The new AirPods MVP
For the past four years, I have maintained that AirPods Pro 2 are the best AirPods ever made. They had great noise cancellation, all the stem controls I could ever want, good battery life, and while I didn't personally prefer in-ear earbuds, they were comfortable enough. I love these things.
This is why last year's AirPods Pro 3 were such a disappointment to me, because I felt they were worse than what I had previously in every single way. The core thing for me was that they did not fit well in my ears, and after several months of trying different tips, both from Apple and third parties, I couldn't get anything that really worked for me. I've actually been using AirPods 4 since last December as my day-to-day AirPods and have been quite happy with them. However, they were not perfect and had a few gaps that I missed from the Pro line.
Last week, Apple released AirPods 5, which had a couple enhancements over what I've been using, and I gotta be honest, I think these are my new favorite AirPods of any kind.
More critically than anything, these AirPods fit great in my ears. I've always had great luck with Apple's EarPods and then AirPods, and whatever 10,000 ears they're measuring when they shape these, those are good ears in my book because every single one for the past 25 years has fit great. Even with the AirPods Pro 2, which fit pretty well, they would still work their way out of my ears after wearing them for a while, and they would really start to lose their place in wet conditions when working out. This either meant when I was working up a lot of big sweat or when it was raining outside. They would genuinely just slide out almost immediately. That's not a problem at all with normal AirPods.
Apple's also improved the stems on these new AirPods to support volume control by sliding up and down. This was the one thing I really missed from the AirPods Pro, and I'm really glad it's here in these as well.
I very much appreciate that Apple has improved the water resistance in these, matching the AirPods Pro 3 and actually surpassing that of the AirPods Pro 2.
They've also improved the battery life, so I can use these for five hours straight compared to four hours with the last AirPods 4, and is nearly caught up to the six hours they advertise for the AirPods Pro 2.
And all of this comes with the smaller charging case, which I have come to really love compared to the AirPods Pro case, which is still very small in the grand scheme of things, but is definitely more robust, and the normal AirPods case just fits more places more comfortably.
Yes, the AirPods Pro 3 still win on paper in some ways, but for me, I'm incredibly smitten with the AirPods 5 and I'm really impressed with them.
P.S. You can reference my review of the AirPods Pro last year to know that I'm not someone who just glazes whatever is new from Apple and rehashes the spec sheet to you.
