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- Extremely comfortable
- Sound quality is great
- ANC is surprisingly effective
- Extremely comfortable
- They sound great
- ANC is surprisingly effective
The AirPods 5 may not be the sexiest product in Apple’s line-up, but of all the upgrades announced alongside the iPhone Duo back in September, they might just be the most significant. That’s not because they’re hugely innovative or exciting; it’s because they deliver so much more bang for your buck than before. In the current environment, that’s something that should be celebrated.
The AirPods 5 now come with active noise cancellation in every model, from the base model to the premium model with wireless charging.
Apple has also improved the effectiveness of that ANC and added touch controls for volume – and it has done all this while actually cutting prices. That, in my book, makes them among the best value headphones money can buy right now, for iPhone owners, at least.
How much do they cost?
That price is now £119 for the standard AirPods 5 and £139 for the AirPods 5 with the wireless charging case. By comparison, the AirPods 4 launched at £129 and £179, respectively.
That also makes them £81 cheaper than the Huawei Freeclip 2, which I liked so much at the back end of last year, £60 cheaper than our favourite open-ear headphones, the Shokz OpenDots 2, and £31 less than the Sennheiser Accentum Clip, to name but a few alternatives.
These rivals aren’t strictly the same type of headphone as the AirPods 5, but with fewer and fewer manufacturers choosing to compete directly with Apple in this space, they’re the closest rivals we’ve tested recently.
What features do they have?
Despite these lower prices, the AirPods 5 deliver significantly more features and capabilities than their predecessors. For the base model, the major update is the addition of active noise cancellation (ANC), but that’s not the only improvement.
Apple has also improved that ANC by “50%”, boosted sound quality thanks to a redesigned acoustic architecture and have also improved its personalised adaptive EQ to work across a greater range of frequencies.
Both models get advanced software features such as Siri AI, Live translation and conversation awareness this year. The headphones are IP57 resistant to dust, sweat and water, and they connect over Bluetooth 5.3.
As ever, there’s close integration with iOS and support for personalised spatial audio with head tracking, but limited audio codec support.
Only Apple’s AAC is supported, and there’s no high-res or lossless support at all. Arguably, though, the sort of person buying AirPods isn’t going to be all that fussed by the nuances of sound quality that advanced codecs like aptX Lossless and LDAC provide.
Airpods 5 vs AirPods 5 with Wireless charging: What’s the difference?
Just to confuse you, there are some remaining differences between the two AirPods 5 models, despite the fact that both get ANC.
First among these is battery life, which on the wireless charging model is now pegged at five hours versus four for the standard AirPods (with ANC enabled), and two hours longer for the charging case, at 22 hours versus 20.
Like last year, the base model doesn’t have a speaker in the charge case, to make it easier to track down in the event you misplace them. You can still use the Find My Network and Find nearby feature to locate them with your iPhone, though.
The other key difference to know about is that the new ability to adjust the volume by swiping your finger up and down the stem only comes to the pricier wireless charging model. You can’t have everything, I suppose.
How did I test the Apple AirPods 5?
I’ve been using the Apple AirPods 5 as my main headphones for around a month now. During that time, I’ve used them on my commute on the London Underground, at home and in the office.
For ANC and audio quality, I directly compared the AirPods 5 to their predecessors, the AirPods 4 with ANC, as well as to the Huawei FreeClip 2, the AirPods Pro 3 and my daily drivers (pre-AirPods 5), the Sony WF-1000XM6.
To test live translation, I fired up some simple foreign language tutorials and interviews on YouTube. I tested ANC, noise cancellation and call quality by listening and recording with loud airplane noise playing on a nearby speaker.
I also tested the battery drain and comfort by wearing the buds for hours, until they ran out of battery.
How comfortable are they?
The physical design of the earbuds is one thing Apple hasn’t changed this time around and that’s a good thing because the AirPods 5 are lightweight and incredibly comfortable to wear.
Some might find them not secure enough in the ear for running or vigorous workouts, but I found I could keep these things in my ears for hours at a time without any ear ache or soreness at all.
Your mileage may vary, of course – everyone’s ears are different after all – but I found that I often simply forgot I was wearing them, especially when a podcast or playlist finished and I neglected to start another. Along with the Huawei FreeClip 2 and the AirPods 4, they’re the most comfortable headphones I think I’ve ever worn.
How do they sound?
