Today, I want to talk about the AirPods 4—no fluff, just what you actually need to know before buying them.
Noise Cancellation: Both a Blessing and a Curse
Let’s start with the main selling point—Active Noise Cancellation (ANC). On one hand, it’s brilliant: I can comfortably ride public transit and barely hear a thing around me, and when I’m working out outside, background noise and people don’t distract me at all.
But there is a flip side: the noise cancellation gives me a headache. The moment I turn it on, it feels like I’ve been shoved into a deep, silent void.
Fit and Case: Great to Hold, Awful to Grab
The second drawback is the fit. My old AirPods 2 with the Lightning port sat in my ears perfectly fine, but these new ones keep slipping out. Sure, you can exercise in them (there’s even a video of me rowing on a machine), but trying to pull them out of the case and put them back in is a massive, clunky pain.
Another annoying detail: the stems are too short. Because of this, even just placing them back into the charging case is awkward—it gets a bit frustrating.
That said, I do like the case itself—it feels nice to the touch, it’s compact, and I appreciate details like that. Plus, you can finally see if it’s fully charged now; the AirPods 2 didn’t have that. They charge via MagSafe—I just drop the case on the charger, the light comes on, and it’s super convenient. A single charge easily lasts me several days of active use.
Controls: Desperately Lacking Flexibility
This is by far the most irritating part. I can’t customize the controls so that squeezing the left earbud goes to the previous track and the right goes to the next. All you can do is squeeze the stem to play the last track or end a call. For this price tag, such a limited feature set is simply not enough.
Device Switching
Here, everything depends on the OS: sometimes they connect instantly, sometimes you have to wait about three seconds, and occasionally, they show they are connected but no audio actually plays. However, this always fixes itself within a few seconds.
But when it works, it’s incredibly seamless: I can listen to music on my iPad, take a call on my phone (which automatically pauses the iPad), and I don’t have to switch anything manually. The same goes for the Mac. It really is convenient. Plus, the music pauses instantly the moment you pull one earbud out of your ear.
I’m hoping that iOS 26.5, which is coming out in a month, and the upcoming iOS 27 will fix these minor glitches instead of introducing new ones.
Speaking of the manual equalizer promised in iOS 27: I was worried whether it would be available for the regular AirPods 4 or if Apple would keep it exclusive to the Pro 3. But since the AirPods 4 run on the exact same H2 chip, the custom EQ with manual frequency controls will definitely be available here too—so there’s no need to overpay for the Pro version just for that.
Microphone and Calls
Everyone I’ve talked to on the phone through these earbuds says the sound quality is almost indistinguishable from speaking directly into the phone—if not better. It’s a shame I can’t show or record that in a text format. Hearing people on my end is also excellent, especially with noise cancellation turned on.
The Sound is Way Better Than Expected
Compared to other earbuds, the sound is crisp, rich, and definitely not flat—it’s hard to find anything lacking. There was a point when I was tempted to get a pair of Marshalls, but out of the box, they don’t actually sound that great. Maybe if I had manually tuned them, I would have liked the sound better.
On my AirPods 4, I listen to Ukrainian techno, classical music with techno beats, pure classical, rock, pop (when I’m out walking or on transit), and very often white noise or birdsong while I’m working.
What I really want from the next system update is, at the very least, decent control customization. Everything else is already pretty solid, and I hope the upcoming updates will clean up the remaining rough edges. And I’m also waiting for the main iPadOS 27 issues to be fixed.
Let’s discuss in the Telegram comments.
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