Lots of folks, including myself, really loved AirPods Pro 2. They were great, especially as an audio enthusiast. Was it the most balanced in-ear monitor (IEM) in the world? No. But it was the combination of features and decent sound quality that really made me fall in love with them.

So with that being said, I was cautiously optimistic about AirPods Pro 3. Especially considering the language Apple used during its announcement of the product. The company specifically called out "better bass," and that got me really concerned.

With that caution in place, I did not optimistically pre-order the AirPods Pro 3 like most others. I waited until after launch and have spent the last week with the earbuds, and boy do I have a lot of thoughts.

Sound Quality

Let’s tackle the elephant in the room. The new sound signature is problematic as an audio nerd. The tonal balance is more V-shaped and has notable peaks in the treble that cause a lot of harshness in the upper frequencies. On the other side of the spectrum? The bass, most notably the sub and mid bass, are boosted as well, giving it an overall warmer tone compared to a slightly warm and dark AirPods Pro 2.

But there is a saving grace here. The mids (middle frequencies) are near perfection. It’s just a shame you can’t really enjoy them (stock) as they are buried by massive boosts in the bass and treble regions.

The best way I can describe its sound signature is very dark with a hint of treble peak. Maybe not classic Beats level of bass, as some have described it, but a few notches too much for my personal taste.

These are my subjective opinions, of course. Sadly, Apple’s headphone accommodations settings can’t fix this sound signature. Specifically, the treble peak. That’s forever stuck with this generation of AirPods Pro. None of Apple’s headphone accommodation settings tones down the treble, sadly. Of course, I could always apply a parametric EQ through something like Roon, but that’s application based. I’d rather Apple expand on headphone accommodations and give us full EQ that applies to the AirPods themselves. That way, we’re not reliant on application-side EQ or a system that only applies to Apple’s own devices (headphone accommodations).

Not to beat a dead horse, but this is exactly why even a 2-band "bass" and "treble" EQ would do wonders. I get not having parametric EQ, as that might be seen as "too advanced" for the average user. But unfortunately, the tonal balance really turned me off this generation. I greatly prefer the sound signature of the AirPods Pro 2.

Beyond tone, the AirPods Pro 3 also seem to have a lower max volume. Does that matter when you’re playing stereo content? Unlikely. But the extra overhead from AirPods Pro 2 was great for when I’d use them for Dolby Atmos/Spatial audio content (both for music and video). Surround sound audio tends to have much more dynamic range, which equates to a much lower noise floor. Which then means I’d want to turn the volume up in louder environments.

With AirPods Pro 2, my comfortable listening volume was around 55-60%. Now, with AirPods Pro 3, I’m up at around 70-75%. This is regardless of using headphone accommodations or not.

Beyond tonal balance, the AirPods Pro 3 are overall a better sounding set of earbuds. The biggest improvement is its soundstage. With or without headphone accommodations, the extra spaciousness is notable. Not quite "over-ear headphones" level like Apple claims, but it is an improvement over the outgoing generation. I definitely notice the more boxed in sound when moving between AirPods Pro 2 and 3.

The other thing would be overall detail retrieval. We’re still talking about 256kbps AAC Bluetooth compression (although one could argue Bluetooth compression isn’t a problem in the environments you’d use AirPods in anyway). What do I mean by that? Cause yes, there’s soundstage, but I think there’s a slight boost in dynamic range that’s helping with the clarity and detail of the buds.

And that’s a huge compliment because if tonal balance is the only issue? That can at least be temporarily fixed with app-based EQ.

Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency Mode

This review won’t be all negative, I promise. Because beyond sound quality, there’s a lot to love. First things first. Active noise cancellation (ANC). Talk about a very obvious improvement. What kind of wizardry is this?

While AirPods Pro 2’s ANC was really good, one of my biggest complaints was primarily wind noise, whether that came from being outside, an AC unit, or purely noise from the propeller on a plane. Those still cut through a decent amount on the outgoing generation. With AirPods Pro 3, this is fixed almost entirely. You still get a slight hum, but it is very quiet.

Voices and the human vocal range have also been silenced a substantial amount. With the previous generation, if you were standing next to a group of people having a conversation, a lot of that would bleed through. Similarly, if you were in a room where someone was watching TV, the same thing would transpire. It’s still there with AirPods Pro 3, but the amount of noise it cuts is greatly improved.

Transparency mode, on the other hand? It’s a bit of a mixed bag. On first impressions, there was an artificialness to the transparency mode compared to AirPods Pro 2. It’s great in the sense that it helps with hearing human voices. But on the other hand, it’s awful when there isn’t anyone talking because it presents an unnaturalness to what was previously a top-tier transparency mode.

In my subjective opinion, I think it partially has to do with the new tuning. That bumped up treble sounds like it’s carrying over to the transparency mode. It’s to the point where I strongly believe this has got to be a bug and not a feature.

Comfort and Ear Tips

This is arguably the most important thing about headphones or earbuds. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: It doesn’t matter how a set of cans sound if you can’t wear them for more than 10 minutes. Thankfully, for me every single generation of AirPods Pro have been comfortable for me and AirPods Pro 3 are the first set where that comes into question.

Forgoing the medium ear tips as always, I went ahead and popped in the large ear tips and those fit decently well in my ears, just like the previous generation. When Apple announced another ear tip size, I was really hoping for an extra large size. That was not the case. Instead, Apple doubled down on the small size by introducing an XXS size. Shame, but the large size seal my ears well enough.

One reason (of many) that had me stuck to AirPods Pro over other true wireless earbuds was the silicone tips. I was cautiously interested in the so-called "foam infused" ear tips. About a week later, they seemed to settle. I find the old pure silicone tips much more comfortable. The new foam tips are comfortable for about the first 30 minutes or so, but become slightly uncomfortable beyond that.

The new earbud design does help AirPods Pro stay in your ear if you had an issue with them staying in your ears in the first place. I never did, so it’s effectively a wash. But I definitely feel them sitting deeper in my ears.

Battery Life

Similar to the ANC improvements, battery life is notable from day one. Yes, there’s a level of battery degradation on my old pair of USB-C AirPods Pro 2, but the new set will absolutely last you longer.

I was able to clock 9 hours and 45 minutes in pure ANC mode. Never did I switch over to transparency mode during this test. That’s a long time and far exceeds Apple’s 8 hour battery claim.

Transparency mode pushes that even further. I’m effectively able to use the AirPods Pro 3 all day in transparency mode and not have to worry about them dying.

The only real downside to battery life is with the charging case. That goes from 30 to 24 hours and all that really means is that I’m charging the case more frequently. That’s a bummer as the case this generation got slightly, but not noticeably bigger in every dimension.

Conclusion

AirPods Pro 3 weren’t a home run as I and probably many others were expecting. Beyond tonal balance, the AirPods Pro 3 are a substantial improvement in the sound quality department. That’s a big fucking one, though. Combine that with the slightly less natural sounding transparency mode and I’m not quite sure how to feel.

The problem with the AirPods Pro 3’s tonal balance is that Apple swung too much into the V-shaped sound signature. The AirPods Pro 2 were great because while not completely neutral, there was only a slight bass boost and were a bit dark in tone. That was perfectly fine and inoffensive. Especially when you were in a loud environment, the extra bass helped.

With the AirPods Pro 3, there’s too much bass to the point where in those same loud environments, there’s still too much bass. The treble? I hate to say it, but I’m gonna have to give Apple some leeway here. We as humans are terrible at hearing the upper frequencies. We’re all over the map. And that’s not even considering hearing loss. Humans are just bad at hearing terrible consistently.

