Finally got my APM today!! The APM arrived around Noon (United States EST time). I got way too excited and tried them on with my cochlear implants. Holy crap! The headphones are amazing! The sound quality of the headphones with my implants on are fantastic. I was a little bit worried whether or not it would sound different to me compared to wearing my special headphones that plugs into my cochlear implants, but amazingly enough — they sound exactly the same! On the funny side, I actually had to turn the headphones down halfway. I usually have the volume on max because with my special headphones, I can't hear the music very well halfway and normally have it all the way up which is like the normal sound level for most people. But with the headphones on, it's the total opposite.
On my cochlear implant, I have a big battery and a small battery. The headphones isn't covering the big battery on my ear, but you can't really see it since it's behind my ear, but i can feel it sticking out of the ear cushion a little bit. The smaller battery works better if I were to wear the headphones. I normally don't wear the smaller cochlear implant battery because I felt that the smaller battery wouldn't get me through the day since my cochlear implant processor sucks the life out of the battery pretty quickly. I only have one small battery so I may consider purchasing a second small battery just for the headphones. But the ear cups itself is covering the entire ear with my implant on, which I'm relieved about!
The headphones are extremely comfortable. Even with my implants on. The ear cups are a little bit tight, but I'm used to that because as a kid I used to have to go to audiologist appointments a lot and get my hearing tested and their headphones were really tight on my head. So the APM 'tightness' didn't really feel a big difference to me when I wore the audiologist's headphones for hearing testing. Man I'm so excited about these headphones. The transparency mode messed me up. I wasn't sure if I was listening through my implants or through the headphones. The noise cancellation is amazing though! I wish I had noise cancellation with my special cord, but wow these headphones is going to make a major change for me by not having to take my implants off, plug them in and then get the dongle and plug the cord in, etc and make sure they're working.
The one thing I did notice was that when I added the APM on all of my devices (Macbook Pro, Apple Watch S6, and iPhone 12 Pro) the audio did begin stuttering and cutting in and out. I wasn't sure if the APM was having issues with bleutooth connectivity since more devices are being added on or not. If I had one or two devices connected to the APM, it works fine without stuttering music/audio. But more than at least 3 devices or so made the APM sutter. Then the APM couldn't connect to my iPhone after disconnecting it from my watch and I did a quick reset on my APM and connected it to my phone. So I think I'm just going to keep the APM on devices that I use the most for now, which is my Macbook Pro and my iPhone 12 pro. I did hear that there's a new firmware update for the APM, so I'll probably update the APM this afternoon while I'm working on things for work.
I literally ripped the box open and got the APM connected and played with the APM for about an hour and it has far exceeded my expectations and literally just made my mouth dropped as to how much amazing technology I missed out on with headphones due to my hearing loss and cochlear implants. I was just utterly speechless. When I spoke to Apple last week about the arrival of the APM, I told them that these will be my first pair of headphones I owned ever and Apple got really excited for me and they said that this was one of the reasons why they made the APM, was so that it can accomodate everybody and have people be able to enjoy airpods in general. The APM is ridiculously expensive BUT as a deaf person with cochlear implants, These headphones are pretty cheap to me considering that cochlear implants are about $7,000 PER EAR (that's with insurance too). So, These APM headphones are definitely worth the purchase for me!