Now, it used to be the case that there was some degree of compromise with this level of comfort. But while silicone tipped earbuds do in general have the edge when it comes to impact and bass reproduction, with the AirPods 5 that gap is no longer as big as it once was.
I ran through my usual eclectic mix of listening material while testing them and I must say there was no point at which I found myself yearning to switch back to a pair of my other, better sounding headphones.
They acquitted themselves just as well with PVT’s Kangaroo and Billie Eilish’s bury a friend as they did with the Dire Straits’ classic, Romeo and Juliet, and quieter tracks such as a-ha’s unplugged version of Tale On Me from 2017. I can confirm that they do, indeed, sound better than the AirPods 4.
And while back-to-back comparisons with the Sony WF-1000XM6 aren’t strictly fair, what they do reveal is how close the AirPods 5 get to sounding like a “proper” pair of headphones.
There’s plentiful bass (much more than most clip-style headphones), a good sense of space and three-dimensionality, and excellent detail reproduction. Spatial audio and head tracking work brilliantly, as usual, too.
How effective is the noise cancellation?
Where the AirPods 5 miss out compared with earbuds that seal up your ear canals is noise cancellation effectiveness, but again don’t rule them out completely.
Anyone who has travelled on the London Underground’s Central Line between Stratford and Mile End will attest to how deafening the screech of wheels confined in small tunnels can be. My Apple Watch regularly warns me how dangerously high the noise levels are, and the AirPods 5 weren’t able to reduce that cacophony as much as the AirPods Pro 3 or the Sony WF-1000XM6.
However, the noise cancellation did work well and I was still able to hear what the hosts and guests were saying on my daily dose of football podcasts. In an environment where ambient sound reaches levels higher than 95dBA, that’s an impressive feat. Again, the AirPods 5 were noticeably more effective than the AirPods 4 here.
Passthrough audio is just as good as it always is with Apple headphones, presenting the outside world completely convincingly with no colouration whatsoever.
How good is call quality?
Another area where Apple has excelled for quite some time is call and microphone quality, and the AirPods 5 perform brilliantly here once more. If you’re the type of person who spends all their working hours in video calls, look no further. These are the headphones to buy.
The microphone reproduces voices with a richness and body that even more expensive headphones can’t match. And clarity in most environments is excellent, with Apple’s Voice Isolation tech working nicely, deftly balancing background audio suppression with sound quality.
However, there is a limit to Voice Isolation’s capabilities. As I found with the AirPods Max 2, there is a point at which the noise suppression algorithm cuts in so much that it messes with the voice pickup from the microphones and can make it sound choppy.
One of my tests is to play loud airplane noise on a speaker about 70cm away from my seating position. Impressively, the AirPods 5 killed off this roar completely to the point where I couldn’t hear it at all on the playback. But unfortunately, when I spoke, my voice sounded compressed and was difficult to listen to.
Is there anything negative to be aware of?
Live translation isn’t very good, either, although I’ll cut it some slack as it’s still in beta. It’s best used in situations where you’re having a very simple back-and-forth conversation, for example in a quiet restaurant with a waiter or in a shop with a cashier, but you’ll probably find it struggles even then.
I tried it out with some simple beginner level Japanese comprehensions on YouTube and, while it worked, it didn’t really reproduce anything remotely approaching a proper interpretation.
It certainly couldn’t cope with more complex language. I had no idea what former Liverpool manager, Jurgen Klopp, was talking about in his interview with the Hotel Matze YouTube channel.
Battery life isn’t brilliant either: at five hours these won’t get you through a transatlantic flight without needing to be popped back in the case for a top up. But they do at least charge up pretty quickly, providing around an hour of listening time (or 20% of the battery) for every five minutes you leave them in the case.
Otherwise, the usual caveats around Apple products apply here. Although they do work as basic Bluetooth headphones with any device, you won’t be able to make the most of the AirPods 5 advanced features like Siri AI, Spatial audio and Live translation unless you’re an iPhone owner.
Should you buy the Apple AirPods Pro 5?
They’re not for Android phone owners, then, more’s the pity. But for Apple aficionados, they’re just great.
The sound quality really isn’t at all far off that produced by silicone tipped earbuds like the AirPods Pro 3, the ANC is surprisingly effective and they are just about the most comfortable headphones you’ll ever likely put in your ears.
Only battery life disappoints, but at a mere £119 for the basic model and £139 for the wireless charging one with volume control, that’s easy to forgive. I love ‘em.
