The apples pro are an excellent set of wireless earbuds but they don't exactly come cheap and to something like the Amazon Echo buds two which are also a great set of earbuds.
So let's work out if you should spend more or less So of course your first consideration is price the airport for generally so for around $250 while the Amazon Echo was two or the second generation are around $120 So in this video I'm going to break down everything from the design to the sound quality code quality microphones, active noise cancellation, and of course the extra bells and whistles.
Chapters all linked in the description below.
And if you want to check out the latest prices, you can also find those links too because sometimes these go on sale.
So let's get started.
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In the box of the fo buds, you get the charging case, the earbuds themselves It is being taped and a USBC cable.
The airport PO Box gets you the earbuds themselves silicon ETFs the charging case and a lightning charging cable.
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So now let's talk about the design starting off with the echo box.
Now based ones A rounded in a bad design, so the AirPods pro also an ear design but they do have a different form factor.
And because of the interchangeable ear tubes you can get a pretty snug fit.
I find that these are fairly comfortable to wear.
I don't feel like they are too bulky but they do sit a little bit outside of my ear they protrude just a little bit I'm so I definitely do feel like I am wearing wireless earbuds when I have them in.
I found that they stay in fairly well, although I do find, I have to use the wing tips.
If I am doing anything regularly active like running.
During yoga or generally just hanging around upside down as you do be able to produce a different design.
They are also in air as I mentioned, but they have a stem that sticks down from your ear.
And you can use that stem to do things like change between tracks.
Activate noise cancellation transparency mode and so on.
Now as you've probably noticed, I do have third party ear tips on the air pods pro, I do have a foam set of tips.
I've also linked that in the description if you're interested in finding out more.
I've just found over my past year of using the airport's pro that these fit a little bit better than the silicon ear tips, but your mileage will vary And fortunately, both sets of ear buds do come with an ear fit test.
So within the app on IOS and Android for the echo buds or within the IOS settings, you can do a fit test to basically see if the ear tips are fitting well in your ears.
And this is actually how I found out But I have two different sized ear canals.
Or at least I need two different sized ear tips when I am wearing the echo buds.
Now I mentioned the stem controls on the AirPods Pro.
The echo buds have tap controls.
So you can interact with the buds that way as well as voice controls which we will talk about later on.
And both, but the echo buds I did notice.
We're not as responsive as the airport's Pro when it came to the commands and changing tracks and so on.
But particularly when it came to switching between active noise, cancellation and pass-through mode.
Or it's also called transparency mode on the acolytes Pro, which we'll talk about later, it took about four to five seconds for the echo buds to recognize my long press, which was a little too long for my liking.
The airpods bud come in white whereas the echo buds two are in white or black.
However, the echo buds do have quite obvious branding.
So if you're not a fan of the Amazon smiley face, I think you can have to become a fan of one because they're always gonna be on your ears like so.
Both of the buds are also IPX4 rated which means they can withstand some splashes and a little bit of light sweat, so you don't need to worry if you get stuck in the rain Do a sweaty workout or potentially throw them in the wash will have a shower with them.
I haven't tested that yet, but I'm fairly sure it'll be okay.
But don't try this at home and don't blame me if you void your warranty because I didn't tell you to do it.
Do it.
No, I didn't tell you to do it.
And [UNKNOWN] rating is only for the buds themselves.
Not the case.
So again, do not try this at home.
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The echo bots to have a pretty good and pretty satisfying soundstage.
And by this I mean that the bass is probably a little bit more prominent than you'll hear on the AirPods pro It's also got really good mids and trebles, although the trebles are probably to my ears a little bit too intense and a little bit high.
Fortunately, there is an equalizer within the app that you can use to sort of tweak the settings more to your liking, just so you can kind of get that sound profile a little bit more custom to you.
The efas Pro, on the other hand, have what's called an adaptive equalizer.
So this is dynamically changing the sound of the earbud based on a couple of different variables specifically around how they fit in your ear.
So I think the airport Pro have a fairly neutral sound profile, but this actually works really well.
Across a range of different musical genres and especially things like podcast and called sound great on the air pods Pro.
They might not sound as dynamic as some other wireless earbuds but I really think that they do work for so many different applications.
That I kind of forgive them for not having the most booming bass because some people don't like that.
And if you do, and you don't want to tweak with the settings maybe you should think about something like the echo buds to instead of the airport's probe, but over Overall, the airports pro are a great all round performer.
