 Three years later and we finally have the second generation of Apple's AirPods Pro. They're $249, they have a better case, improved battery life, and an all-new H2 chip that Apple claims delivers advanced computational audio previously unable to run on a device of this size. And that, coupled with new vent placements, reportedly adds up to twice the amount of active noise cancellation over the previous AirPods Pro. The thing about reviewing earbuds on video is that features such as ANC are incredibly hard to demonstrate. So I wanted to try something new. This is Owen. He set up a sort of blind active noise cancellation test that's going to simulate common noises that most folks who are wearing ANC buds want to cancel out. Every earbud fits every ear differently and that is incredibly important to ANC performance, but I'm hoping that this test will give us a general idea of how each of these earbuds perform. I'm going to be listening to the same song on four pairs of wireless earbuds that we here at The Verge think have the best active noise cancellation in this price range. If slash when I hear a noise, I'll raise this sign and then we'll move on to the next sound. Is that like white noise? It's like a low. Oh, God. Is that like a helicopter? It's deep. I can like feel it, but I can't hear it. All set? Yeah. Wow. Okay. Some jackhammers. Yeah. Okay. No other pair of earbuds came close to canceling as much noise as the Bose QuietComfort 2s did. It was almost scary how much I couldn't hear. That being said, the AirPod Pro's second gen did cancel out a pretty good amount of noise and definitely more than the previous version. Now they also have a feature called active transparency mode, which is when you're in transparency mode, meaning that you can hear the things around you. If there's annoying sounds, it's supposed to take those sounds down so you have a more pleasant listening experience. Now I have had an incredibly hard time getting this to trigger. In fact, I haven't been able to get it to trigger. Even here in the studio, we played some jackhammer sounds and I couldn't get it to take them down. So we'll have to use these headphones more and see if we can get that feature to work at all. For folks coming from the original AirPods Pro, the biggest changes you'll notice are actually in the case. There's a lanyard loop on the side and now the case can be charged via MagSafe or on any Apple Watch charger. But more importantly, the case now makes sound. The only visual difference to the buds themselves is the vent is now located on the top of the bud and there's an added extra small size ear tip option. On the stem, there's also now the ability to swipe up and down to adjust the earbuds volume. I have thought that all earbuds should have swiping volume control, so it's absolutely excellent to see that coming to these earbuds. Apple also claims that they've improved the inward facing mics on these buds, so we put them through the ultimate stress test. Okay, I've wanted to do this mic test for a very long time. These are the $249 Secondhand AirPods Pros and we're on a boat. The boat test is not just about wind. It's also about background noise. It's also about just wanting to talk on the phone when you want to talk on the phone. And these are the original AirPods Pro. You can get them for like $179. Oh man, we got wind baby. Apple has some really nice windshield technology on their earbuds, but this is a lot of wind and a lot of background noise. Okay, okay, but here's what they sound like in a more controlled environment. There's like a noisy fridge behind me, but otherwise we're in a quiet office. I continue to be impressed with the mic on the Sony Link buds. I continue to be disappointed by the mic on the Samsung Buds 2 Pro, but to me the first gen AirPods Pro don't really sound all that different from the second generation of the AirPods Pro. And well, nothing will ever come close to the wired Apple headphones that of course have incredible mic placement and a solid wired connection. But how did the AirPods Pros sound? The new AirPods Pro have a personalized spatial audio feature that is created via the True Depth camera on the iPhone. It always feels fun to go through a personalization setup, but rarely does it affect real life performance. And sadly, that is true here as well. I did not notice any real change in spatial audio performance post-personalization. But that didn't make me any less in love with head tracking, which many folks would label as a gimmick and I don't know, it just hasn't gotten old for me yet. And I especially love making people use it who have never tested it before. It's really cool, it's a great bar trick. But more importantly, the second generation AirPods Pros have an improved H2 chip and new amps and drivers. The company claims that this creates deeper bass and crisper highs, and yeah, it does. These buds sound great and incredibly full with a balanced amount of bass, but if you're coming from the previous AirPods Pros, I'm not sure there's like that much of a difference. Those earbuds had great sound and these do too. I made a playlist that I'll link down below full of all the songs I've been listening to while testing these buds. They happen to be all these full, really punchy songs. They have lots of highs and lows and good bass. These headphones, they really shine when they can separate all those sounds for you. Now something that previous owners of AirPods Pros and new owners will notice is battery life. The new buds have six hours of battery life with ANSI turned on and four and a half hours of continuous talk time from a single charge. All of that means that during a workday I started at 9.30 a.m., I was able to get around 3 p.m. before the buds died. It's definitely better and will feel amazing if your first gen AirPods Pros batteries have begun to fade. So the second generation AirPods Pro, they're not the stemless, earth-shattering earbuds I was kind of hoping they would be, but they're a solid upgrade to the previous version. Apple took an already great product and added some simple upgrades to battery life, some minor case improvements, a bump in audio quality and a much bigger bump in ANC, and added a few gimmicks like personalized spatial audio. And all of these things will make these AirPods Pro feel new and special to owners of the previous AirPods Pro. But I don't think there's enough there for folks who aren't due for an upgrade to jump at. But I'm just not so sure why I'm seeing so many reviews like absolutely raving about these earbuds. They're good, yes, but they're not nearly as groundbreaking as the first generation was. And of course, if you are an iOS user, you're going to love the tight integration with the ecosystem and you're probably absolutely going to buy these so long as they fit your ears. But for everybody else, there's a whole huge sea of wireless earbuds that have better ANC like the Bose QC2s or, I don't know, better audio quality like Sony's WF-1000XM4s. I think that it's a bad name, but I think that's it. Or I don't know, anything from Anker that's going to be a much cheaper price. But if you love your AirPods Pros or you're set on having a pair of AirPods Pros, then these are the absolutely best ones. I couldn't get this sound to play when we were doing the case sound test because the headphones weren't dead, but they're dying now. So this is the sound that it makes when you put your headphones in the case and the headphones are dying. It is the most useful sound they have because it reminds you to charge it. Anyway. That's sweet, right? Do do do do do do do do. Bye bye.