The AirPods Pro are Possibly Apple’s Worst Product

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I’ve lost all patience for my AirPods Pro. The noise cancellation is great. The audio quality is decent enough for earbuds and well-balanced. Battery life isn’t bad. Microphone quality? Great. Unmatched, even. However one issue makes them an incredibly frustrating piece of tech, and another makes them still, over two years after release, incapable of fulfilling Apple’s promise of one set of headphones for all of your devices with easy switching.

On more than on occasion, I’ve been grabbing my bag to head out the door. I put in my AirPods Pro and… nothing. The battery of one or both earbuds is dead. I end up grabbing my ever-reliable Skullcandy Dime headphones. These have excessive bass, no noise cancellation (but decent isolation), passable microphones, and middling battery life. However, every time I take them out of the case, they’re charged, they connect quickly, and they work. These cost me $25. You can still get them for as little as $26.99, or the new version with Tile tracking for $29.99. Honestly? If they had red Skullcandy Dime 2 headphones, I might even be tempted to buy another set. They’re a joy.

My AirPods Pro are my best earbuds… when they work. Unfortunately, they’re the most unreliable earbuds I’ve ever used.

Refusing to Charge

Two days last week I was heading out the door and grabbed my AirPods Pro. Stuck them in my ears and was greeted by the familiar sound of neither transparency mode nor noise cancellation. One earbud connected, the other didn’t. So I put them back in the case, shifted each one around enough to see the light on the front blink, telling me it knew they were there, and then tried again. Once, I found this was enough to fix the problem. Another time, it wasn’t. One earbud was simply dead, it had been in the case without charging. I’ve also had instances where the AirPods Pro were in the charging case but remained connected to a device. When this happens, they can drain the battery of the AirPods Pro charging case and the AirPods Pro earbuds.

These issues come up frequently. I’ve used rubbing alcohol and Q-Tips, including silicone cleaners, to ensure this wasn’t an earwax issue. This isn’t something blocking the connection at all, it’s just that the connection in the charging case is very slight. The pins don’t reliably stick out far enough to make a connection. As a result, I’m often left with dead earbuds.

You know what never does this? My <$30 Skullcandy Dimes. Why? Because they used magnets and a shallow case to make sure the pins always line up. They were designed to work, not just look nice.

Device Switching

Another issue I’ve talked at length about is device switching. Numerous firmware updates and macOS and iOS updates haven’t fixed the problem. Basically? It’s impossible to get your headphones to 1) Stay connected to a device that’s actually using your headphones for a video, music, or video call, and 2) Connect to a device that has begun playing media.

Here’s the real problem: this feature is on by default. On every device you connect your AirPods Pro to, with the exception of the Apple TV, you will have to manually turn off this auto-connect behavior. Reconnect your AirPods Pro to a device due to Bluetooth issues? You’ll have to now turn off auto-connect on your MacBook, work MacBook, iPhone, and iPad. It’s a monumental pain, and when you forget a device, expect weird connection problems during that Monday morning Zoom call.

A Disappointing Annoyance

I loved the AirPods Pro when I first got them. I rated them a 9/10. These issues weren’t incredibly common. But it seems as though repeated use may damage the connectors. It’s possible that these simply break down over time. I have completely replaced every part of my original AirPods Pro. First an earbud that wasn’t charging (turned out to be the same problem), then another that had a known issue with noise, and then a broken case. Every single component has been replaced and yet the issues plaguing Apple’s premier in-ear headphones persist. These are Apple’s greatest in-ear headphones, and they’re priced that way too. Despite this, they’re less reliable than a $30 pair of headphones. I simply struggle to recommend them to anyone now.

Maybe Apple will fix this problem with the AirPods Pro 2, potentially coming out later this year or early next year. However, with Apple’s “design over function” nature, I’m not holding my breath.