To me, there’s a slight harshness to the treble that wasn’t present in AirPods Pro 2. But for others, you might not hear the harshness on the AirPods Pro 3, but may hear it on the older 2s.

With all that said, sound is hugely personal and varied. That’s why EQ is a thing. I’m beating the dead horse again here, but the entire AirPods lineup could benefit from some sort of EQ customizability. Again, that’s a huge compliment as every other part of the sound is a notable upgrade.

Apple’s adaptive EQ is already great at ensuring a consistent sound across most, if not all, ear shapes. Apple also applies some level of the Equal Loudness curve where the bass and treble are boosted at lower volumes for a more consistent sound.

I’m not asking for a parametric EQ, that’s never coming to AirPods, I know this already (although it would be very cool). But can we at least have what Sonos has and have a generic "bass" and "treble" slider? That would, at the very least, solve for AirPods Pro 3 in my book. Because the midrange on these earbuds is perfect. Just let me turn down bass and treble a smidge.

Beyond sound quality, the ANC and battery life improvements are excellent. Comfort and fit took a few days to adjust, but they’re equal if not better than the outgoing generation. AirPods Pro 3 very obviously block out more sound than the 2s and last substantially longer as well.

To say I’m disappointed is an understatement. I use my AirPods Pro 2 everyday for at least several hours a day. They are part of my every day carry. For now, I don’t think those will be replaced by the AirPods Pro 3 or any other earbuds, for that matter. I’ll happily continue using my AirPods Pro 2 until maybe AirPods Pro 4 or some other earbuds that catch my attention appear.

Also, one last note: the clank for the charging case is substantially better with AirPods Pro 2 vs AirPods Pro 3. The 3s have a higher pitched, cheaper sound.

I’ve been wanting to do this for a very long time. I’ve been an AirPods owner since the very first set back in 2016. I’m a tech enthusiast as much as I am a music junkie. The best thing about owning the first two generations of AirPods is that I regularly called them my, "podcasts, phone calls, and audiobooks" headphones.

At that point, I was still using wired over-ear headphones for serious listening. In hindsight, I was fighting the inevitable. The wireless future was coming and the longer I fought it, the more cumbersome it was going to be.

Anyways, skip a few years and I eventually moved onto the first generation AirPods Pro. I loved those, but they had a permanent hardware failure that meant I was replacing them at least once a year with how much I was using them. (See: repair program for AirPods Pro 1st generation.)

You bet your butt that I replaced them with AirPods Pro 2 as soon as those were released. And that’s where we stand today. Other than switching from the lightning variation to the updated USB-C model (ugh), AirPods Pro 2 have been my daily driver for a few years now.

So, how do I like them?

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The Original Promise

Better noise cancelling and proper volume controls on the stems. That’s what sold me. It sounds silly today, but before AirPods Pro 2, Apple’s AirPods line never featured a way to control the volume on the buds themselves. You always had to control it via your Apple Watch, iPhone, Mac, Apple TV, etc. Being able to control volume by just using the stems was huge at the time for AirPods users.

Better noise cancellation is always appreciated. I never felt like AirPods Pro 1’s active noise cancellation (ANC) was bad. But over-ear headphones were always a notable step up. With the 2nd gen AirPods Pro, that’s changed. Now, when I want really good ANC, I always pick up my AirPods. It’s not even a question and I don’t really have the desire to find over-ear headphones with great ANC anymore. You can’t beat the portability of AirPods and convenience of AirPods.

While I wouldn’t classify the AirPods Pro 2 as having great sound quality, it’s pretty good. You’re still beholden to AAC Bluetooth compression and all of its quirks. That includes a relatively small soundstage and pretty average detail retrieval.

The good news is that the frequency response is pretty consistent and neutral. That means they at least sound good enough in a pinch. And honestly, that’s the best way to describe it. With the standard non-Pro AirPods, I never wanted to listen to music on them at any cost. With the AirPods Pro (both generations) I’m happy to report that I’ll listen to music with them if I don’t have anything else with me. I’ve tried standard AirPods and to me, it hasn’t crossed that threshold yet.

The Updates

You should never buy a product based on future promises. I certainly didn’t. But AirPods Pro 2 seems to be a product that unexpectedly keeps getting better with time.

I understand it’s a super stupid thing to do, but the only reason I purchased AirPods Pro 2 was to solve AirPods Pro 1’s hardware issue. If it did that, I was happy.

Conversation Awareness and Adaptive Transparency are what keep me locked in nowadays. Those both came a year or two after AirPods Pro 2 were initially released. Neither are inherently unique and other ANC earbuds have them. But the implementation details is why I love my AirPods.

I’d say the two work best together. Conversation Awareness allows me to just start talking. It’ll lower the volume of what I’m playing, and kick on transparency mode. However in this case, it’ll kick into Adaptive Transparency. And when I’m done speaking, it’ll wait a few seconds and kick back into ANC.

Adaptive Transparency does wonders for me as an auDHD person. It lets me hear the important stuff while simultaneously still suppressing noises such as engines, fans, etc. This feature got even better with iOS 18 as you’re now able to adjust how much noise you want. I find the default behavior works best for me. It sounds most natural to my ears.

As an auDHD person, Adaptive Transparency was an absolute game changer for me. I’m able to navigate the world without constantly feeling overwhelmed. I’m able to keep a conversation with people in public while still feeling comfortable.

And most recently, Apple added the ability to do a hearing test and AirPods Pro 2 are now FDA-approved to be used as hearing aids. I might not need these features, but I will never be against companies making their products more accessible.

The last thing I want to touch on—and it’s last because it applies to the smallest number of people—is official support for Apple Vision Pro. It’s nice having everything integrated. I’m not gonna pretend like lossless audio on AirPods Pro is a game changer, it’s not. But having access to low-latency, spatial audio on such a device is essential. The last thing you need is to get motion sick because the audio is delayed from what you’re seeing.

Conclusion

Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be falling off of the AirPods Pro train any time soon. I love how the Pros sound and the earbuds work well both within and outside of the not-really-a-secret ecosystem. The walls are high, but for AirPods, they still function exceptionally well beyond the garden.

It checks every box I’ve been wanting. It’s comfortable, I can wear them for long stretches of time, I can charge the case with the same charger as my iPhone or Apple Watch, and they automatically pair to all of my devices and I can control them from the buds themselves without having to reach for my phone for playback or volume controls.

I basically use them everyday. It helps me stay focused at my desk, writing. And out and about? It helps me manage the environment around me. I charge the case every 3-4 days, if you want an idea of how much I use them. The case is supposed to get me 24 hours. And the AirPods on a full charge give you 6 hours of use, totaling 30 hours total.

The upgrade from AirPods Pro 1 to AirPods Pro 2 was pretty straightforward for me. But will I upgrade from AirPods Pro 2 to AirPods Pro 3 (whenever that releases)? I’m not sure. The 2nd gen AirPods Pro are just that good.

Y’all already know I loathe music streaming services. On one hand, most of them deliver more music than you could ever listen to. Sure the libraries differ from service to service but most of them now claim over 100 million tracks.

So how do they differentiate? In features, of course. And that’s where things tend to fall apart. Some offer everything but the kitchen sink, but do it poorly. At the same time, others omit features in order to make their current feature set super reliable.

But overall, they’re all effectively borrowing features from one another with the odd feature here and there. In this story, I wanted to walk through what I think are the unique features of some services and maybe why some of them shouldn’t actually exist.

