Apple’s Best AirPods Will Go on Sale on Black Friday
There are a lot of headphones to choose from, but if you’re as entrenched in the Apple ecosystem as I am, AirPods make a ton of sense. Apple intended that to be the case, of course, but it helps that they make some really great headphones. The second-generation AirPods Pro are particularly good, although a little more expensive. That’s why when they drop in price, like during Black Friday, it’s a fantastic opportunity to buy them.
Amazon is currently offering the AirPods Pro 2 for 32% off, dropping them to $169.99 from $249. That’s a significant deal, but it’s not as big of a price cut as Amazon suggests. These AirPods typically cost around $199 on Amazon, and sometimes go lower than that. That being said, they haven’t been this cheap since Prime Day. In fact, Amazon briefly sold them for $159.99 this morning. It’s unclear if Amazon will drop to this price again, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.
Apple may give the “Pro” moniker to most product categories these days, but the AirPods Pro at least have plenty of features to live up to the name. They may not be for “professionals,” but you get features not found in other AirPods models.
First, the AirPods Pro have excellent noise cancellation. Although, to be honest, the in-ear seal of the silicone tips blocks out background noise so much that I almost never turn on noise canceling. In fact, since the sealing is so good, you also get a transparency mode, an option that amplifies the sounds around you so you can be aware of your surroundings or even talk with the headphones.
Speaking of conversations, one great feature exclusive to the second-gen Pro is conversation tracking: when you start talking while listening to something, your AirPods will lower the volume and amplify the voices of the people you’re talking to. When everyone stops talking, your AirPods will return to normal. This is cool. Another automatic feature is ” Adaptive Audio ” (formerly “Adaptive Transparency”), which can reduce any sound above 85 dB while maintaining the normal volume of other sounds. So you can follow a conversation or even watch a TV show with AirPods, but if an ambulance passes you, its sirens will seem to be a tolerable 85 dB. You’d think you’d get these two features on the AirPods Max, Apple’s flagship in-ear headphones, but that’s not the case: you need the second-generation Pros for that.
Like all AirPods, the Pro easily switches between all your connected Apple devices. You can watch a video on your Mac, then answer a call on your iPhone and start chatting through AirPods. If you have an Apple TV, you can also switch to your AirPods, which I often do since I prefer that experience over my soundbar.
While all of these features are amazing, what really matters to me is the sound quality: the Pros sound amazing, especially for such low-profile headphones. And because they block so much sound on their own, I feel like I can judge the quality of the music I’m listening to in a wide variety of situations. I used to pause the music on my old AirPods whenever a loud truck or bus passed me while walking. This is not a problem for professionals.
Last but not least, you can now use these AirPods as hearing aids . And this isn’t marketing bullshit on Apple’s part: the FDA has cleared these headphones for use as hearing aids . Not a bad deal for $169.99.