Comparison between AirPods Pro and AirPods: how do they differ?

With better sound, noise cancellation system and a completely renewed design, Apple’s popular headphones hit the market with a noticeable price increase

Although they may have belonged to the second generation, Apple’s AirPods headphones have been renewed with significant improvements. The new model, baptized as AirPods Pro in line with other devices of the brand, introduces an adaptive noise cancellation system as a great novelty. His aesthetic is also very striking; Your design has been completely modified.

Compared to the original AirPods, launched in 2016 , it features a renewed button-shaped design. The difference is remarkable, since it is passed to a concept inherited from the cable helmets marketed by the brand in recent years in the form of a water drop to a more sober one. Each headset comes with flexible silicone pads in three sizes that adapt to the anatomy of the ear. This is intended to offer a comfortable fit, something that also affects insulation.With a greater resistance to sweat and water – although they are not submersible -, the new AirPods Pro are precisely more oriented to be an off-road product and even for sports. They fit smaller in the ear so that the chances of falling during exercise are reduced.

The most important function comes from a combination of hardware and software, the noise cancellation system. It is a feature that had been rumored long ago but not incorporated into the AirPods 2, launched six months ago . Now, the new model has two microphones that adapt continuously to the anatomy of each user’s ear. This eliminates background noise and, with this, you can get a personalized noise cancellation experience so that the user can focus on what they are listening to, whether it is their favorite song or a telephone conversation.

Technically, the device is quite complex. The first microphone faces outwards and detects external sound to analyze ambient noise. Therefore, they can produce an equivalent anti-noise that suppresses background noise before it is perceived by the user’s ear. The second faces inward and clears the rest of the noise detected by the microphone. It is a function that can be deactivated with a gesture of pressure from the bar, since it has a “ambient sound” mode, which allows users to listen to music without isolating themselves from the outside world .

The noise cancellation is adjusted 200 times per second so that the sound envelops you when you listen to music , put on a podcast or talk on the phone. And if you don’t want to run away from the worldly noise, press and hold the pressure sensor on the elongated part of the headset: you will switch from active noise cancellation to ambient sound mode. So you can attend to your surroundings and talk with other people in the most natural way. This is, without a doubt, a great step since this type of headphones capable of “isolating” the person from the mundane outside noise achieves, without fit, a better listening experience, but usually presents certain disagreements when used in the street, where they can cause distractions that lead to an accident. They weigh a little more: 45.6 grams compared to 40 grams of their predecessors.

It is an amazing engineering piece. Both models, despite everything, share architecture. Both AirPods and AirPods Pro are based on the H1 microchip, which is responsible for everything working, from sound to Siri voice assistant, which can be activated easily by saying the magic words “Hey Siri” without pressing any button . The case of new models also allow charging. The autonomy is in the levels of its predecessors, around 5 hours with the battery of the headphones, extending to a day if they are recharged by the case, which has also varied its aesthetics.

Another of the novelties introduced is the “» Shared Audio “function, by which you can link two pairs of AirPods to listen to a song, a podcast with whoever you want. The new AirPods Pro come standard with a wireless charging system, while the previous ones are a special version that comes from a case compatible with this charging method. As for the price, the truth is that it is an important decision since they now cost about 260 euros compared to 179 euros of the “normal” version.