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Spotify

Of course, the big one people like to point out is Spotify Connect. Which? Completely fair. Spotify Connect is great and I don’t blame anyone for staying with Spotify for that reason.

But I actually think the biggest bonus of Spotify is its size, dominance, and scale. Spotify can afford to be missing features because they have the catalog to back it up. You’ll find very little that’s not on Spotify that’s available on other services (of course, omitting platform specific tracks and albums).

Spotify can be half a decade late to lossless audio and not offer Spatial Audio/Dolby Atmos and most of its users don’t care. Spotify can morph its music streaming app into a podcast player and add audiobooks and users don’t care.

Spotify Connect, combined with its social features is what makes people stay with the platform. Its playlist algorithm is pretty decent, though some people swear by it. Personally, I don’t really care for it. The Spotify app is quick and it’s effectively available anywhere you can play music. For the most part, if it can make a sound, it can play Spotify.

I think Spotify’s biggest issue is that it has diverted itself away from music. The Spotify app combines podcasts and audiobooks all into one. If that’s something you’re looking for, great. I’m not. It’s ultimately why I don’t really want to use the service anymore. There’s too much going on. I wish there was a way to disable podcasts and audiobooks. Or at the very least, Spotify should release a separate app for people who just want music.

And that last one hurts the most when you consider the recent price hikes from Spotify. It seems as though the company will do anything but improve the core sound quality, which is now being lapped by literally everyone else. I’m not talking codecs or bitrate. Spotify subjectively sounds worse than services such as YouTube Music or Apple Music (set to High Quality).

Apple Music

I don’t want to beat an already dead horse. But the obvious thing is if you’re in the Apple ecosystem, Apple Music is probably your best choice. But that’s not the only reason to pick Apple Music.

I’d argue Apple Music has its quirks but is overall the most well-rounded service out there. But those quirks I mentioned? If those bother you at all, it will be the bane of your existence and will be dealbreakers.

Apple Music brought lossless audio and Dolby Atmos/Spatial Audio to the mainstream. It’s also ad-free (but there’s no free tier) and has best-in-class beat-by-beat lyrics and an unmatched catalog of animated artwork. Similar to Spotify, Apple Music’s catalog is large and vast. It practically has anything you’d ever want to listen to.

For anything that isn’t in the Apple Music catalog? You’re welcome to upload your own local files. Apple will take those files and try and match them with its own catalog. If not, you get a "high quality" 256 kbps copy of it. And unlike Spotify, these local files sync to the cloud and are available on any device that runs the Apple Music app.

The service’s playlists are relatively good, and its radio stations are very good in my opinion. I’ve discovered a lot through Apple Music’s Discovery Radio. Of course, you can’t forget music videos and Apple’s generally pretty solid library management system.

If you’re a serious music listener, Apple Music and Spotify are generally the only two guaranteed services to get pre-save/add. This applies both when an artist posts a link and when you go searching for an upcoming release. Most other services just post singles until the album’s official release date.

I think the main problem with Apple Music is its platform availability and the quality of its apps on desktop. Unlike Spotify, Apple Music isn’t available quite everywhere. Just on the big platforms. If you’re a non-Apple device user, you can find Apple Music on Windows, Android, PS5, and a few smart speakers. But that’s about it. Otherwise, you’re stuck using a pretty sub-par web experience. I have a whole story on my adventures of Apple Music you can find here. It’s worth a read if you’ve only ever used Apple Music as your music platform.

YouTube Music

Of all the services, I actually think YouTube Music is the most unique. It’s the only music service that builds in a community-driven music service of sorts. In addition to the typical library you can find on most other services, YouTube Music ties in... well... YouTube. Any remixes or unofficial edits are available at your fingertips.

Admittedly, I haven’t used YouTube Music for any expanded amount of time. But everyone I know who uses the service is generally very happy with almost no downsides. The only real party pooper I’ve heard was when the service was originally Google Play Music and the transition into the YouTube branding was quite frustrating.

And that’s it, I think. Its biggest party trick is being tied to the YouTube branding. Although, that’s not a bad thing. That opens up the door for a significantly larger music library if you don’t want to go through the guesswork of having to rip YouTube videos, convert them to audio, and add them to your library on practically any other service. With YouTube Music, it’s right there.

Deezer

Deezer is a weird one. I know very few people who have it. In my personal opinion, I think Deezer is lost. It has no idea who it’s marketing to. And that’s very apparent when you stop and think, "Who do I know that uses Deezer?"

The service is still offering the very dated 360 Reality Audio platform (practically any modern service offers Dolby Atmos or both). Very few devices can properly decode 360 Reality Audio. It’s time to move on and start incorporating Dolby Atmos at this point.

Deezer offers CD quality lossless but nothing beyond. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it means it won’t attract a lot of the audiophile crowd (yours truly included), to the platform. Those who arguably actually care about sound quality to that degree.

Similar to Apple Music, Deezer lets you upload local files to your library. However, you have to convert them all to the MP3 format. Apple’s implementation is a bit limited as well (needs to be converted to ALAC or AIFF for lossless), but it’s insane that Deezer forces you to use MP3 and no other format.

I think the only reason you’d use Deezer is if it was cheaper than most other services for you. I just don’t see the appeal for Deezer. And I ran the service for a few months straight in the past.

Amazon Music

In my head, Amazon Music almost falls in the same boat as Deezer. Most people I know who have Amazon Music have it because of their Amazon Prime membership.

I tried Amazon Music not too long ago thanks to Amazon’s constant free trial promos and I’m shocked at how poor the app experience still continues to be.

It’s one of those things where I suppose if you don’t spend a whole lot of time in the app and you rely on Alexa to control the service, it’s fine. But I’m not too keen on relying on a voice assistant for my music streaming service.

Plus, Amazon Music is pretty locked down when it comes to trying to import or export your playlists and library. Even Apple Music is better here and allows for library portability. Services such as Soundiiz have a hard time working with Amazon Music. And to take it a step further, Amazon Music doesn’t really integrate with anyone else either. It really is a closed ecosystem.

That said, Amazon Music’s catalog is large thanks to the decades the company has with its Amazon digital music store. Amazon Music catalog is on Spotify/Apple Music’s level. You’ll be hard pressed to not find what you’re looking for here.

The one saving grace that used to make Amazon Music pretty decent is its digital music locker, aka a way to store your local files and integrate them with your library. That’s been gone for about five years now.

So unless you’re in the Amazon ecosystem, I think it’s safe to say you should skip it and use something else.

Tidal

Y’all already know Tidal is my choice for music streaming, so I’ll try my best to stay level headed here.

Tidal’s biggest upside is that it tries to be Spotify. Tidal Connect is solid, but not as good as Spotify Connect. Tidal supports animated artwork, lyrics, and music videos. The experience for those is decent and I’d love for Tidal to really focus on making its existing feature set across the board great.

Its app situation isn’t great. Its core apps are pretty great (phones, tablets, desktop computers), but otherwise, the rest seem to effectively be abandoned. The concept for Tidal’s TV app is neat — music videos first, but oftentimes I just want to play my music library and Tidal makes it hard to do so on TV.

I think Tidal’s saving grace is its third-party integrations. Yes, it works with Roon. Which, for me means I almost never actually launch Tidal’s first-party app (for better or for worse). Tidal’s integration with Plex and Plexamp is pretty solid too if you’re in that ecosystem.

