The first thing that struck me about the AirPods 5 is the enhanced sound quality. Sure, I knew there would be a difference between these and the previous model, but I didn’t expect to be wowed immediately. As soon as I got them in my ears and hit play on Sylvan Esso’s “Flood Season,” the bass stood out. Unlike the AirPods Pro models, which seal off your ear canal, open-wear earbuds like the AirPods typically struggle with low-end tone. With the changes Apple made to its audio platform on the AirPods 5, this isn’t an issue. The upgrades extend to the extra detail the company promised, too: Instruments across a range of genres have texture and nuance, and songs are immersive, even without Spatial Audio activated.
When it comes to the ANC upgrade, the AirPods 5’s most obvious advantage over the AirPods 4 with ANC is with constantly churning noises. If your home or office has an always-humming HVAC system, or your desk is near enough to a white noise machine, the AirPods 5 will provide welcome relief. Human voices still remain a challenge for these new models, but there’s enough noise-blocking power here to at least reduce them, especially when you’re listening to music or a podcast. You’ll still hear the chatter, but it’s at least at a much lower volume.
In general, what Apple has managed to do with ANC performance on “regular” AirPods that don’t seal off your ears remains impressive. That was true when noise cancellation debuted on the AirPods 4 and is still the case here.
Apple’s active noise cancellation tech, together with the processing power of the H2 chip, assists with features like Live Translation. On the AirPods 5, this means lowering the volume of the speaker (the person being translated) so that you can hear Siri’s language conversion through the earbuds. You can either ask Siri to begin Live Translation, or you can activate the feature by pressing and holding the stems of both AirPods at the same time. You can also set the Action Button on your iPhone to trigger it, or navigate to the AirPods tab in the Translate app. As before, your iPhone functions as a display, showing a live transcription for reference or if you need pronunciation assistance. This all works as advertised so far, but I’ll report back if I encounter any issues.
In terms of battery life, Apple promises up to five hours of listening time on the AirPods 5 with Wireless Charging Case with ANC enabled. Turn that off, and the company says you can expect up to seven hours of use. During my tests, which were done entirely with ANC on and Spatial Audio off, I still had 5-7 percent left at the five hour mark. For comparison, the cheaper AirPods 5 get up to four hours with ANC and up to six hours without. And with both models, you can get one hour of emergency use with five minutes in the charging case.