Apple AirPods Pro 2 with USB-C MSRP $249.00 Score Details DT Editors' Choice “Look past the case of the Apple AirPods Pro 2 with USB-C, and you'll see wireless audio's future.” Pros Cons The new AirPods Pro 2 with USB-C and MagSafe charging are just the same AirPods Pro we had before, but with a different charging port, right?It’s not just about the new USB-C charging port and what comes with that.
But those days are in the rearview mirror now. Apple is now all-in on USB-C. And in the case of the new AirPods Pro 2 — literally, in the case — this means you can move toward tossing your Lightning cables into that drawer or bin with all the other cables you can’t bring yourself to throw out. iOS 17 improvements So is that it? Is that all that’s new? First, let’s look at some of the new features that were released alongside the new USB-C AirPods Pro, but are not limited to the new AirPods Pro — these are available if you have the Lightning version as well, so long as you are running iOS 17 and your AirPods Pro have the latest firmware.
While I appreciate attempts at this feature by, say, Sony, for example, on its XM5 headphones and earbuds, what I have found is that any sufficiently loud noise will trigger it, turning off noise canceling and piping surrounding audio in. This is not good if what sets off the feature is something like a lawn mower or leaf blower, or some other loud piece of gear. I very much do not want that noise piped in as if I’m having a conversation with it.
The Adaptive Noise Control doesn’t work exactly as I had imagined it. But, to be honest, how I had imagined it might work would probably be super annoying. Of course, I can only say that having experienced how Apple has envisioned it, I think Apple got this one right. One thing is certain: I can’t think of another brand of earbuds or full-sized headphones that can do what the AirPods Pro 2 can do with these new iOS17-enabled features. Other brands have transparency or passthrough modes, they have dialog detection, and some of them have adjustable levels of noise cancellation. Sony has all three of those. But none of them are executed nearly as well as Apple is executing them here. So, I’ve got to give all three a pretty enthusiastic thumbs up.
What I can tell you is that it is not Bluetooth. And there is no wireless audio codec involved. It’s not FLAC, or AptX, or anything like that. It is raw, uncompressed, lossless audio at up to 20-bits.