48 Macworld • January 2022iPHONE
your ear shape. I suggest trying them
on before you buy, if at all possible.
The shorter stems are nice, and
help reduce incidents where they
get caught on a hat or strap or
bumped free. Apple has replaced
‘tap’ controls with the ‘squeeze the
stem’ force sensor as found on the
AirPods Pro. It gives you a little more
control but, as ever, I find it hard to
use without messing up the AirPods
fit in my ear. I generally control them
either through voice or the controls
on my iPhone or Mac.
There’s certainly no way in which
I feel that the third-gen AirPods are
a worse design than the second-
gen, and the shorter stems and
water/sweat resistance are both
improvements I can appreciate. But
as with the second-gen model, theshape of your ears will determine just
how secure and comfortable the fit is.BATTERY LIFE AND
CHARGING CASE
Apple promises that the battery will
last up to six hours, and that seems
a pretty accurate claim. I managed
to get just a bit more than that on a
full charge, but volume plays a factor,
and you can expect less when using
spatial audio, too. These are the
longest-lasting AirPods you can buy,
though you can buy wireless earbuds
with longer battery life (they are
usually larger, though).
The charging case, which looks
very much like that for the AirPods
Pro but is just slightly less wide, holds
another 4 full charges, so you can
juice up the earbuds several times
before you have
to find a plug.
Speaking of
finding a plug,
the charging case
supports charging
via Lightning or Qi
wireless charging
and has magnets to
attach to MagSafe
chargers.
Apple claims
that about fiveThe third-gen AirPods case (centre) is just a touch less wide
than the AirPods Pro case (right).