The Latest AirPods Update Is More Confusing Than Ever

Apple’s basic AirPods are my least favorite tech product, and I see them everywhere. They’re not good earbuds in either specs or design anymore, and even with a new H2 chip and noise canceling added to the higher end of the AirPods 4, they’re still not great.
The first AirPods deserved praise simply because they were among the first wireless earbuds to actually work—earlier models from various other brands were plagued by connection woes. (The AirPods, it’s worth noting, solved a problem Apple itself created by removing the headphone jack, but the company did solve it well enough.)
The tipless design had many flaws but one benefit—you didn’t need to remove earbuds to chat with people, because they didn’t seal out the world. In the years since, newer wireless earbuds don’t just work well and sound great—they have fixed said transparency issue. Every pair from JLab’s $60 Jbuds ANC to Apple’s own AirPods Pro have eartips, noise canceling, and a transparency mode so you can chat without adjusting your buds.
These days, the entry-level AirPods ask more questions than they answer. Why do they still lack eartips, and how can noise canceling be effective without a proper seal in your ear canal? Why do they still have a woeful five-hour battery life (which depreciates after a few years)? Why do they sound only as good as competitors that cost half the price? I honestly can’t think of a reason beyond the amount of dollars Apple has spent marketing the buds. Consumers have a preference: The AirPods Pro are Apple’s best-selling model, according to Apple itself. Just because you can sell a legacy product with a flawed design doesn’t mean you should.
The AirPods 4 and AirPods 4 with Active Noise Canceling look identical to each other and so similar to the older model that friends and family have asked me which is which when presented with them side by side. (The tell is how much smaller the sensor in the middle of the earbud is on the latest pairs, as you can see below.)
The AirPods 4 with ANC ($179) have wireless charging in the case and a speaker for Apple’s Find My tech, meaning you can use your iPhone to find the case if it’s misplaced. Those features are unavailable on the $129 AirPods 4, but otherwise, you can’t tell the difference externally between the hardware.
The cases for both models are the design highlight for me; they’re smaller, sleeker, and easier to put in tiny pockets. I wish we got a similar change for the AirPods Pro 2. These AirPods also finally feature USB-C charging, falling in line with the European Union’s regulations, set to go into effect this December on a universal charging connector.
Apple claims it collected more than 50 million data points to redesign the new AirPods to be the best fitting yet. I agree there have been improvements. Even if the changes are subtle, they slip more comfortably in my ears and seem to stay put with more confidence than before. But they still have the same flaw as previous models: They hurt my ears after a little while because the tips are hard white plastic instead of silicone or moldable foam. I get about an hour of listening time before I need a break.
The highlight feature of the AirPods 4 is active noise canceling (available only in the $179 model). But the fact that the headphones leak sound in and out creates a weird listening experience.
The noise-canceling is effective, particularly on rumbly things like my old window AC unit and idling cars, but it creates a sort of uncanny valley in the high frequencies because of the lack of seal and speed of those sound waves. Snap your fingers and they come through more or less loud and clear, as do any clanging, higher-pitched sounds you might encounter. I get nearly the same low-end isolation with AirPods Pro even without ANC on, and better high-end isolation. Eartips: They do something!
The lack of a seal on the earbuds also means you’re likely to listen to music at louder volumes to compensate for outside noise. Apple has capped the volume of all AirPod models at 100 decibels for years, which translates to about 15 minutes of safe exposure daily at that volume. You can, and should, dive into the settings and adjust the volume cap. (I recommend setting it to 85 db or lower.) And kudos to Apple for its hearing health information in the Health app; I recommend you check it out as it gives you noise exposure levels. Hearing loss is permanent and is no joke. It’s important that the world’s largest headphone maker is actually taking this seriously, and many other tech brands should follow suit.
Apple’s recent push into advanced hearing tech on the AirPods Pro 2 is fantastic, and I hope this will influence the entire industry. There is a bit of irony here though. The brand that made the iPod and open-tipped earbuds a thing in the first place is willing to fix the physics problem of tipless buds on its nicer model. The cynic in me sees a tax on poorer buyers who want to own shiny white buds as a status symbol, but who now also may affect their hearing health with that choice unless they know to cap the volume. The optimist sees Apple bringing a free and much-needed update to its best-selling earbuds that makes previously unaffordable tech available to the masses.
The sound quality in the fourth-gen earbuds is basically indistinguishable from the previous model to my ears. The AirPods 4 boast a new pair of dynamic drivers and the higher processing power of the H2 chip, delivering impressive audio quality for a pair of open-tipped buds. Apple’s software does a lot to try to fix the hardware problem here, but you hear significantly worse quality, especially in the bass, than similarly priced options from Beats (a company also owned by Apple, and which sells all of its earbuds with eartips).
The bass is oddly punchy but then tends to overtake the low midrange in a way that makes everything a bit vague. There is a bright pinch of highs up top to make sounds like hip-hop hi-hats crisper and tighter. It’s a weird signature, but one you’ll be familiar with if you’ve used earlier models. I find myself wondering how much better it would be if engineers didn’t have to account for sound leaking everywhere—both in and out—while listening.
I haven’t even mentioned the basic specs of these things. You can nod your head or shake it to answer or decline a phone call (cool), but otherwise these headphones have pretty lackluster battery life. Four hours of battery life with noise canceling turned on in a pair of $180 earbuds? Hope it’s a short flight. You can get a pair of headphones with cutting-edge solid-state driver technology, better noise canceling, eartips, and better battery life from Soundpeats for $90. They’re even the same shape.
Charging double for worse tech isn’t what I expect from a pioneer; if you want us to pay a premium, make a premium product and we’ll buy it. See: the fantastic AirPods Pro, which very well might get a revised 10/10 score for its upcoming hearing health features—a free update.
For listeners, it’s a world with two Apples. One makes excellent high-end headphones and cares deeply about the listening experience; the other is willing to sell fundamentally flawed tech as long as it remains popular. As it stands, the AirPods Pro and the now-aging AirPods Max (which were updated recently to add new colors and USB-C) are the only great headphones Apple sells, though both could stand to get a proper refresh.
If you want the seamless Apple features you get with the company’s headphones, I suggest springing for earbuds from Beats. The AirPods 4 are a rare Apple product I can’t recommend to anyone except the die-hards who claim the lack of eartips are the only kinds of earbuds that fit—my editor among them. To those folks, I’d say: Try another pair, you just might be surprised.