And as I mentioned before, Tidal Connect isn’t as good as Spotify. But that’s in the sense of control across devices. Tidal Connect works with most music streamers, connected-DACs, and receivers. It still has some work to do in terms of more modern "smart" devices such as speakers, TVs, watches, etc. But Tidal’s core focus is still on the audiophile, and I think that’s great.

It’s biggest pitfall? The music catalog. It’s actually not too terrible, but it’s notably smaller than Spotify/Apple Music/Amazon Music/YouTube Music. It’s getting better by the day, but there are still at least a few hundred tracks I’ve had to import into my Roon local library due to its unavailability on Tidal.

That being said, unless you care for third-party integrations or audiophile-specific features, Tidal is probably a skip. You’re better off using Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube Music.

Qobuz

The only reason I mention Qobuz here is because it’s the de-facto audiophile’s choice for music streamers nowadays. It’s typically seen as an alternative to Tidal. But in my personal opinion, unless you’re into jazz or classical music, it’s hard to recommend.

I used Qobuz in conjunction with Roon and Tidal up until recently. I love the sound quality of Qobuz. I love the general layout of Qobuz, but the actual experience of using the Qobuz app is pretty terrible. The apps are often buggy and are missing key features for a modern music application.

It ties in and integrates with Roon. But I don’t think Qobuz is worth it for the vast majority of people. Of all the music streaming services mentioned, Qobuz has the smallest catalog by far. Oftentimes, full albums by mainstream artists are just missing on Qobuz. And in my experience, there’s usually no rhyme or reason to it. Usually, Qobuz has most albums available but has a gap from an artist or band during a certain date range. And that date range isn’t consistent across other bands or artists.

It’s just a mess over there. You might want to run a trial just to hear its better sound quality. But I’d wager most people probably won’t stick around due to its lackluster apps (which currently are only phones, tablets, and computers but nothing else). Qobuz Connect is coming, but not here yet.

As much as I have been rooting for Qobuz for the last few years, I think they’re way too far behind now both in-app features and library size.

The Rest (Conclusion)

And then there’s the rest. I’m only one person, but in my opinion, the rest that aren’t named aren’t worth looking at, at all. There’s nothing that sets them apart from the ones I’ve mentioned in this piece.

I think there’s a lot more to do to innovate in the music streaming space. Apps need to continue to get better and it’s very obvious that in my eyes, there’s not one "perfect" music platform out there. They all have their faults and quirks—whether that’s in features or library size.

Even for myself, I can’t say for sure that I’ll be sticking to my current setup for the next five or even 10 years. The landscape is constantly changing and hopefully, innovation continues.

For now, my personal choice is Tidal, Roon, and my local library. As painful as it is to say, I’m rooting for either Spotify, Apple, or YouTube to make their experiences better for audiophiles so I can switch to them.

While I hate to admit it, music streaming services are sort of a popularity contest and most artists only really focus on the bigger services with exclusive releases and/or exclusive content for those platforms. Those sometimes trickle down to services such as Tidal, but it’s pretty rare to see.

I genuinely thought I’d need more time to really settle in with the Sonos Ace headphones but it turns out its biggest flaw made me not want to really use them anymore (more on that later, obviously).

Which sucks because the Sonos Ace was a set of headphones I was really looking forward to getting my hands on. I’ve been a proud and happy owner of the Sonos Arc soundbar, paired with the Sonos Sub and a pair of Sonos Era 300s for a number of years now. It’s probably the best soundbar out there sans the Nakamichi Dragon. The Arc is the best compromise between great sound and tech features.

Regrettably, I think the Sonos Ace should be avoided, despite its price tag and feature set. They took a jab at it and I don’t think it played out like the company hoped.

Not much has changed since I wrote my first impression. So to avoid rehashing the same points, you can read that here.

So without further ado, let’s dive into my review of the Sonos Ace headphones.

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Sound Quality

I hate to start with the negatives but this one is so big that I think it warrants going first.

Its biggest pitfall is its sound quality and lack of sound customization. Subjectively the Ace has a great soundstage but the longer I listened to the headphones, the more I realized how poor the detail retrieval actually is. Pile on top of the fact that the frequency response isn’t tuned to be fun (V-shaped) or neutral and there’s no real way to get it to sound like either without third-party hacks.

For my frequency response nerds out there (I’m one of y’all too): The bass has a notable sub-bass bump and upper-bass bump, leaving the mid-bass suppressed. There’s a good amount of upper-bass to lower-mid bleed that leads into a relatively recessed midrange entirely. In terms of treble, the ear gain region (lower treble) seems to be missing entirely, while the 7-8K region is pushed forward making vocals and things such as hi-hats sound harsh and sharp.

Meanwhile, the Sonos app only has two EQ options: a "Bass" and a "Treble" slider. So no matter what you do, you can’t tame that treble peak nor can you flatten out the bass. Bass isn’t too bad as some may actually prefer the bass response. At the end of the day, a recessed mid-bass isn’t that big of a deal for most. But the treble peak is something that’ll fatigue most people’s ears within an hour or so of listening. You can "solve" this by cranking down the treble, but then you get an even darker headphone with even less detail.

I’ve tried pulling the Ace into something like Roon with a proper parametric equalizer (PEQ) and trying to flatten out the curve does not work. The Ace’s drivers can’t deliver the detail in the top end. If anything, doing so narrows the soundstage and crushes micro details even further. With certain tracks, I was able to get the Ace to distort trying to add ear gain back into the mix.

And to be fair, I understand that active noise cancellation and sound quality don’t typically go hand-in-hand. But the fact that all of the other top players flat out sound better than the Sonos Ace by a sizable margin is sad to see, especially at its MSRP. Similar to how you’d expect Apple to nail the technology aspect (they did) in their headphones, I was hoping Sonos would nail sound quality.

The one upside is that the extra bass boost works really well for movies and TV shows. The treble peak is still annoying for any sort of dialogue. This is where the Ace absolutely shine. It works best when paired with the Sonos Arc for lossless audio and low latency. But it’s great even if you pair it to your phone or computer over Bluetooth. In that specific case, I could see carrying the Sonos Ace for travel.

(Un)fortunately, Everything Else Is Great

Sound quality is definitely the elephant in the room. It sucks because I practically love everything else about the Ace. As I mentioned in my first impression, I find the content key brilliant, the buttons for ANC/Awareness and on/off are tactile and easy to press and discern from one another. My only small gripe is that the press and hold to de/activate TV audio swap is about a beat too slow.

But what hurts the most is the Ace is so freaking comfortable. I can’t get over how comfy they are. I was able to wear them for 10 hours straight with no issue. I could easily see myself wearing the Ace for 15+ hour flights. I like that the ear pads are replaceable. That’s always a win in my book as those are typically the first thing that needs replacing when it comes to headphones. Battery life has been great as well, averaging 30 hours on a single charge. I’m charging the headphones about once a week.

In my testing in loud environments, the Ace’s microphone quality while on a call is pretty good. It’s still a Bluetooth headphone so you still get some compression but the other person can hear you regardless of how loud the environment is. It’s good enough for other people to hear you, but it’s still nowhere near wired microphone quality.

Noise cancelling is top tier. Not quite as good as the Bose QC Ultra, but better than the Sony XM5 and definitely better than the AirPods Max. Awareness/Transparency is where the Ace truly shines, only bested by the AirPods Max. As I mentioned in my first impression, I typically don’t use transparency mode because it’s trash on most headphones. The Ace is one of the few exceptions. With only a small bit of treble peak (likely due to the normal treble peak in the EQ), the transparency mode is one of the best I’ve ever heard. I can carry full conversations with the Sonos Ace on my head. Likewise, I actually enjoy walking around the city with the Ace’s transparency mode enabled.

