Jordan Bourquin works as an Apple Specialist at Simply Computing Winnipeg.
I recently got a pair of Apple Airpods to try out and take photos and videos with for promotion. It was at this time I realized how much I had grown up as I remember when they were first announced and my fifteen-year-old self thought, “PFFT why would Apple make this product? They are just going to fall out of your ears and you will lose them. What a stupid thing for them to do!” For that reason, I stayed away from Airpods. So getting a pair now and still having the same concerns about the Airpods that I had way back I decided to test out the Airpods to see how well they sat in my ears by doing the most “head movement” I thought of a Burpee. For those who don’t know what a Burpee is, a Burpee is a pushup followed by a jumping jack then you fall into a pushup position then repeat everything, and the Airpods, to my surprise, stayed where they were. I was surprised at how well the Airpods were handling my movement and not even threatening to fall out. I wondered why, despite being a similar design to the corded earbuds, the Airpods didn’t fall out. I thought it was possibly the cord for the old earbuds that helped pull them out of my ears as whenever I walk the earbuds that are connected to the phone in my pocket would move with my legs, thus pulling them out. When I was shooting promotion material for the Simply Computing Instagram page, I was doing jumping jacks and jogging and the Airpods still sat exactly where they were supposed to be; so they are good day-to-day use earbuds.
Another thing that surprised me about the Airpods was the sound quality. The bass these things have--my goodness! But the price you are paying for the Airpods are not just for Bluetooth enabled earbuds, which is what I originally thought, they are for some good quality earbuds with an awesome sound quality.
The only real issue I see with Airpods is that I can only use them with devices that support bluetooth; so if I were to go traveling I wouldn’t be able to use them on some planes because their media player may no support wireless headphones. But, I found that a company named Twelve South makes an adapter that allows you to use your Airpods at every opportunity. It’s called the Twelve South AirFly and can connect to any headphone jack and transmit the audio to your wireless headphones. Twelve south also makes a little pouch, called the AirSnap, that lets you carry the Airpods charge case. I love this pouch as it has a clip on the top so I can connect it to my keychain or my backpack, plus there is an opening at the bottom so you don’t even have to take the Airpods of the pouch to charge them.
I must also say how amazing the range is on these earbuds; I was able to walk to different parts of my house leaving the device I had them synced to without any issue. There is a really cool feature that I wasn’t aware of at first - if you’re playing music or watching a Youtube video and someone wants to talk to you, you can remove one of the Airpods and the song/video pauses and then resumes if you put it back in so you never miss anything that is being said. The process of syncing up to my iPhone and Macbook Pro were the exact same as setting up any bluetooth device. I got a cool animation on my iPhone as well. The only downside with the Airpods was I thought that they would be able to switch automatically but I found out that that feature is only available with the iPhone to Apple Watch and vice versa. But it isn’t the biggest problem as it literally takes three clicks to disconnect and reconnect the Airpods to my Macbook.
All in all, I would say my opinion of Airpods has changed just in the short time I’ve had them. Despite the price tag of $219.99 I would say they are a must have as they are, in my opinion, the best earbuds Apple has ever made. If you really want a set of Airpods, look towards Simply Computing’s EasyPlan where they can be yours for as low as $5.51 a month.
