 Apple's original AirPods were one of the first true wireless earbuds on the market. True wireless, meaning that they're not even physically connected to each other by a wire. And we actually loved them when they came out. In fact, I think it's fair to say that in spite of the tidal wave of wireless earbuds that have hit the market in the last couple of years, they still hold up pretty well. And, according to Apple at least, their customers agree because they are still the most popular wireless earbuds on the market. So, with all of that in mind, I am even more ready than I was last time to be blown away by the latest, greatest, expensive-est thing from Apple. Hit me with them AirPods too, baby! This is like, this is the same. How am I gonna show everybody how loaded I am? These... Uh, yeah, I don't know. Dip them in gold? Oh. Yeah, I guess that's an option. Like, AirPods Edition. Pebblehost is a transparent game and web hosting company focused on balancing price with performance. Game servers start at just a dollar per gig for RAM, and web hosting starts at just $2 a month. Check them out today and use code LTT to save 20%. 🎵Music🎵 Ah, yes my friends, you heard it here first. Or on Marques's channel. Man, that guy's fast. Whatever, it doesn't matter. So the AirPods 2, which is not their actual name, they're just new AirPods, look exactly the same as the first generation AirPods, which, for once, I can kinda get behind, to be honest. This new version is an extremely incremental upgrade over the original, with only a few small changes under the hood. And in fact, the only real game-changing upgrade is an optional accessory, a wireless charging case, which will really come in handy soon when Apple launches their hotly anticipated air power charging ba- Uhhh... So we'll look a little closer at the case later. For now, the new AirPods have the same size battery, same 5-hour battery life for listening to audio, the same programmable double-tap gesture, and the same respectable, if unexceptional, audio quality. On the inside, however, they're powered by Apple's new H1 chip, rather than the W1 in the old model. And this brings us a few key improvements. Battery life for calls has increased from 2 to 3 hours on a single charge, switching between devices is faster by a second or two, you can say, hey Siri now, instead of mapping it to a double-tap gesture, and finally, audio latency has apparently been reduced by 30%, though, frankly, it wasn't really that noticeable in our testing. So, if you love the original AirPods, you're gonna love these two. Grab your hard-earned money, or better yet, your Apple-branded titanium credit card, and go buy a pair. But, there is actually a problem here. A lot of people didn't love the original, and Apple has done absolutely nothing to help them out. Here's the thing, human ears are actually really, really different from each other, and some people just can not get AirPods to stay in place. Now, fortunately, the majority of expensive earphones use a well-established industry standard solution to this problem. They provide a selection of flexible ear tips in a variety of sizes, so that you can choose the one, or one's, people are not entirely symmetrical, you know, that best fit their ears. Some earbuds also have some sort of adjustable mechanism for securing them in place, like the Google Pixel buds. And this is more important than you might think, because a good seal with your ear canal not only keeps you from dropping your left pod down a storm drain and ruining your day, it also has a profound impact on the listening experience. This is part of the reason that you might see wildly varying reports of the audio quality of the AirPods. So, if you're one of the chosen few with small, symmetrical ears, congratulations. You get to enjoy the AirPods, and the new AirPods. But if you've got bigger ears, or even worse, if you have one ear that fits them great, and one that doesn't, like Riley, who wrote this episode, then one will fall out if you run while wearing them, and all you'll be left with is a single AirPod. As a reminder of how much of a weird, asymmetrical freak you are. So, yeah, with so many solutions to this problem already on the market, it is a little disappointing to see Apple change nothing about the way that AirPods sit in your ear. Knowing them, I'm sure they could have engineered a marvelous, spectacular, magical, slightly more grippy material for the pod itself, or included optional ear hook accessories in the box. But no. Now, you can buy third-party attachments for cheap on Amazon, but those won't fit inside your charging case, making them yet another thing to lose all the time. And, even worse, they kind of make your real AirPods look like a cheap knockoff. Kind of defeats the whole point of buying AirPods, doesn't it? More irritating to me, I mean, they fit fine in my ears, is that they also didn't add any new gestures. While you can still customize double taps on the right and left ear pods to activate Siri, play and pause, or skip tracks, telling Siri to change the volume is still the only way to do that without touching your phone. I mean, you can tell Siri to turn it way down or way up, but it's still an uncharacteristically janky solution. Hey Siri, turn the volume up. Hey Siri, turn the volume up. Having Siri always listening is nice, by the way, but the issue with Siri is that she's Siri. And even with Cortana quite literally dead in the water, I'm still not sure if she's on the podium for the top digital assistants. I do have some good news for Android users, though. No thanks to Apple. Compared to when I originally reviewed the original AirPods, you can now use a third-party app, Assistant Trigger, to summon the Google Assistant by double tapping an AirPod. Unfortunately, that's really the only good news for the Android lovers. Yes, you can still use AirPods 2 with an Android device, but in our testing we experienced multiple glitches, including the double tap gestures not working and this particularly annoying phenomenon involving music volume getting blasted up to full power when playing the next track. Now that last one is apparently fixed in the latest firmware, which is great, except for one thing. There's no manual way to update it. Apple's instructions to update your firmware are quite literally. Place them near an Apple device they've been paired to and wait. Well, we did wait for hours and nothing happened. So for Android users with no other Apple devices, honestly, this just looks like yet another fun little way for Apple to say, Oh, really? I'm sorry you're too poor for an iPhone. Bummer. All right then, enough about the AirPods. What about that cool new wireless charging case? There are some actual small changes to the physical design here. The LED indicator has moved from inside the case to the front. The pairing button on the back has moved up a bit and the hinge now has a matte finish instead of a mirrored one. Okay, I mean, I did say there were small changes, right? Anyway, the case holds 19 hours of battery life, which in addition to the five hours of music listening in the AirPods, will net you a maximum of 24 hours of battery life total. You can get three hours of listening time from just 15 minutes in the case and the case, which is $40 when bundled with the AirPods 2 or $80 as an upgrade for your old ones, will charge at five watts on any Qi compatible charging pad. What's also nice is that at the expense of them being a little bit heavier, to be clear, it's not a lot, they still manage to squeeze a lightning jack in the bottom so you can use a wire if you want. Enjoy that while it lasts, by the way, because we all see the direction Apple's going with our precious wires. So then, with the AirPods 2, we find ourselves in a very similar situation to the one we were in right before they came out. For Android users, they're flawed and expensive, but one of the only options for earphones that don't penetrate your ear canal. As for the Apple users, well, they're still a great option and you'll probably get your money's worth as long as you don't lose them. I do have to say though, I hope that Apple makes some bigger changes for the AirPods 3, or I feel like they're going to be left behind by the rest of the wireless earbud market, which is rapidly expanding. Speaking of rapidly expanding, dbrand! 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Also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts, kind of like the one I'm wearing, but not this one. This one was LTX only. And we've also got our community forum down there, which you should totally join.