The only real complaint I have about the Sonos Ace’s transparency mode is that I’ve gotten used to adaptive transparency with other headphones where they’ll mix ANC in with transparency so you can still hear what’s important around you while still blocking things out like engine noises or jackhammers. I wish the Ace had an adaptive mode or a way to tweak how much noise you want to let in with its transparency mode. On an airplane, I don’t need to hear its engine noise but want to hear announcements and flight attendants. But if you’ve never experienced adaptive transparency, the Ace is perfectly usable.

Design and looks are subjective but I’ve been a really big fan of how the Ace looks. I have them in the soft white colorway and it looks fantastic. The headband and ear pads are made of vegan leather with a stainless steel yoke. Unlike AirPods Max which uses aluminum ear cups, the Ace sub its cups for plastic. I think that’s perfectly acceptable to reduce weight. It’s been well documented that the AirPods Max are some of the heaviest noise cancelling headphones on the market. Again, the Ace is insanely comfortable.

Conclusion

The Sonos Ace was a set of headphones I came in hoping I’d love by the end of it. Unfortunately, unless you exclusively use the Ace for movies and TV, I can’t reasonably recommend them. You can get better noise cancelling for cheaper. And while sound quality is subjective, I can’t in good faith say that the Sonos Ace sound good. They don’t.

And it really hurts for me to say. Because practically everything else about the product is fantastic. But to repeat it one last time—that just sucks. Because even if I could apply a PEQ through Roon, that doesn’t carry through to other applications. If could use SoundSource on my Mac, but that’s the same problem. It only applies to my Mac. Sonos has its own basic EQ in their app that applies to the headphones directly but that is nowhere near nuanced enough to solve for the Ace’s glaring frequency response issues.

My only other small complaint is the travel case. While thin, the zipper tends to get stuck on itself, requiring a few minutes of fiddling to get the zipper out of the inside of the case. And it requires you to push the headband all the way down. Not a huge deal as you can always buy a different case (as I did) and that’s an easy solution.

Sonos has no influence on what I’ve written in this review. However, if the next iteration of the Ace, whatever it may be called, can really focus on improving sound quality and nothing else, I’d love to give that variant a shot. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve genuinely been disappointed in a product.

But for now, I’m returning the Sonos Ace and my search continues for a great sounding set of headphones with great active noise cancellation. To this day, none of them really wow me. Either I get really good sound quality but ANC that’s effectively non-existent, or really great ANC but sound quality of a $5 tin can.

Let me start by addressing the elephant in the room. The internet seems to be hating on the Sonos Ace hard as it seems to have disappointed many Sonos owners. Rightfully so. Sonos is known for its Wi-Fi enabled speakers. Being able to hot swap what you were playing on your soundbar to your headphones is a huge part of the experience. Don’t get me wrong—I was also hoping for a Wi-Fi enabled headphone from Sonos that let you stream directly from the web, bypassing any sort of Bluetooth handshake or compression.

Alas, that’s not what we got. While it’s much too early to review the product, I think it’s only right to give you my initial thoughts on the product as it’s a new product category from Sonos. Are the Ace enough to differentiate itself from the countless other high-end ANC headphones? Let’s check them out together.

Here are my first impressions of the Sonos Ace headphones, the company’s first foray into headphones of any kind.

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Unboxing and Setting Up the Headphones

I don’t usually talk about unboxing experiences but would like to note that the Sonos Ace offers a pleasant unboxing experience. All of the packaging is using what I assume is recycled materials.

I will say, however, that the carrying case is terrible. It looks and feels nice. But the zipper gets stuck within the case more times than not. And as a big head headphone person, having to fully retract the headband every time I need to put the Ace back in the case is an epic fail. I’ll continue to use my Waterfield headphone case, which were originally designed for Apple’s AirPods Max, but have been carrying my Focal Bathys for the better part of a year.

Okay. Moving on to setup. It wouldn’t be 2024 if it didn’t mean unboxing a set of headphones, pairing them to your phone, opening a companion app, and then getting immediately hit with a firmware update. So that’s what I spent doing for the first 15-20 minutes after unboxing. Sitting there waiting for a firmware update.

There have been a plethora of opinions written on the internet about the revamped Sonos app, so I won’t bore you here. Yes, it’s that bad. Yes, Sonos is aware of the issues. And yes, it shouldn’t have shipped in its current shape.

After the update was complete, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by how flexible the settings are. You can toggle Noise Control, Head Tracking, and Wear Detection. With that last one, you can even toggle on a feature that automatically picks up a phone call when you put the Ace on and connect over Bluetooth. Neat.

One toggle I wish more Bluetooth headphone manufacturers would add is Multipoint. By default, it’s off but you can turn it on and have the headphones connect to more than one device at a time. I personally prefer to have this feature and have near-instant switching between devices. And the Ace does just that. Go into your device’s Bluetooth settings, tap connect, and it’ll instantly pair to it and disconnect from the other device.

Initial Sound Impressions

But of course, I’m an audio blog so my main focus is sound quality. That also means that since these are a Bluetooth headphone with optional USB audio, I went straight to USB audio.

Disappointingly, the first thing I noticed was how low the USB audio volume was. I plugged the Ace into my Mac via USB-C and fired up Roon. I’m at 68% for my comfortable listening volume. I tried the headphones briefly over Bluetooth and got much better volume there (around 45-50%). Hopefully, Sonos can fix this with a firmware update.

Likewise, the USB audio feature seems like a complete afterthought from Sonos. No matter if I was plugged into my iPhone or Mac, the Ace seems to only play at one sample rate and bit-depth—16-bit, 48 kHz. If you’re technically minded, you know that almost nothing is recorded in that combination. Typically anything above CD quality (16-bit, 44.1 kHz) is 24-bit. While that’s mildly frustrating (I was hoping to get 16- and 24-bit, up to 48k. Not only 16-bit, 48k), the Ace still sounds a step better in wired mode. The soundstage opens up a smidge and detail retrieval takes a leap.

But outside of those two nitpicks, my initial subjective opinion is that the Sonos Ace has a warm sound signature. The bass is detailed, fast, and punchy (though, I’d much prefer bass with more slam than punch). The midrange is pretty good here as well. Guitars and male vocals come through clear and balanced. Though, there’s a dip probably around the 1-2K range, burying things like female vocals at times. The treble is a bit messy with some peaks. In my subjective opinion, there’s probably a peak around 6-8k, making some hi-hats sound super metallic-y, S’s and T’s sound super sharp, and some snare drums come through above the mix. This will be noticeable if you’re a detail oriented listener and may be a dealbreaker for some.

That peak makes sense as Sonos is traditionally a home theater brand. A peak in those ranges on a soundbar or home theater setup gives you a sense of spaciousness and height. But when the speaker—so to speak—is inches from your ear, it presents some issues.

The Sonos app’s EQ leaves a lot to be desired with only a bass, treble, and balance slider. This setup is fine if the headphones have a flat frequency across the board, even if the bass and treble are elevated. I’ll have to spend some time tweaking these settings and see if that is the case. A 5-band EQ would be nice, but these EQ settings are carried over from the company’s soundbars so that’s unlikely. But if you’re like me and use Roon, you should be able to EQ these issues away pretty easily. (And EQ is fine since the Sonos Ace has an onboard DAC/amp regardless of what mode you’re in.)

