At its Glowtime event, Apple unveiled a new pair of AirPods true wireless and updates to the existing Airpods Pro 2.
The first you’ll want to know is how do they compare? What’s new and what’s different, and that’s what we’re here to help you figure out.
Price
There are two versions of the AirPods 4. One that retails at $129 / £129, and another version with ANC that’s priced at $179 / £179. They’ll be available from September 20th onwards.
They’re both less expensive than the AirPods Pro 2, which initially launched at $249 / £249 but you can find it for $200 / £200 since it has been out for a few years.
Design
The AirPods 4 keep their open-ear design, which means they let environmental sound pass-through to your ears without obstruction. The AirPods Pro 2 are a sealed design, which means they block out external sounds. This helps with the noise-cancellation, which further helps to reduce the impact of the environment around you.
The more expensive version of the AirPods 4 also features active noise-cancellation, which has us wondering how it works considering its an open-eared design. ANC works best with sealed designs, so we’re not sure how impactful this noise-cancellation will be.
Regardless, both feature force sensors for control of audio/calls, and unless we miss something at the Glowtime event, the AirPods 4 will feature gesture controls that enable you to accept or reject Siri notifications with a nod of the head. As far as we know, that hasn’t been announced for the AirPods Pro 2, but we may have missed that announcement during the event.
Features
The addition of ANC to the AirPods 4 closes the gap between it and the AirPods Pro 2, though we don’t expect the performance to be similar.
Transparency mode and the Conversation Awareness feature further close the gap between the two AirPods, though if you ask us, the AirPods 4 don’t really need a Transparency mode.
There’s no new model of the AirPods Pro, but Apple did announce that it’ll be receiving a number of health-related updates. With the H2 chip powering its performance, the AirPods Pro 2 now support Hearing Protection, which senses how loud external sounds are and reduces the impact on your hearing.
The AirPods Pro 2 will also pack a Hearing Test feature, where you can test the hearing strength of the left and right, with the results stored (privately) in the Watch app. It’ll be available in over 100 countries when it launches later in the year, through a firmware update on the AirPods Pro 2 when paired with an iPad or iPhone running on iOS 18.
The AirPods Pro 2 can also be used as clinical grade hearing aid. You take the Hearing Test mentioned above, and if it senses any hearing loss, then the hearing aid mode is available to use. This profile is applied to movies, music, and podcasts. In the US, this feature is currently making its way through FDA approval process, though it remains to be seen whether it’ll make it to the UK given there was no mention of UK availability.
Sound Quality
There’s not much we can say about the sound quality but we don’t expect the AirPods 4 to sound altogether too much different from the AirPods 3.
The AirPods Pro 2 deliver a full, rich sound, with strong bass and a lively sense of energy to its performance. We wouldn’t expect the AirPods 4 to deliver the same bass performance because of its open-eared design. Both models feature personalised spatial audio, allowing for 360-degree immersion with audio where supported.
