Vance Tran

The AirPods Pro That Refused to Die

Published on

I've had the original AirPods Pro since 2021. They still work. Mostly.

The Lightning charging port on the case is busted, so I've been relying on wireless charging. Not the end of the world — I've got a Qi pad on my nightstand — but it's the kind of thing that nags at you. I keep telling myself I'll fix it by swapping in a USB-C port, which honestly sounds like a fun little repair project if I can find the time for it.

The left earbud has also developed a crackling habit. It pops and crackles when I'm eating with them in, which is a weird and specific failure mode. Must be some pressure compensating mechanism that is broken on the left bud, but still works on the right one. My workaround is to just use the right earbud in those cases. Which is fine. It works. Mostly.

I know I've railed against them in the past mostly due to their high cost, but they have truly become one of my favorite products of all time. When the opportunity came to pick them up on a work stipend, I decided to give it a shot. The sound quality is remarkable for something that small. Noise cancellation on BART is borderline life-changing — if you've ever had the pleasure of riding through the Transbay Tube, you know the screech. The AirPods Pro block out most of it... but I hear the Pro 3s do a much better job - more on that later. I took to the stem squeeze controls quickly, and now I can't go back — the typical tap controls on other earbuds always felt like playing my ears like a percussion instrument, which is exactly as unpleasant as it sounds. And the Find My integration has saved me more than once, whether I'm pinging them to make them chirp from under a couch cushion or tracking them with a game of hot and cold enabled by the rudimentary Bluetooth signal tracking.

The Rotation

My main concern with buying expensive earbuds was always battery longevity. The batteries are not user-replaceable and stories of people replacing them after two years are so common, it left me bummed out not just on a financial level, but on an environmental one as well.

But here's the thing — I think the reason these have lasted four years is that I don't rely on them exclusively. I've got a small rotation of earbuds going, which I think of as wear-leveling. It's a concept borrowed from SSDs: spread the load across multiple devices so no single one takes all the abuse. Applied to earbuds, it means fewer charge cycles per pair, which means the batteries hold up longer.

The latest additions to the rotation are two pairs of CMF Buds by Nothing. They're inexpensive, sound surprisingly good, and fill in nicely for non-Apple devices. One is paired to my laptop, the other to my Android tablet. Anything that doesn't need the Apple magic gets routed through those. The AirPods Pro stay in the Apple ecosystem where they excel — seamless switching, spatial audio, transparency mode — and they're not burning charge cycles on YouTube videos I'm half-watching while doing the dishes.

It's just a smidge more futzing, but it works. The CMF Buds are good earbuds in their own right, too. Not AirPods Pro, but for the price and use cases, they punch well above their weight.

Strongly Considering AirPods Pro 3

All that said — broken charging port, crackling left earbud, four years of daily use — I'm pretty much sold on picking up the AirPods Pro 3 when the timing feels right.

Standout features I'm looking forward to:

  • Improved audio quality
  • Better findability, with an added speaker on the case and high-precision tracking.
  • Much improved noise cancellation for those loud environments like train rides
  • Speaking of: Automatic hearing protection
  • Then there are the gimmicky features that could be potentially cool
    • Live Translation - I've seen some demos and while it's not perfect, it seems to work in a pinch.
    • Heart rate sensing - handy if I'm not wearing a watch, I suppose.

Four years is a good run. I can't be that upset about it. And the third generation brings enough improvements that the gap is real and not just marketing. The originals will probably get demoted to backup status, or maybe I'll actually do that USB-C port repair and see how much life is left in them. Heck, if I'm feeling spicy, I'll replace those "non-user-replaceable" batteries.

Either way, the rotation will continue. I'll add a new pair, spread the load, and maybe write a post in 2030 about how those are still going strong.

Or I'll lose one in a couch cushion. Genuinely could go either way.