AirPods Pro 2: a year in our ears

We have used the second-generation AirPods Pro with the USB-C case on commutes, flights and long days at the desk. Here is how they have held up over twelve months.

Noise cancellation and transparency

Noise cancellation is strong enough to make a train ride genuinely quiet, and Adaptive Audio handles the walk from a quiet office onto a noisy street better than we expected. Transparency mode remains the most natural we have tried — you forget you are wearing earbuds.

The case

The USB-C case charges from the same cable as everything else, has a speaker for Find My and a lanyard loop that we actually use. After a year the hinge is still firm and the battery still lasts a week of commuting.

Fit

Fit is personal. Run the ear-tip fit test in Settings and try the other tip sizes before giving up. Two of us moved to the small tips and immediately heard better bass.

The feature we would miss most is not noise cancellation — it is how seamlessly they switch between an iPhone and a Mac.

They are at their best with an iPhone. On Android or Windows you lose automatic switching and most of the settings.