Tonality aside, the Ace’s dynamic range is abysmal, but that’s to be expected with noise cancelling headphones. You can’t (at least not yet) have great dynamic range while also pumping heaps of anti-noise to accommodate active noise cancellation. It’s to hard discern the quietest instruments from the loudest. Despite that, the detail retrieval is great with the Ace. It has a pretty decent soundstage as well, but not as wide as my Focal Bathys. The Ace’s stage remains mostly in your head, but that’s to be expected for a closed-back headphone.

In my testing, there’s no notable sound leakage. Even at higher volumes and in quiet environments I wasn’t able to get the headphones to leak unless I turned the volume up to unreasonable levels. That’s great, especially for travel. The last thing you want to do is crank the volume on the plane and the next three passengers are able to hear what you’re listening to.

The headlining feature of the Sonos Ace is its ability to quickly connect to your Sonos Arc soundbar and play its audio through your headphones. This feature works great. Although, I’d say the press and hold to connect is slightly too long. Every single time I’ve initiated the feature, I feel like I’m pressing the content key one second too long, questioning if the feature is going to actually work.

But beyond that, it works as expected. As other reviewers have noted the latency is imperceptible and is very low. I never had an issue with it at all. I played an episode of After Midnight and a few episodes of Castle Rock on my Apple TV and it worked great. Whenever I hit pause on the remote, the audio paused instantly. Then I started playing Splatoon 3 on my Nintendo Switch, docked to the TV. Same experience here. No perceptible lag. The Ace played it like a champ.

If this is something you desire, Sonos is practically the only company that makes the integration this seamless. It works with any audio coming through your Sonos Arc.

While you should never purchase a product based on future promises, Sonos says that the Audio Swap feature will be coming to the company’s other soundbars in a future software update.

Lastly, Atmos content with head tracking. I’ve always thought head tracking was a gimmicky feature but it works as well as you’d expect here—if you’re into that type of thing. The tracking works great and there’s no perceptible lag when turning your head.

Without head tracking, Atmos content plays super well here. I played the Atmos mix of Down Bad by Taylor Swift and Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter on Tidal and could instantly hear the soundstage get wider compared to the standard stereo mix. I also played the latest episode of Acapulco and the Atmos experience was solid. It’s not as good as playing Atmos content over a home theater setup, obviously, but for a headphone experience, it’s right up there with most other headphones that offer it.

Active Noise Cancelling & Awareness Mode

While the Sonos Ace is the company’s first entry into not only headphones, but Bluetooth noise cancelling headphones, the ANC and awareness (I’ll call it transparency mode from this point forward) is excellent and competes with the top players.

With no audio playing, the Sonos Ace does an excellent job blocking out bass and lower midrange frequencies. I genuinely can’t hear a thing. Voices are very suppressed but do come in, albeit very quietly.

With audio playing, you won’t hear a thing. Even at low volumes, it’s hard to hear pretty much anything. I haven’t been able to travel with these yet, but have tested the scenario by blasting airplane engine noises through my home speakers and the amount of noise reduced is right up there with the Sony WH-1000XM5, Bose QuietComfort Ultra, and Apple AirPods Max. All of these headphones are neck-on-neck in terms of ANC performance.

Awareness/transparency mode is a sore spot for me. Practically anything other than AirPods (any generation and model) aren’t worth talking about. With anything but—I’d rather remove my headphones to hear the outside world.

I wouldn’t say the Sonos Ace are on AirPods level, but it’s very close. There are still some issues with how it handles higher pitched noises such as fans or air conditioners as those have a small amount of digital artifacting (and may be related to the treble peak around 6-8k). Otherwise, it’s spot on.

Things that are far away sound far away and things that are nearby are placed correctly. I’m able to hear my own voice and others at normal speaking volumes.

Hardware

I love almost everything about the hardware. The telescoping yoke, physical buttons. and the USB-C charging port being on the correct side of the headphones (left). My favorite hardware feature? Physical media controls. It’s no secret that I absolutely hate touch controls for headphones (mostly looking at you Sony!).

I’ve found Sonos’ content key to be really intuitive. Flick up for volume up, flick down for volume down, and the standard click gestures for play/pause/skip/reverse. It’s not flimsy like most other headphones that have physical buttons and is super tactile and responsive. I love that the content key, noise cancellation button, and power buttons are all different shapes and sizes. It makes it easy to feel for the correct button. Although, I would swap the power and ANC/transparency mode buttons. I’m still getting tripped up on which one is which.

Another point for the Ace is that the volume is smooth. Outside of AirPods, almost every other pair of Bluetooth headphones adjusts volume in steps. So 41-45 is one step, and 46-50 is another step, for example. Not with Sonos Ace, at least from what I can tell. Micro adjustments actually make a difference here. Also, holding the content key up or down continuously raises or lowers the volume respectively. No more needing to spam the volume up or down buttons (or in some cases, swipe until your finger falls off to get to the right volume).

The ear cushions are made of a vegan leather material and are magnetic and replaceable. I love that as those are usually the first things to go on headphones. Similarly, the headband is made of a similar vegan leather material with ample cushioning. It’s way too early to tell how comfortable the headphones are over long periods, but using them preliminarily for the last few days, it’s been great. As someone with big ears, I wish the ear pads were slightly deeper. Thankfully the cushions are magnetic and replaceable so let’s hope third-parties hop on the Ace and offer different cushion types.

What’s Missing?

Not much, to be completely honest. The Sonos community seems to be up and arms about the Sonos app refresh and by extension, the Sonos Ace headphones. But I’m relatively happy with the Ace so far.

While the Sonos Ace are great at being a Bluetooth headphone with one headlining Sonos integration feature, it leaves a lot to be desired. For many (including myself), we were hoping that we’d get Wi-Fi enabled headphones from Sonos. A set of headphones that can connect directly to the internet and stream directly to the headphones.

This did not happen. While the TV audio swap feature does use Wi-Fi, it creates a peer-to-peer connection with your Sonos ARC and the soundbar does all the heavy lifting. It’s the least Sonos, Sonos product to date. It’s controlled within the Sonos app but doesn’t really integrate with its other products beyond TV audio swap.

On that topic, I’d love to also see the ability to use the Ace’s built-in microphones while in TV audio swap. Say, for when you’re playing a game on your gaming console and want to use voice chat at the same time. That’s not currently possible.

I’d also love to see an updated case where the zipper doesn’t get caught on itself half of the time. And maybe a case that lets you put the headphones in with the headband fully extended. But that’s unlikely to come until a second generation (if ever).

Conclusion

It’s early, so I can’t come to a definitive conclusion just yet (I’ve only had the headphones for three days at the time of writing). But I do think the Sonos Ace are a solid set of headphones with one big caveat. It depends on what you’re looking for, of course.

If you’re looking for simple travel headphones with great noise cancellation and nothing else, the Sonos Ace aren’t for you. Consider the Sony XM5s or Bose QC Ultra. Those are substantially cheaper and offer exactly that experience. Plus, those have more extensive EQ options.

The Sonos Ace are hard to recommend. Not just because of price, but because they do everything right except for what you’d buy headphones for—sound quality. Comfort, design, TV audio swap, ANC, and transparency modes are done really well with the Ace. But the messy upper midrange and treble mean that these headphones just sound weird—not boring, stale or anything, just weird. The overly simplistic EQ settings means that you can’t really solve it either without outside tools that only apply to certain devices or applications.

The reality is we’ll see. Again, it’s too early to tell. If firmware updates come to solve some of the sound quality issues—or if Sonos releases a more comprehensive EQ in the app, they might be worth it then. But for now, I think the Sonos Ace are a pass. There’s too much "coming soon" and its overall tonality should turn most people away.