Now I mentioned the airports pro have an adaptive equalizer.
But if you do want to change the sound profile even further, there are a couple of ways that you can do it either in an equalizer in your favorite music app like Spotify, or even Apple Music within the iOS settings, you can do that or you can go into the headphones accommodation within iOS And tweak the sound even further specifically around things like how good your hearing is, which I really like because you can really make these earbuds your own.
Let's talk about noise cancellation because this is a huge reason why you're buying one of these two pairs Now both of them have active noise cancellation, and both of them actually work really well.
Now I've used the airport's pro on a plane, I haven't yet been able to use the echo buds to on a plane but I have been able to recreate a couple of white noise environments with an overhead fan, a bathroom fan and also just listening to a white noise playlist, a 12 hour playlist on Spotify.
Don't ask me why I had to listen to that.
But I did.
And both of them actually performed really, really well.
I think the airport's pros do have more effective noise cancellation, and that doesn't surprise me given that they are more expensive earbuds.
But overall the performance on the echo buds two is great.
They are a lot better than the first generation echo buds.
If you are potentially thinking about upgrading, you will hear a difference with these Now the echo bots to I did notice there was a slight case when the active noise cancellation setting was on as well as the pass through mode.
So if you have super sensitive ears or you can, you know, you can hear sounds like slight hisses, then maybe these ones won't work for you, but I could only hear it when there was no music playing.
So just take that into account the air pods Pro do not have any of that hissing sound with the active noise cancellation or the transparency mode on, so they work really well if you have sensitive hearing.
Now both earbuds have a mode to let in sounds from the outside world, it's called transparency mode on the AirPods pro and pass through on the echo buds 2. This is great.
If you are wanting to make sure that you have awareness of your surroundings, maybe you're outside on a walk.
Maybe you're waiting for here when you're screaming, baby or puppy wakes up, or maybe you just want to human.
The doorbell goes off because you're working from home.
Now, both of the modes work really well.
I think the airports pro obviously sounds As the most natural overall and I'm not surprised given that they are twice the price of the echo buds to it sounds like augmented reality for your ears.
I think that's the closest way I can describe it.
It's really natural and makes you feel like you're still present in a situation but being able to listen to music or take a call.
The pastor Matt on the echo buds to is also really good.
It's obviously not as good as the AirPods Pro.
And I'm not surprised because it is half the price, but you can adjust that pass through mode within the app, which means that you can crank up the volume a little bit so you can have much more awareness of your surroundings or lessen it so you don't necessarily hear as much Now I tested out these ear buds on a couple of different phone calls as well as on Zoom attached to a computer, and both performed pretty well.
The echo buds too definitely had more gains.
So to the caller on the other end The buzz sounded a little bit louder and overall I just sounded a little bit more booming and kind of front and centre.
The airports pro were a little bit more balanced overall.
All right, so microphone samples for you now these are as you can see the AIRPODS PRO recording on the IPHONE 12 PRO in FILMIC PRO So many pros anyway, this is what they sound like take a listen and see what you think and then compare them to the next clip.
And this is a clip from the echo buds recording on the same configuration.
Take a list Listen to the microphones and see what you think.
But that is actually a bit of a design fault with the echo buds and I will show you what I mean.
So when you don't have long hair or your hair is tied up like I have it here, sounds fine.
Just wait
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Long haired friends, if you wear the Echo Buds and have long hair, yeah, this is gonna happen.
It sounds, kind of like someone's eating cereal.
And yeah obviously no one with long hair tested these before rolling them out cuz Hate this, am feeling uncomfortable [LAUGH] my hair is just a mess.
All right for my fellow long haired friends, this is the AIRPODS PRO just for a fair comparison against the echo buds with your hair down, just to take a listen and see definitely Was not as much complaints to that can noise and crunching and scrunching.
When I was on coals compared to the echo buds here on the airports.
All right.
Now I'll put my hair back together again, this is the echo buds to recording on Android, specifically the XE fault too.
Using pro video.
And just around things out also on the Z fold 2 Android, I am talking in the airports pro this time, just so you can have a comparison across different ecosystems to see which one you like, the sound of the most.
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Fortunately, there's a lot more features to talk about on both of these ear buds, Starting with the airports pro they have spatial audio.
So this creates a virtual surround sound effect when you are listening to movies and TV shows in supported apps and also now within Apple Music.
