Comparing AirPods 3 to AirPods Pro: Which is right for you?

Speaker 1: The third generation AirPods and the AirPods pro have a lot of things in common. So how do you work out? Which one to get let's find out your decision is gonna come down to one of three main factors, how they fit in your ears, whether or not you want noise, canceling and price. The airports are $250. Whereas the airports three are $180. Although you can find the pro for less than $200, especially [00:00:30] at certain times of the year, when pretty much everything gets discounted, I've put latest pricing and availability in the links, in the description below. So let's get into it to tip or not to tip that is the question now fit and comfort is a highly personal thing, especially for wireless ear. So it's really hard for me to tell you which one's gonna work in your ears, but I will give you some general guidance and let you know what works for me, which hopefully will help you out as well. Speaker 1: [00:01:00] So let's talk about the AirPods pro first, as I mentioned, interchangeable tips. Now these ones have three different Silicon sizes that come in the box that you can swap in and out small, medium, a large, depending on the size of your ear canal. And you can actually go even further. I found that the Silicon tips don't provide as tight or as snug of a fit as I actually want, because I have really small ears and small ear canals. So I've actually switched to foam tips and that provides a really secure fit. And also the [00:01:30] added benefit of even more passive noise cancellation because I have a tip physically blocking out a lot of sounds from the outside world. This is on top of the active noise cancellation on the AirPods pro, which we will talk of out in the sound quality section. But if you know that you don't like in earbuds and you know that it might be a little bit uncomfortable, cause some extra pressure you've tried it in the past and it's just not for you. Speaker 1: Don't look at the pods pro definitely think about the pods three. This is a similar premise to the pods first [00:02:00] and second generation when they just rest in your ear, rather of an insert in your ear canal. And as a result, this might be more comfortable for certain people, but the design is a little bit different from AirPods of old. It is more contoured and for my small ears, they actually fit more snuggly inside. As you can hopefully see the keyword here though is snug for me. I've had no issues in terms comfort. I've been able to wear them for hours at a time with no discomfort. I've heard some people say the opposite. I also do [00:02:30] find with the air pods three, that one ear fits perfectly. The other, I do need to adjust just a little bit more. Every time I put it in just to find that sweet spot to get the best overall sound. And also for them to feel the most secure. I have run with both pairs and they do stay in well with a little bit of adjustment along the way, but really there's only one true way to find out the fit and how secure they are is the head bank test. Speaker 1: Just pretend [00:03:00] I'm listening to heavy metal or something. Oh, oh, oh, well, left ear fell out on the effort three. Okay. So your mileage will vary. And as I said, that was the one that always needed a little bit of adjustment. So airports pro next, Speaker 1: Oh, [00:03:30] my head hurts, but they're still in the stands on both of these ear buds actually work in a very similar way. They are a, of course, shorter than you might be used to. If you're upgrading from the original design of the AirPods, I actually find that this is advantageous, particularly for people like me with longer hair. There's less incidents of me flicking it out of my ear accidentally. But more importantly is the way you control the earbuds. It's through a force sensor. It's basically a clickable stem that you can do things like change, tracks, [00:04:00] answer calls, playing pause music. I actually find in this case, it's the design of the AirPods pro that come in the most handy when I am using that clickable stem purely because the fit is just even more secure for me with that interchangeable tip it's right in there. Speaker 1: So when I am clicking the stem, I'm not moving the ear, but around as much as when I have the AirPods through in, and it just naturally dislodges a little bit when I am clicking, changing tracks and so on, for me, the most important part of any wireless [00:04:30] ear bud is of course the sound quality. And overall, I was actually really surprised at how close the air pods pro and air pods three sounded when I was listening to a range of different musical genres for the AirPods pro. When I was listening to tracks like the weekends blinding lights, I did notice that it just sounded a little bit more rich and full overall than the AirPods three. There was also a little bit more space for the vocals to breathe as well. Same too, with tracks like Ariana Grande's motive. I could actually hear that slight [00:05:00] sibilance on her, her vocals a little bit more clearly on the AirPods pro than I did on the AirPods three and on fairer COO's water, no get enemy. Speaker 1: I could really hear things like the horn section and the symbols really clearly and crisply on the AirPods pro rather than the AirPods three, they still sounded really good, but there just wasn't as much definition overall in terms of face rendition, I found the airports three really held their own against the airports pro, which I was really pleased about tracks like childish Gambino, sweat [00:05:30] pads. I could really hear the thump on both of them and they really sounded good. Both of the ear buds have an adaptive equalizer. So that's automatically changing the sound profile and properties based on things like how the earbuds are fit in your ears. And that's really important for something like the AirPods three that don't have an interchangeable seal because base can naturally start to escape. So that adaptive equalizer, as I mentioned, I really felt like compensated well. The other big question is noise cancellation or not. Speaker 1: Do you want that? As I mentioned, the AirPods pro have two [00:06:00] layers of noise cancellation. If you wanna think of it like that, the first is this seal that is provided through the EIP provides one layer of passive noise cancellation by blocking out some of the external sounds. But on top of that is active noise cancellation. That's working to block out certain frequencies, really helpful for things like traveling. If you do a lot of commuting, if you do plane travel, these are fantastic for use on a plane. The airports three don't have active noise cancellation. And as a result, if you are in a noisier situation, you might need to [00:06:30] crank the volume a little bit more to hear your tunes. The airports pro also have transparency mode. Now this is piping in sounds from the outside world to give you more awareness of your