Okay, full disclosure—I had a fully written review ready but it didn’t feel right. So this is the alt version.

I wanted to do a one month review of Apple Vision Pro but I felt like it wouldn’t be right to do so without experiencing one of its biggest selling points - traveling. I was able to travel with the Vision Pro this past week and I finally feel I have enough to say about Apple’s first head-mounted display (HMD).

Also, as a person who was diagnosed with autism (and ADHD) within the last year, I think the Vision Pro has helped me in ways I never even imagined when I first picked it up almost six weeks ago.

So without further ado, here’s my long term review of Apple Vision Pro.

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Accessibility

So let’s start there. My disability wasn’t even something that I was thinking about when I picked up my Vision Pro. The first week with the device was an absolute nightmare for me.

As a person with autism (and YMMV of course), I hadn’t really grasped the fact that, unlike most others, I tend to keep my eyes looking forward and tend to move my head when looking at something. Rather than moving my eyes to look at things in my peripheral vision, I tend to move my entire head (post edit: I’m still struggling with this even now—just to a lesser degree).

Thankfully, Apple has thought this through. In the Vision Pro’s accessibility settings, you’re able to change how you navigate the device—eye, hand, head, or finger tracking, for example. I tried head tracking for a few hours and that got bad quick, thanks to the weight of the Vision Pro. I felt the neck strain within the first hour of using the Vision Pro this way.

I’ve also likely spent more time than most re-doing eye tracking. For the next two or three weeks following my first week, I probably ran the eye tracking setup four or five dozen times.

But I think the best descriptor for the Vision Pro for me is that this device is headphones for your eyes. Televisions, movie screens, projectors, etc. are all the equivalent of speakers and home theater setups. It’s a shared experience. Vision Pro is a personal device designed for only one person at a time - similar to headphones.

From a sensory standpoint, the Vision Pro actually helps out quite a bit. Especially now that we’re heading into the sunnier months of the year. Yes, passthrough on the Vision Pro is the best we’ve seen. Yet, it’s still very obvious you’re staring at a display showing cameras. Yes, dynamic range isn’t as good as modern smartphone cameras and it looks like you’re viewing a washed out version of the world. Yet, I’m actually thankful for this because that means I can’t get overloaded by the insanely bright sun or bright house lights. If it’s a bright and sunny day, I can turn on an Environment and sit in Mount Hood at night.

But, despite Apple pushing AR and mixed reality, I find myself using the Vision Pro in what’s traditionally defined as a VR environment more often. The Mount Hood environment is currently my favorite of the bunch and I find myself much more comfortable on the Vision Pro versus my dual Studio Displays at home.

And it’s not like I haven’t used VR headsets before. I’ve used the Meta Quest 2 and PSVR in the past. But I didn’t really find those terribly intuitive for productivity. I’ve always thought of those as gaming headsets (especially the PSVR, obviously).

The Vision Pro also helps with my ADHD as well. Rather than having distractions from the real world, I for once am able to have complete control over my environment. I don’t have much to say in that regard other than it’s great for focus. It forces me to only have what I need around me and strips away anything I don’t. Again, the high-definition replica of Mount Hood works wonders here.

Comfort

I think the biggest concern about Vision Pro I hear from others is weight and comfort. Yes, the Apple Vision Pro is literally like strapping an iPad Pro to your face in terms of weight. Unfortunately, the two head straps that come with the device are both not great.

The Solo Knit Band is the lesser of two evils in that it’s the best looking and more comfortable of the two... if you’re planning to use it for an hour or less. It’s super easy to get on and adjust as needed. But after 45 minutes to an hour, you’ll start to feel the pressure on your head.

The Dual Loop band, at least for me, falls in the "don’t bother" category. I tried it, especially since everyone seems to argue it’s the better band, and almost immediately gave up on it. The top strap is simply way too thin and starts to hurt after about 10 minutes of use.

But fear not, not all is lost. To solve for comfort, I went ahead and bought the SoloTop adapter from Etsy, along with a second Solo Knit band from Apple (size small is recommended for most heads). With this combination, comfort went from a 3 maybe 4 out of 10 at most to an 8 or 9 out of 10. This won’t work for everyone, but this works best for me. Plus, this lets me keep the intuitive fit dial from the solo knit band. It went from an hour max in the Vision Pro to me being able to use it for a full workday (8 hours). With the battery plugged in, of course. The Vision Pro on its own can only get me 3-4 hours max before giving out.

There’s also the Light Seal dilemma. I, unfortunately, wasn’t lucky enough to get the proper light seal on the first try (nor second, third, fourth, or even fifth try). To put it shortly, I spent the first month trying different light seals. Looking back at my order information? I went through seven different light seals before landing on the one I have now - which is perfect. Apple has an online tool you can use to decipher what light seal might be good for you based on a few questions.

Ultimately, though, this Reddit thread helped me decipher Apple’s numbering system and is what helped me figure out what light seal worked best. If you were like me and were struggling to find the right light seal, that guide helped me tremendously. With my current light seal and band combination, I have a near-complete seal. I can ever so slightly see a little gap under my nose, but I’d have to actually look all the way down to see it. It’s outside my peripheral vision. 99% of the time, I’m completely sealed away.

Traveling with Apple Vision Pro

This is the part of my review I had to sit on because... well, I haven’t traveled until very recently. First and foremost, everyone else is right. Make sure you enable Travel Mode on Vision Pro before you actually get on the flight. Otherwise, like me, you’ll be fighting the constant Tracking Failed error and trying to, as quickly as you can, access the control center and activate Travel Mode before the error pops up. (Some people say that Vision Pro asks you to turn on Travel Mode in this scenario, but that was not the case for me.)

Thankfully, once you have it enabled (again, you want to do it before you actually get on the flight), it stays on until you manually turn off the feature.

Unfortunately, with Travel Mode enabled is where I feel the Vision Pro is the most buggy. While watching offline content is fine, you’ll notice that the video window slightly shifts every few seconds. It’s fine if your window is quite large and you’re in an environment. It’s not terribly noticeable there. But when you have your real-world environment dialed in and the video window about a foot in front of you as a tiny window because you’re waiting on the drink cart to show up? It becomes super apparent that testing for travel mode pre-launch was minimal. Hopefully, Apple improves on this as more feedback and more people can freely travel with the Vision Pro, but as of right now (visionOS 1.1), it’s good enough with clear bug fixes that can be made.

Other bugs I noticed include environments not dialing in and out as I turned the digital crown and the visionOS home screen becoming extremely laggy and buggy. I also had a few instances where apps would become unresponsive to hand gestures. The big one, as Apple notes, is that you have to remain stationary. You can’t look out the window. As soon as you look elsewhere, including down, to grab your drink, you get the Trackinng Failed message again. Thankfully, once you look forward again, the error goes away and you can continue where you left off.

Also, don’t bother with Mac Virtual Display in this environment unless your flight has free Wi-Fi. In order for the feature to work in flight, you’ll need to pay for Wi-Fi for both your Vision Pro and your Mac. I actually tried to use the feature at the Denver airport while waiting a few hours for a layover (free Wi-Fi). For whatever reason, it refused to work. That’s after trying to restart both my Mac and Vision Pro and I even tried to connect both to a mobile hotspot. Didn’t work. I kept getting a timed out error. I spent a good 45-90 minutes troubleshooting this and probably looked like a complete psychopath in the making. Did not work.