It uses accelerometers and gyroscopes in both the airports pro and your iOS or iPad device in order to give you that virtual [UNKNOWN] Experience it sounds really great.
When it comes to voice assistance.
Well the world is your oyster if you are on the echo birds because they support not only the google assistant and Siri if you are listening on iOS and Android, but they also have hands free You know what I'm gonna say, so go and deactivate your Amazon voice assistant if you have one, so I don't keep triggering it.
I'll give you a second.
Okay, great, you're back.
I'm glad you did pause the video deactivated that, so these have hands free alexa and alexa actually can do a lot of different things.
If you have an alexa home smart speaker, and you're really into the Amazon ecosystem when it comes to using alexa for lots of different things, you're probably really gonna value the echo buds.
Not only can you do things like make phone calls, and also interact with things like your alexa's skills, but you can also get directions change volume on your tracks Start and stop music playback, it's really flexible what the Alexa wake word can do on these echo buds and it works on IOS and Android, which is a nice bonus.
Now we One thing I would say about the Alexa integration is that sometimes it takes maybe one or two tries for me to get say the actual wake word for it to respond, but overall, it was pretty good.
Now the airport's pro also have hands free Series so you say hey And it will open up the voice assistance and you can do a bunch of things like pick calls, respond to messages, have messages read alert your ear as well, and of course interact with your friend to do things like Change tracks and so on.
So both of them are very flexible indeed when it comes to using them hands free.
If you lose these ear buds You can also open up the find my in both IOS for the applets for or within the Alexa app on the echo buds too, and you'll be able to see the location on a map and if you wanna leave one ear bud in the case and use the other one independently Say for example, you just wanna have one ear open to the outside world or one of the batteries has gone dead and you need to charge one but still be listening in the other.
You can use both of these earbuds independently, which I really like.
On the connectivity front, the airport pro come with quick switching between devices that are signed in to your Apple ID.
I really like this feature.
And it is something that the echo bots do not have, which I would have liked to have seen.
Or at least multi device connectivity to be able to connect two devices simultaneously to the echo buds too.
Unfortunately that's not a feature and maybe something to think about for the echo buds three.
Or maybe I'm asking for too much because these are only $120.
Can't really do everything, but I would still like them to try.
One thing I did notice about the echo bugs too is that sometimes they didn't automatically reconnect to the last device that I had used them with, whether that was an iPhone or an Android.
And sometimes the sinking was a little bit off when I was watching movies.
TV shows or even YouTube.
Battery life is super important to get the most out of each charge from the wireless charging case, the airport's per se you'll get 4.5 hours of listening time with active noise cancellation turned on, and the extra bucks to save five hours of listening time.
With active noise cancellation turned on and always on Amazon voice assistant, but real world testing is a little bit different.
I actually found that the airpods pro could push me closer to five hours of listening time with active noise cancellation turned on at a better 50% volume.
Whereas the echo dots 2 actually got me close to that four and a half hours of listening time.
With the same parameters, so they kind of did a bit of a swap see around with the real world testing.
The charging case itself will give you around 24 hours of total charge on the iPods Pro, whereas the echo buds to only be about 15 hours of total charge.
And if you need a quick charge within the case 15 minutes on the iPods Pro gets you almost three hours of listening time whereas on the echo buds to 15 minutes in the case will give you almost two hours and both of the cases themselves support wireless charging.
However, you do need to pay a little bit more on the echo buds if you want to buy the wireless charging case version It is $20 more for the echo buds with wireless charging whereas the airport's Pro is just a wireless charging case as standard.
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Now it comes down to the part of the video where you need to decide which pair of wireless ear buds is your overall winner.
Now hopefully you've watched the rest of the video and haven't just skipped to this section.
So you do have a bit of an idea of the strengths of each of them.
But I'll give you the cheat sheet.
Overall, for $120 and potentially even less if you can find these on discount, say for example, at Prime Day, these are really, really good value.
Especially if you're tied closely into the Amazon ecosystem already with some other devices, you have some smart speakers.
These are just going to be a natural extension of that.
The sound quality is good, the bass is pretty strong and prominent and overall, I enjoyed using these A lot and the wingtips really mean that they can give you an even more secure fit.
The airpords pro are yes, they're more expensive but they are probably the better choice if you are more tightly into Apple's ecosystem.
You also want spatial audio from supported movies,TV shows and music.
And overall you want the most effective noise cancellation and the most natural transparency mode.
