A little more info... in the sound menubar, it shows the battery icon as expected, and the submenu is there that lets you select noise cancelation modes (again, like the automatic pairing, this was surprising). However, I found one minor issue in the Bluetooth prefpane...
Looks like there is some erroneous carryover from AirPods Pro (the "Press & Hold..." options), but the checkboxes to control what the Noise Control button on the headphones, and the Automatic Ear Detection checkbox do work properly though.