While Travel Mode in its current state is way better than not having it at all—especially when you’re able to fully immerse yourself in the air—it still has a lot of work to do in terms of stability.

Entertainment, 3D Movies, Immersive Experiences & Audio

Likely the biggest reason most people would consider the Vision Pro is for its entertainment factor. And boy, it is an experience. And that’s coming from someone who has two OLED TVs—a 55-inch 2017 LG C7 and a 65-inch LG CX.

Those TVs are now reserved for group viewing experiences. If I know I’m only going to watch something on my own, the Vision Pro is the first thing I go for now. It’s the best display I have. And that’s only with 2D experiences.

It’s not a hot take by any stretch of the imagination but I’ve never been a fan of 3D movies. Seeing them in theaters was never a great experience for me. But my goodness, 3D movies on Apple Vision Pro are next level. You don’t lose brightness or dynamic range like at the theater. And because AVP has two physical displays, it’s able to output real 3D without any lens or display tricks. The best way I can describe it is things don’t really pop out at you. Rather, your "normal" vision is about as far forward as it’ll go, but things start popping "in" behind it. As opposed to what a lot of us were led to believe when we were younger where you expect things to pop out of the screen.

I watched a few movies on Disney+ in 3D such as Encanto, and Ralph Breaks The Internet. In the former, it felt like a 2D movie with 3D effects sprinkled on top. It wasn’t distracting at all. For the latter, the 3D effect was very much in your face, but not distracting. After a few minutes, my eyes adjusted to the fact that it was seeing 3D, and didn’t really think about it. The end credits for Ralph Breaks The Internet were most notable for that movie. I wouldn’t want to watch a 3D movie any other way ever again.

But something that I absolutely love and would like to see more of is Apple’s immersive video and third-party fully immersive VR experiences. They’re separate tech that aims to deliver a similar experience—a 180-degree immersive experience. Most notably, I really liked the Alicia Keys Rehearsal Room episode on Apple TV+, and the Zara Larsson experience on AmazeVR. Watching those had me clamoring for more content in those formats.

The main difference, of course, is that Apple’s experiences are shot in much higher fidelity. And at least with that particular episode, all of the cameras were stationary. Meanwhile, the AmazeVR experience has you transported into virtual worlds (though, I would kill for “real” live concerts shot in 3D in the future). The fidelity isn’t as high and you can definitely see the lower quality at times, but the movement was smooth and the overall experience was great. It was an enjoyable 20-minute "mini" concert.

My only real complaint about the AmazeVR experience is that it requires you to download the concert in full to play it. And boy does that take quite a while to download. For reference, I have a gigabit wired connection blanketed with Wi-Fi 6E and it took the app nearly half an hour to download the 19GB concert. There’s currently no way to stream it. But outside of the sluggish downloads, if this is the worst AmazeVR is ever gonna be, I’m excited for what’s to come as they build out their content library. It also sucks that, despite the download requirement, the app requires an active network connection.

But the biggest downside for the Vision Pro for entertainment is its audio setup. It’s great that you can pair any Bluetooth headphones to AVP or use the built-in audio pods. And spatial audio on AVP is genuinely great, but you’re still bandwidth limited. There are no physical data ports on the Vision Pro, and there’s no way to AirPlay to other devices (though, that’s still a lossy audio experience). It’s not so much sound quality as much as it is latency. I don’t notice it most of the time, but the intro to Lush Life in the Zara Larsson experience involves her clapping to the beat and that’s the first time I’ve felt an audio/visual disconnect in the Vision Pro while using third-party headphones.

On the topic of headphones, it’s very obvious the Vision Pro was designed with earbuds in mind. Not even just AirPods, but any Bluetooth earbuds. While you can absolutely wear over-ear headphones with Vision Pro, it’s a bit cumbersome. Wearing the Solo Knit band, your over-ear headphones’ ear pads will more than likely sit on top of the adjustment knob. That not only prevents a full seal but makes it incredibly difficult to adjust the fit of the band with headphones on. The seal isn’t that much of a problem with open-back headphones or most closed-back headphones, really. But we’re talking about Vision Pro, so most people will be pairing noise cancelling headphones. Obviously, the seal is very important there otherwise you’ll be hearing the world around you. Similarly, you’ll need to wrap the Vision Pro’s power cable around your ear pads if you want a full seal. You may need to have the ear cups lower on your head than normal to compensate. Or, you let the ear pads sit on the adjustment knob if you’ve dialed in your fit already.

Conclusion

Here comes the hard part. For me, the Vision Pro crosses the, "Is there enough here to use on a daily basis" line. For my use cases, I’m more than happy to strap on Apple’s spatial computer to my face and use it for hours at a time on most days.

I’m currently on a personal trip and am thousands of miles away from home. Yet, for the first time, I don’t miss being at my desk with my dual Studio Displays. I have a truly massive 4K display when wearing the Vision Pro and I’m able to use my Mac’s keyboard and trackpad to not only control my Mac display but all of my other apps within visionOS.

And when not working, I am very glad that I’m able to sit back and watch most TV shows and movies natively (and sometimes a less great, but still much better than a small 15-inch 1080p TV, iPad experience. But even then, opening Safari and using the web to watch content not available through the App Store) on a massive 100-foot screen.

I think the best way to describe the Vision Pro experience is that it’s "good enough" in all the areas most people care about. Entertainment is great and most people are okay with Bluetooth latency and audio. Mac Virtual Display is very good, but if you look at it closely, you’ll notice pixelation and latency. Travel Mode is great and is way better than bending your neck down to stare at a laptop screen. Traveling with the Vision Pro is actually the first time I’ve been able to lay back and watch content on a plane. I’ve never had that happen before.

Comfort is a real problem, but thankfully third-party accessories are a thing and that market will only continue to grow and expand in the future. I suppose, my only real complaint about the hardware right now is the lack of physical ports without having to spend $300 for a single USB-C port that only works with development or restoring your device. If they could open up that USB-C port and make the strap available to everyone, that would be a massive step forward.

Yet, saying all that, I can’t recommend the Vision Pro to the vast majority of people. The software is in its infancy both at the operating system level and with third-party applications. For the vast majority of people, you’re better off buying a nice display and a standard computer. Price aside, the Vision Pro is a large, heavy, head-strapped computer with an external battery. While I don’t agree with most of what Mark Zuckerberg says comparing the Vision Pro and Quest 3, the core of his argument is accurate. Apple designed the Vision Pro around its incredible displays. Apple uses premium materials, yet when iFixit tore it down, you can see the company was trying everything it possibly could to reduce weight internally. But that’s still not enough. It’s still a very heavy device you strap to your head, despite having the best displays around when you put the Vision Pro on.

I think Vision Pro is the desktop computer of the computing world. It’s meant for very specific use cases and isn’t meant to be mobile. Mixed reality glasses will be the mass market "made for everybody" product. But that also has tradeoffs such as no immersive environments and processing power. In the best way possible, Apple Vision Pro is the iPad of the world, and future mixed reality glasses are the Apple Watch of the world. iPads can be a bit clunky to use in some scenarios (like walking down the street), but iPads have incredible hardware capability. The Apple Watch is super convenient and most people are more than happy to strap it to their wrist and wear it for every waking moment, but its capabilities are fairly limited thanks to the form factor. That’s how I see Apple Vision Pro versus any future Apple Vision "non-Pro" product.

However, I would still highly recommend booking a demo and trying the Vision Pro at an Apple Store if you’re close. It’s a great first-generation product that will "wow" most people even if it’s not for you.