AirPods Pro: The First Fifteen Minutes
October 31, 2019
Just opened the box and set up a pair of AirPods Pro about fifteen minutes ago.
First, I needed to update my iPhone to iOS 13.2 which includes the support for AirPods Pro.
Pairing was as easy as with AirPods, open the case near your iPhone and a screen appears to walk you through the process.
The noise cancelling is impressive. It’s a chilly morning in Northern California and my furnace is on, making a very noticeable amount of noise.
With the AirPods in and noise cancelling turned on, I honestly couldn’t tell you if the furnace is still running or if it reached the target temperature and turned off.
It turns out as I wrote the previous sentence, the furnace had turned off. So I went into the Nest app, adjusted the target temperature upward and the furnace came back on.
I heard absolutely no difference with noise cancelling turned on.
I had to switch off noise cancelling to confirm with my ears that the furnace definitely had come back on.
I have a pair of Bose over-the-ear noise cancelling headphones that I primarily used on flights. They are very bulky and so I’ve fallen out of the habit of bringing them along.
I will definitely be bringing my AirPods Pro on flights.
Figuring out the way to click or long click on the stem is taking a little bit of getting used to, but it’s only been fifteen minutes. The key is finding the flat part of the stem as the surface to press against.
One thing that could use improvement is the discoverability of the settings for AirPods Pro.
You reach the settings in the Bluetooth settings section, by pressing the info button in the AirPods Pro entry in the list of paired devices.
If I had not read about those settings online and their location in the Daring Fireball article about AirPods Pro, I would never have found them or even knew they existed.
Searching for AirPods Pro in the Settings app brings up no entries. I imagine the names of paired devices are not part of the search.
Since you don’t need to visit the Bluetooth settings to set up the AirPods Pro, it never occurred to me that is where you would customize them or run the Ear Tip Fit Test.
(If you were wondering, the default ear tips provided a good fit out of the box.)
So, my first fifteen minutes (okay, now thirty minutes) with AirPods Pro have been good ones. I’m looking forward to my next flight to use noise cancellation without carrying a bulky pair of headphones. •
Category: Apple