surroundings, your airports three don't have a transparency mode, but if you think about it, it's kind of by design because these are an open design. There's no seal. So naturally a lot more sound is coming into your ear and you don't need a quote unquote transparency mode because it naturally has that available. Speaker 2: [00:07:00] So now we're gonna test the microphone quality to hear if there are any differences, I haven't listed the help of my BFF Lai to test it out. Wait, what? I didn't sign up for this. You told me what we're gonna play the new Mario party. So now you want us to have a conversation so people can hear the difference. Yeah. So it's a quiet situation. Recording audio on the iPhone with the microphone from each of them. Dude, where is your switch? I bet you haven't even started a download yet. And this isn't even the Olay one. You [00:07:30] know, other people actually said that the airports three sounded a little bit clearer compared to the ones you are wearing. When we were on a phone call, wait, you're telling me that people can really hear the difference. Sure. Look, if you just do me a solid, we'll go outside, test out the audio quality and then we'll come back and play a game. Speaker 2: I promise. Oh fine. But you better let me play as wallow this time. Cause I am not playing as Bower again. All right, let's get you outside. It's windy. There's lots of traffic. [00:08:00] You name it. Let's see what the microphone sound like. Perfect. So you won't hear me uttering under my breath. I heard that anyway. The, to use this new AAC, E L D Kodak, that's supposed to make FaceTime calls sound clearer. Cool. And I suppose you're gonna boast about your acoustic mesh or something. Yeah. That's one of the things that the, we have to reduce wind noise. Can I go now? Oh, come on. This is fun. Weirdo Speaker 1: [00:08:30] Time to dive into all of the other features that these earbuds share. And it's actually a lot. You're really not losing out on many of the other bells and whistles. If you chew use the three over the pro, for example, let's get into it. The first one is your voice assistant. So without naming Apple's voice assistant, um, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I don't wanna accidentally invoke yours, but you can use hands free control. So you say, Hey, voice assistant, and you can say, send a message, [00:09:00] play and pause music, change the volume for example, because neither of these have a physical volume control on the ear, bud. The other thing you can do is have messages read aloud in your ear and reply with your voice. So that's the same on both. The other thing they also share is spatial audio. Now this is a feature that gives you a virtual surround sound experience when listening to supported music, movies and TV shows in certain apps. Speaker 1: But I find that the airport's pro just sound a little bit more true to life for [00:09:30] something like Greyhound on apple TV plus is a scene when a torpedo is like coming right past the boat. And look, I haven't been in a situation in real life when there's been a torpedo coming past me or a ship that I've been on, but it sounded more true to life on the air pods pro than it did on the air pods three dynamic head tracking is another layer of spatial audio that opens up a world of being able to have the music change prop. It is when you move your head around for example, and it does sound very similar on [00:10:00] both. Both of them have find my functionality as well. So you'll be able to open up that app on your phone, see their last location, mark them as lost, get things like separation alerts, and also do nearby location tracking of your AirPods. Speaker 1: They both pause music. When you take one out of the ear, you can used them both independently for listening to music or taking phone calls. So, so far so similar for both of these in terms of overall feature set and the other bells and whistles. The one thing that is different though, there's kind of intriguing [00:10:30] on the AirPods three. They have a feature that the AirPods pro lack it's called a skin detect sensor. It's basically measuring the refraction of light. So it's going to know if these are in your ear, up against skin, as opposed to say lying on a table in your pocket and things like that. So it's gonna help preserve overall battery life, cuz they're not gonna keep playing. If you say, just like put them down in your pocket for a moment while you're doing something else, the airports pro don't have that sense. It's kind of intriguing. What else it's gonna be [00:11:00] for on the AirPods? Three? I'm thinking some fitness stuff. Maybe. I don't know. I don't have any insights into future plans at all, but I'm just thinking there's gotta be something else that this little sense is gonna do. Speaker 1: Battery lifetime. The airport three will get you around six hours of total listening time at a moderate or 50% volume. The pods pro will get you closer to five hours with transparency mode active [00:11:30] or four and a half hours with active noise cancellation. But that's Apple's number in my real world tests, I definitely found that the airports pro could get me closer to the five hour mark with active noise cancellation when they were brand new, straight out of the box. The cases themselves obviously have extra charge in them too. The AirPods pro 24 hours of total charge. And there are 30 hours of total charge in the airport's three case. The cases can charge wirelessly on both of them on any regular Chi [00:12:00] wireless charging pad. Overall durability is slightly different. Let's talk about that. I P X four rating on both of the ear buds. So that means splash and water resistant. Now the one, your friends in the durability overall that the pods three have that the AirPods pro do not see these cases. This case itself is also IPX four rated, whereas this case is not. Speaker 1: So they, you have it hopefully have [00:12:30] given you enough information to make the call. If air pods three or AirPods pro are the right choice for you. If I was making the call, I would probably choose the AirPods pro and that's because I really value noise cancellation. And I do like being able to change the fit of the actual earbuds with interchangeable tips, especially third party foam ones, super helpful for me. But I do like that. The call quality on the pods three is a little bit better than the pods pro in my testing. [00:13:00] So that might be a deciding factor to sway you this way, rather than this way. Thank you for watching. As I said earlier, they are useful links in the description below with latest pricing and availability. So you can check those out. And if you have any further questions for me about either of these earbuds or you just wanna sound off about, you know, one of the trucks I was listening to, um, you really like it, or you really don't let me know Twitter, Instagram or down in the YouTube comments. I'll see you later.