Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Gen)
What’s the story?
Although they’re named the same and look pretty much the same, that’s where the similarities between the first and second gen of the AirPods Pro end. Most significantly, Apple has worked to improve the audio, the active noise-cancellation and the battery life.
The charging case now has a speaker, which seems a little odd but comes into its own when you need to find it via the Find My app: it can now emit a welcome shriek from the back of the sofa. Mind you, if you charge your buds by your bed you might want to disable that: we had ours topping up on a pad and they kept pinging at us when they were charged.
Are they any good?
We were sceptical that these could be much better than the original AirPods Pro, but it’s immediately clear that they provide much beefier and punchier audio – and the ANC is also much improved. The upshot is that you actually need to be careful walking down the street with full cancellation on: it’s too good and you end up blocking out sounds you should be hearing. So you’ll find yourself using the Transparency mode more than before.
Spatial audio can now be personalised through analysis of your ears (you need to take photos of them!), but this is a software update so it’s also available on the older model, plus the third-gen AirPods, AirPods Max
