Apple’s new AirPods 4 earphones hit shops this week, and we’ve found the best place to buy them at launch.
Beloved UK retailer John Lewis isn’t offering any form of discount on the AirPods 4 at launch – no one is – but it is offering some tasty bonuses.
One of those is the retailer’s customary two year warranty, which it offers as standard. You also get free delivery and a three month Apple Music subscription.
It’s true that those last two would also be available should you buy your AirPods 4 direct from Apple, but the tech giant is only offering a one year warranty. That makes John Lewis the winner in our book.
Get the AirPods 4 with a 2-year warranty
John Lewis is offering the most compelling offer for the AirPods 4 at launch, with a two-year warranty alongside three months of Apple Music.
- John Lewis
- 2-year warranty
- Now £179
We’re not quite ready with our AirPods 4 review at the time of writing, but we’re looking forward to putting them through their paces. Apple announced the AirPods 4 last week at its Glowtime launch event, offering two new variants of its baseline earphones.
The more appealing of the two (and the one featured here) offers Apple’s classic open-eared design, but with active noise cancellation (ANC) and a transparency mode added to the package.
Thanks to Apple’s latest H2 chip, the Active Noise Cancellation (which is the unwieldy official name) also supports Adaptive Audio, which “dynamically blends” the ANC and transparency mode functions depending on your surroundings. Conversation Awareness, meanwhile, lowers the media volume when you start talking to someone.
Voice Isolation promises to lead to clearer call quality, while Siri Interactions let you use gesture controls such as shaking your head to respond to Siri.
Apple also claims to have improved gaming performance through lower audio latency, while 16-bit/48kHz audio is also supported.
Apple’s open-ear design doesn’t always fit well with everyone, but it claims to be offering its best fit yet with the AirPods 4, using 3D photogrammetry and laser topograpy to map and analyse thousands of ears.
In terms of pure sound quality, Apple has supplied a new acoustic architecture along with a low-distortion driver and a high dynamic amplifier. You also get Personalised Spatial Audio, which supports dynamic head tracking for greater immersion in audio, movies, and podcasts.
Apple has supplied its smallest charging case, but it offers 30 hours of charge in total over USB-C or wireless.
