Apple’s new AirPods Pro cost almost ten times the price of many budget true wireless earbuds I’ve reviewed recently. Can they get even close to justifying this massive price differential?
Apple’s new AirPods Pro cost almost ten times the price of many budget true wireless earbuds I’ve reviewed recently. Can they get even close to justifying this massive price differential?
I’ll be comparing them to the Tronsmart earbuds I reviewed recently, since they have many comparable features, yet cost less than £30 or $30 versus the AirPods Pro £249 or $249 price tag!
I’ll be looking at what you get for your money, how easy they are to use, how well they fit for general use but also for running, any additional features like the active noise cancellation of the Airpods Pro, and of course how they both sound.
In the box
Both earbuds come with a charging case and cable. Both cases support wireless charging via the almost universal Qi wireless charging standard. The AirPods Pro case has the proprietary Lightning charging port for wired charging, with USB-C on the other end. The Tronsmart use the latest standardised USB-C port which is more convenient for most people.
At least Apple’s included cable can fast charge most recent iPhones if you have one and you happen to have a USB-C fast charger. This cable is an optional extra for all iPhones except the iPhone 11 Pros and would cost almost as much the Tronsmarts alone!
Apple’s earbuds will last 4.5h with Active Noise Cancelation on and 5 hours with it turned off. With their charging case you have up to 24 hours of usage. And a 5 minute quick charge in the case provides one hour of usage, if you do run out of battery.
Tronsmart’s earbuds last only 3.5h, which is on the low side, but fine for most of us. With their charging case this increases to 18 hours.
Apple’s charging case, whilst around 15% larger than the standard AirPods case, is still far smaller than Tronsmarts. And its build quality is unsurprisingly far better, made of premium glossy plastic with a very satisfying magnetic closure. But Tronsmart’s case is still fairly compact, with a rather unique lid. The Tronsmart’s weigh 47g with the the earbuds inside and the Airpods Pro weigh 56g. The Tronsmart earbuds themselves are also lighter at 7g for the pair versus 11g for the AirPods Pro. Both are barely noticeable in your ear, but the slightly lighter weight of the Tronsmart together with their longer driver stem help a little when running, which I’ll come back to.
Both sets of earbuds have medium tips fitted with small and large spare tips to ensure a good fit. The AirPods Pro are only available in white and have a stem based design. Although it’s shorter than the cheaper AirPods, the earbuds are still pretty noticeable but their build quality is again very good as you’d expect. The Tronsmart are only available in black and have a fully in-ear design. They are some of the most discreet earbuds I’ve tested which I like. The stem-based design does have a big advantage though which I’ll come to shortly.
Pairing
If you’re using the AirPods Pros with an Apple device, pairing is about as easy as it gets. Their H1 wireless chip prompts automatic pairing with a tap of a confirmation screen when you open the lid of the charging case.
What’s more, they become paired with any other Apple devices you have via your iCloud account. So you can switch between your iPhone, iPad or MacBook just by selecting the AirPods Pro as your output. They’ll still only connect to one device at a time though, so they aren’t clever enough to just play through whatever device you’re currently using.
To pair to a non-Apple device or an older unsupported Apple device, you can open the lid and press and hold the pairing button on the back until the status LED flashes white. You can then pair them as you normally would, to any device that supports Bluetooth earphones. You don’t need to worry about disconnecting them first either, they always just switch across to the device you’re currently pairing to.
You can listen to each earbud independently and switching between the left and right earbud is seamless.
Pairing to the Tronsmarts is hardly difficult, just not quite as easy. After you remove them both from the case they’ll pair with each other.
You can then pair to them manually under your devices Bluetooth settings. If you want to pair to another device, you’ll need to disconnect them in your Bluetooth settings first. You can use the left one on its own after this initial pairing, but to pair to the right earbud it gets more complicated. I covered this in detail in my full review. You only need to do this setup once, if you’re just pairing with one device, but if you use your earbuds with multiple devices it can get confusing!
The whole convenience pairing the AirPods Pro with multiple devices, like the AirPods before them is a big selling point. But if you’re only use your earbuds with one device, it won’t really matter much. And it hardly justifies spending over £200 or $200 extra for most people.
Fit
For most people’s ears the already fitted medium tips should work fine with both sets of earbuds. If they don’t, both have small and large tips you can try. Apple takes this one step further with a fit test, although this is only supported on Apple devices. A sound is played back and you’ll get a green tick if it measures a good fit. I’m not sure if this is a bit gimmicky – since I got a pass with all three sized ear tips – but I’d be interested to hear how you get on – let me know down below.
The AirPods Pro do use a unique ear tip design that actually clips onto the earbud, rather than stretching over its elongated section like on the Tronsmart and most other earbuds I’ve tried. The supposed advantage is that some people find it uncomfortable to have part of the earbud inside their ear canal. I’ve never had an issue with this myself, but it’s a clever design and the ear tips have a very secure fit to the earbuds, requiring some force to remove them and have a nice positive click when you attach them.
I have used the Tronsmarts for a few months now and I find them pretty comfortable. They are also the most secure earbuds I’ve yet tried, which makes them perfect for running. Their small size, and light weight means I don’t even have to adjust them mid run like a lot of other earbuds I’ve tried. And they have an IPX5 sweatproof rating.
The AirPods Pro are a far better fit than the AirPods although it does take a few seconds to adjust their fit compared to the originals. But I can’t run at all with the AirPods – their fit is just too loose. The new Pros also come with an IPX4 sweatproof rating, which the previous AirPods didn’t have.
