long periods. I am amazed how short-sighted many of the comments here are. You cannot find a cheap wired headphones with anything close to the overall comfort and quality of Air Pods.
Well, when one product costs 10x as much as the other does, I would expect it to be a nicer product. But for me, it is not even possible for a product to be so much better as to justify that price increase. Headphones have exactly one use case for me: listening to music (or playing a game on a handheld device) when in public, so as not to disturb others. So we're talking 1h max of quick and dirty use. All the features you mentioned don't actually add any utility for my usage.
Sorry, but cheap chi-fi IEMs easily beat them. Other response says KZ ZSN, but that's not really that. I've recently got Moondrop Chu 2 (a ~ $25 budget IEMs) and they're amazing. The case is aluminum, they're quite small and comfortable to wear (should be fine for smaller ears) while fitting snugly into the ear giving good, passive noise isolation, the wire is very soft and fits neatly around your ear preventing them from being pulled out. If you break the wire, you can buy a replacement one following the 2 pin standard. If you wish so, you can get a cable with a microphone - even worst buds have better mics than any true wireless buds can currently deliver.
Seriously, air pods advantage is just being wireless and having some software features like ANC (they're good overall, but that's nothing special). If that is not a killer feature for somebody, they're just really overpriced ok set of earphones.
Automatic handoff, conversation awareness, transparency mode, and how they work on calls are the killer features for me. I also have IEMs and appreciate good quality audio when that's what I'm looking for, but I see my AirPods as serving more of a utilitarian purpose. They're not for active listening, they're for exercise, working from the cafe, taking a long call while cooking a meal, etc.
If your earphone price range is $19 then those things will indeed not be the right choice for you, that's true. But there are wired earphones which cost 10x as much as Airpods, so your statement only shows your bias.
> Unlike AirPods which fall out of your ears continually.
If you genuinely have that problem you're doing something very wrong with your Airpods when many of its users are able to do long walks and runs without them ever budging.
I wear mine to the gym, on hikes, long runs etc - I can confidently say I have never, ever had them fall out in 3 years of ownership.
Read as: "My ears happen to be of the right size that AirPods fit inside them without falling out, and if your ears don't conform in that way, you must be a broken human."
> you're doing something very wrong with your Airpods when many of its users are able to do long walks and runs without them ever budging
It's a product relying on friction fit with a body part that's shaped differently on every person, what makes you even consider the individual user is at fault?
Also in my experience Airpods require a very precise orientation in the ear to really hold well. If the angle is a bit off they can fall out within 30 seconds, if it's exactly right I can listen to music for an hour without any issue. But I can't eat or drink in that time as that almost guarantees they'll slip out, and lying on my back is also not a good idea apparently.
Those things are otherwise really cool devices but this is definitely a problem. I've seen a YouTube review where the guy said he's on his third pair by now.
That is a bit too harsh, his ears may not be the right size or shape. I have had a lot of problems with AirPod like headphones and had to try several models before I found ones that don't fall off.
Maybe you are talking about different things? The normal AirPod has a fixed shape - it either fits your ear canal or it doesn’t. You definitely should try it out before buying it.
The AirPods Pro has changeable sizes, so it really shouldn’t fall off anyone’s ear.
Couldn't get my AirPod Pros to stay in with any of the tips I could find. Tried silicone, foam, all shapes and sizes, different amounts of pressure and depth in ear, but nothing worked. They'd just slowly creep out and eventually drop out, especially if I spoke.
Regular 2nd gen AirPods are like glued in though, I could headbang or do handstands and they wouldn't go anywhere. Go figure...
In my experience the fit can be very dependent on the precise orientation in the ear. When I get it right they almost never fall out, when the angle is off a bit they hold for a few minutes at most.
I haven't tried the AirPods yet and the shops around here (remote Atlantic islands) don't have an unboxed pair for me to try. From my experience the Pro models would work fine but the other models will probably fall when I am doing work in the woodshop or doing yard work. I have maybe three or four in ear headphones lying around that didn't fit the bill. For some people, that type of headphones don't fit.
> That is a bit too harsh, his ears may not be the right size or shape.
Correction: his ears have perfectly right size and shape. The thing which might not have the right size and shape is the Airpod. We do not fit ourselves to human made objects, but the other way around.
Airpods and similar shaped earbuds just never fit well in my ears. I couldn't tell you why. But unless they're like IEMs with molded fit pieces or those rubbery cones that dig in deep like hearing protection, they're going to fall right out of my ears.
I don't like earbuds, I avoid them. They're great for other people, and that's awesome, but they're not for me.
Not everybody stands in-ear headphones for long periods of time (the other ones are much easier to handle for me). Maybe this was an issue only with Airpods 1 but still, earbud types or over-ear are more comfortable
