Apple AirPods 2 Review

The Apple AirPods 2 has helped to pave the way for the current earbud market, but it's best to leave them in the history books and not in your ears.

Performance Comparison

Sound Quality

A panel of expert listeners tested the Apple AirPods 2 across a wide range of music genres to evaluate how these earbuds handle a variety of compositions. We found that the bass is a little low in the mix, while the mid-range delivers the richest, cleanest tones.

Due to the lack of power in the bass notes, particularly the sub-bass, these earbuds are disappointing when listening to EDM and hip-hop. Even pop songs like Madonna's “Like a Virgin” lack punch during the chorus at 0:45, draining the song of its upbeat energy.

In contrast, the midrange sounds clear and full, making for pleasant and warm vocals. “Wildest Dreams (Taylor's Version)” by Taylor Swift has nuance and depth, creating a textural experience, especially during the chorus around the 0:42 mark.

While the treble is reasonably clear, it sounds thin and watered down, creating more of a whisper than a full presence. “Lights” by Reptile Room sounds thoroughly mediocre through these earbuds, with all the high-end and bass sadly stripped from the mix.

Soundstage

The way you perceive music to be positioned in space when you use earbuds is a quality known as their soundstage. These AirPods are able to create atmospheric space with their multi-directional sound. This openness is most pronounced when you use the Spatial Audio setting on Apple Music. It's not as powerful and immersive as more impressive earbuds, however, since the earbuds don't seal or block background noises well.

To complete our sound quality testing, we also set these buds up in our intricate, state-of-the-art sound testing system and measured their frequency response. We then compared the Apple AirPod 2's frequency response to the GearLab House Curve. Finally, we scored them based on how well they matched the ideal curve. These earbuds had a hard time keeping up with our curve, only aligning in midrange while both bass and treble fell off. Ultimately, though not the worst sound quality score in our lineup, these earbuds created a disappointing listening experience for pretty much anything you could play through them.

User Experience

Compared to the plethora of great options out there that provide amazing user experience, the Apple AirPods 2 disappointed us with its user experience. We tested these by first checking their fit and stability across a variety of ear shapes, checking both stationary wearability and during physical activity. Then, we scored their ease-of-use, customizability, and connectivity via their app (if applicable).

Comfort

All of our volunteers with varying ear shapes struggled to get these buds to feel comfortable or secure, and unless you were born with Apple Goldilocks ears, you're going to have a bad time after wearing them for several hours or while working out. If you can get these buds to stay in your ears, it won't be long before you want to take them out due to the pressure the hard plastic puts on the surrounding ear structure.

Stability

Taking a sweater off is a recipe for disaster, let alone any sort of physical activity, and these buds are definitely not recommended for the gym or activities like jogging. To sum up the fit of these earbuds, they always feel one gust of wind away from being ejected from your ears.

Customization

The app, as expected, works fine with Apple devices but is functionally unusable with Android or anything else. There aren't any notable features other than a location “Find My” function. You won't be able to adjust the boxed-in EQ: what you hear is what you get. Overall, the AirPods 2 are pretty unpleasant to use, especially if you don't have Apple's chosen ear shape.

Connectivity

Before we do anything, we like to get firsthand experience with every product we test and form our own opinions. We also surveyed all the 1-star Amazon User Reviews for each product, noting each mention of a connectivity issue, and found the rate of reported issues as a percentage of total Amazon User Reviews. The 2nd Generation AirPods excel in this area, with an issue rate of only 0.1% in our analysis. This comes with the caveat that Apple earbuds will work best with other proprietary Apple devices and software. So, if you have an iPhone, you're all but guaranteed smooth sailing.

Noise Cancellation

While the Apple AirPods 2 do not have active noise cancellation (ANC), we still tested their passive seal by setting them up in our testing rig and playing various background noises at them and measuring what bled through.

As you can tell in the graph below, everything bled through. That's because these earbuds do not have any sort of passive seal ability due to their lack of silicone or foam tips.

The AirPods rest outside of the ear canal, and thus, any environment you're in will be clearly audible through these earbuds. We wouldn't recommend these for commuting on public transit or any sort of loud environment that you'd like to tune out. At best, these buds perform well in quiet rooms, whether that be at home or out in the world.

Battery Life

We measured the Apple AirPods 2's battery life by setting them to a controlled volume and letting them play until they died.

These performed near the worst of our lineup, with 4 hours of playing songs back to back until the battery drained, which is 1 hour shorter than the manufacturer claims. You can get four more charges out of the case, totaling 16 hours before needing to plug in. If you charge them for 15 minutes, it gets you another 3 hours of playback. Overall, earbuds that are nearly half the price performed twice as well as these.

Call Quality

We tested the call quality of the Apple AirPods 2 by setting them up in our testing rig and speaking into the mic while playing different levels of noise in the background.

During our subway noise stress test, high-pitched voices become hard to hear, and much of the background bleeds through; though, low-pitched voices remain audible.

With office noise, voices are clear but the graininess remains, and the background bleeds through.

In a quiet room, voices have a bit of a grainy and hollow sound with intermittent static in the background.

Should You Buy the Apple AirPods 2?

In the current earbud market, there really is no ideal user for the Apple AirPods 2. Anyone dead set on entry-level AirPods (and we urge you to reconsider) could go with the Apple AirPods 3, which are marginally more expensive and slightly improve all of the weakest points of the 2nd generation. However, due to the awkward, insecure fit and poor sound quality, neither is recommendable. At this price point, we urge you to read below for alternative recommendations.

What Other Earbuds Should You Consider?

If you have to have Apple AirPods, it's worth saving up and spending more on the Apple AirPods Pro 2. They fix everything wrong with entry-level AirPods, add premium features like great ANC and Spatial Audio, and integrate seamlessly into the Apple ecosystem. If you're on a strict budget, we'd urge you to go outside of Apple's walled garden and consider the Jaybird Vista 2, which actually stayed locked in our ears while jogging and working out and provides a vastly better overall package than the AirPods at an even lower price point.