I’ve now been on a few runs with the AirPods Pro. I do get some slight movement over the run which is a little disconcerting, but they haven’t come close to falling out, yet. I actually sized up to the large ear tips which have slightly less movement so it’s worth experimenting.
[UPDATE 22/11/2019: I find if I use the earbuds on the cycling turbo trainer they do fall out even with barely any movement. Looks like they don’t cope so well with sweat! They’ve still been ok for running, but it’s pretty cold at the moment so I’ll report back how they fare with hotter, sweatier runs!]
For general use though they are very comfortable. Apart from the slight movement in my ear they are barely noticeable most of the time.
Controls
The Tronsmarts have touch controls which generally work well and you can even adjust volume which is rare on true wireless earbuds.
The AirPods Pro use a force sensor on the stem of the earbuds which you have to squeeze and it does take a bit of getting used to. A long squeeze switches between Noise Cancelling and Transparency mode which I’ll cover shortly and a short squeeze pauses music. You can double squeeze and triple squeeze to skip forward and backwards respectively. All these controls work from either earbud. There are some configuration options available only on Apple devices, but bizarrely they still don’t let you control volume. You could use voice commands, otherwise you’ll need to use your phone, or an Apple Watch if you have one.
Neither of these controls are very easy to use when running, but I slightly prefer the touch controls of the Tronsmarts.
Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) and other features
The biggest feature of the new AirPods Pro is Active Noise Cancellation which works better than I was expecting. In a coffee shop they really do cut out a good amount of background noise, especially when you start playing music at even low volumes. You’ll still hear nearby loud conversations, but they’re no longer distracting.
For general use the arguably more useful feature is Transparency mode which uses the earbuds’ microphones to let outside sounds in. Typically in-ear buds have their own passive noise reduction – which can make it difficult to hear outside sounds, often important for safety and general awareness. I always have this on for runs and walks to hear what’s going on around me. It works well too, considering it’s basically providing a recorded version of your surrounding environment.
You can also turn off ANC and Transparency mode which gives a marginal improvement to battery life, but apart from that I can’t see why you’d ever use this mode. It feels like you’ve entered a vacuum.
The AirPods Pros, like the AirPods also have ear detection, so when you remove an earbud music pauses, and then continues when you reinsert the earbud.
Apart from the basic configuration options on Apple devices, there’s no app for fine control over EQ or to adjust the level of noise cancellation.
The Tronsmarts don’t have any of these features. I’m not sure we’ll see decent Active Noise Cancellation in budget earbuds anytime soon. But a transparency mode should be far easier to implement, and I’d like to see this appearing on less expensive earbuds in the not to distant future.
Both earbuds use the latest Bluetooth 5.0 and I didn’t notice much difference in range between either.
Sound quality
The new AirPods Pros do sound better than the AirPods but not by a huge amount. Although they have new drivers, the main difference is the fit which improves the bass response, and together which the Active Noise Cancellation and passive noise isolation of the in-ear design, you can play back your music at lower volumes whilst still hearing the clean detailed sound that even the original AirPods had. To my ear they sound better with ANC on.
Like their predecessors, they still excel at playing back content with spoken audio like podcasts, films and TV shows, but I doubt many people would have any complaints playing back most types of music as well. There are better sounding earphones at this price, but the overall feature set and ease of use, especially if you’re an Apple user, is quite compelling – if you’re going to spend that sort of money anyway.
However this is where the Tronsmart earbuds, and in fact any of the budget earbuds I’ve reviewed recently seem exceptional value. The AirPods Pro just don’t sound that much better – and certainly not 10 times better!
Where the AirPods have always outperformed most other earbuds is call quality and the AirPods Pro even with their shorter stem are still impressive. Calls come through clearly and even in noisy environments the person at the other end of the call can hear me almost like I’m on the handset itself.
The Tronsmarts are ok in a quiet environment but struggle with background noise, like most other true wireless earbuds I’ve tried. You can hear how they both sound in the video.
The AirPods and now the AirPods Pro also are the only true wireless earbuds I’ve tried that have no audio sync delay watching YouTube on iOS.
Conclusions
The AirPods Pro are a good step up from the AirPods, especially the version with the wireless charging case which retails at only £50 or $50 less, yet are still very expensive. The slightly less obtrusive design, better fit and resulting better sound is almost enough reason on its own. But the Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency modes seal the deal if you’re set on a new pair or Apple earbuds.
Through Amazon and other sites, the AirPods can now be found cheaper and the best value option if you want the convenience of AirPods, is the version without the wireless charging case which you can get for around £140 or $140. Wireless charging is nice, but most people aren’t charging the case that often anyway.
If you travel a lot or need to work in noisy environments and you can afford them, the AirPods Pro might just be the one set of earphones that do it all. Even more so if you’re already an Apple user and have a number of their devices you’ll use them with.
But if you’re after decent sound and a secure fit, and aren’t sure how often you’d even use ANC and rarely use earbuds for phone calls, it’s hard not to recommend the Tronsmarts or any of the budget alternatives to many people. With the Tronsmarts you even get wireless and USB-C charging, touch controls which also control volume and their fit for running, for me at least, is actually better. If you’re connecting to multiple devices, you’ll lose some convenience, but even if you bought a pair of budget earbuds for every device you own you’d still be quids in!
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Apple AirPods Pro: https://amzn.to/32tcnJk
Tronsmart Spunky Pro: https://amzn.to/2rtgWXj
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