For me, AirPods Pro aren't as good as AirPods 2.0

[Sill]

Same! I thought I might be the only one because whenever I say this people never believe me!

There's a lot of closed-minded people who assume their experience is the only valid one. (I'm talking about life in general, not religion, so lets not go there.) Those are usually the people who end up as career politicians because they know what's best for everyone else.

I've been in your position numerous times, even here. Its not fun getting beat over the head with the numbers fallacy ("the/a vast majority of customers are perfectly satisfied with this product") but if it makes those folks feel better, well I guess we all have our crutches.

This thread has been mercifully free of that, thankfully.

 

[Sill]

Same here. I’ve gone back to my 2nd Gen AirPods cuz they don’t go in my ear canals. I only use my Pros when I mow the lawn.

I had to work outside today, so I put my AP2.0 in service just in case my phone rang. (Its a great ecosystem: iPhone vibes, I look at my Watch to see if I want to take the call, I tap theWwatch or my right AP to answer/hang up. I'm perfectly happy with it, even though I practically mocked the Watch when it was introduced.) The phone never rang, but the AP2.0 didn't interfere with my work: I could hear everything around me and work safely, no need to worry if something malign was on a collision course with me.

I can understand the need for something to mute the lawnmower noise - your case is the first one I've contemplated as valid for the APP. I've also begun wondering just how good the transient response is in terms of dB cancellation. I know they act 200 times/sec, but they'd need to squash about 30dB minimum in order for me to trust them. Could I wear the APP to the range and get my practice in without having to wear my usual gear? Only one way to find out, but if they're not good enough I may end up with long term issues afterwards.

 

[Sill]

The problem is that afaik there are basically 0 wireless openback cans.
There is some over-ear weird Grado and that's the only ones I think.

I have been looking for wireless Openback for years now and the only ones I can find besides the Grados are the very old Sennheiser RS 185 that require a base station that is powered by AC, clearly not a portable solution.

I'm not an audiophile at all, most stuff is good enough for me.

I look from time to time but you're very right - there isn't anything like what we want available. Either there isn't a market for it, or more likely its because the hipsters are buying up every "IEM" they can find, as well as big, corded, closed-back seashells to plug into their tube DACs and the manufacturers are loathe to give up production capacity to a smaller market that isn't driven by hype.

 

[CookieFlow]

I look from time to time but you're very right - there isn't anything like what we want available. Either there isn't a market for it, or more likely its because the hipsters are buying up every "IEM" they can find, as well as big, corded, closed-back seashells to plug into their tube DACs and the manufacturers are loathe to give up production capacity to a smaller market that isn't driven by hype.

I asked this question to some audiophiles and one reason that made some sense was that openback headphones use much more battery due to higher impedance. And that the headphones would be pretty bulky since open air tends to be bigger and you need to also fit the batteries.

So the market for a bulky and low battery headphones probably isn't that big.
But I still find it strange that 0 companies even made an attempt, sure it might be a niche market but I'd think there would be enough people to make it worth.

For now I'll give the APM a try and return them most likely.
My real hope is in the AP 3 and hoping it's the same form factor as APP but without the in-ear part.

 

[Sill]

I asked this question to some audiophiles and one reason that made some sense was that openback headphones use much more battery due to higher impedance. And that the headphones would be pretty bulky since open air tends to be bigger and you need to also fit the batteries.

So the market for a bulky and low battery headphones probably isn't that big.
But I still find it strange that 0 companies even made an attempt, sure it might be a niche market but I'd think there would be enough people to make it worth.

For now I'll give the APM a try and return them most likely.
My real hope is in the AP 3 and hoping it's the same form factor as APP but without the in-ear part.

Think about that for a second though - if it requires more juice due to higher impedance, but its also bigger because it needs to cover the entire ear, the widget solves its own problem.

Consider Tesla - for about 2-3 decades people were trying to do battery-powered cars. Everyone focused on making the cars as small and light as possible so they wouldn't require a lot of juice. Elon Musk, after doing his proof-of-concept on a Lotus, decides to go in the opposite direction: he builds a relatively large sedan, and essentially makes the entire floor of the vehicles a battery.

In-ear pods are very small by definition so they don't have a lot of room for a battery, and they don't have a lot of mass for that battery to move. It works. An over-ear design has a larger driver so its more mass for the system to work with, but you now have a huge "chassis" that you can use as a big battery space. A manufacturer could easily put 10 pod battery cells in the frame of an open-back can an offer something with remarkable performance.

There may be some technological or design restraints to this that I'm not aware of. Apple could use the empty space in the typical iPad (which is pretty much just an iPhone with a big display) as battery space and give us tablets that last for days on a charge, but they don't.

 

[CookieFlow]

I'm not saying it's impossible.
But those 2 explanations made some sense.

Also I'm guessing that it's just market demand, most likely there is much higher demand for closed-back ANC cans, sadly for us.

 

[Sill]

Agreed.

 

[tomtad]

Totally agree, tried the Pros but just couldn't get on with the seal, I was constantly fiddling with them to get them to sit right in my ear, and the squeeze buttons are harder to use. The classic AirPod design you just pop them in no problem and tap to change track. Perfect.

 

[perezr10]

Same! I thought I might be the only one because whenever I say this people never believe me!

That’s because there are so few of you.

People who can’t use the original AirPods design are like basketball players who can’t fit into cars because their legs are so long. There are so few of them compared to the general market, that they are irrelevant to the manufacturer.

 

[C. Robert]

I use the pros and there are trade offs. Mostly the ear fatigue. The 2.0 just sit there and can be forgotten but I think the pros of the pros outweigh that.

 

[vmac556]

Agree with the op. Imo the pro is the worst apple product they make because of the fit. All 3 tips are horrible and never stay in, and when they do stay in they are painful. On the contrary the regular airpods are amazing and so are the max. Both are perfect products.

 

[Sill]

I have them boxed up and they're going back tomorrow. This bums me out. I'm not used to being unhappy with Apple hardware.

Sure the software messes me up sometimes - the iCloud aberrance I mentioned above, but also recently the upgrade to Catalina and its insistence on using TV.app to play movies. When I opened it the first time it told me it needed to "process" my movie directory, and after churning for 10 minutes I found it had stripped all of the folders, subs, and year data away from the movies and replaced it all with "<moviename>(1080HD)". That wrecked Infuse because it uses the production year data to help look up the movie info. If TV.app could see that the movie was 1080, why would it need to change the name to reflect it? Why would it delete the folders, the subs, the year, why alter it at all?

It took me hours and hours to fix that...

But I've always been happy with the hardware. This time, the hardware is the problem. I'm hoping that Apple comes up with a way to make these APP more universally tolerable if not enjoyable.