Got a pair of AirPods? Or thinking of buying some? Wondering how long it takes AirPods to charge? Here’s everything you need to know…
Apple’s AirPods are immensely popular. Apple went from not making headphones to being one of the biggest headphone brands in the world. And it did it pretty much overnight, thanks to its AirPods.
Are AirPods any good? Yes and no. Me personally, I’m not a fan; I prefer over-ear headphones and, for my needs, Apple’s AirPods just aren’t good enough with respect to battery life – four hours just ain’t enough.
RELATED: Which Wireless EarBuds Have The Best Battery Life?
The AirPods useless battery life is somewhat negated by the fact that its charging case will effectively give you around 24 hours of potential charge. But you will need to put the AirPods back in its charging case to top them up once the battery inside them is depleted.
How Long Do AirPods Take To Charge Up?
If you run your AirPods from 100% to 0%, this will take you around 3-4 hours of usage. For me, that’s a long ride or a big run. Once your AirPods are out of battery life, you will need to return them to the charging case to recharge.
Once inside the charging case, your AirPods will be more or less fully recharged inside 15 minutes. After 15 minutes has passed, you’ll have around 3 hours of battery life on your AirPods.
Put them in for a shorter amount of time, say, five minutes, and you’ll get around 60 minutes of battery life before they’ll run out of juice again.
Three hours from 15 minutes charging is pretty respectable, and this is all down to Apple’s W1 chip inside the AirPods – it supports fast charging. Although, again, Apple is not leading the field in this context.
Plenty of other brands’ headphones charge up way quicker.
My over-ear Bose QC35II’s which not only sound better and are more comfortable to wear will last me around a week on a single charge, and they can be topped up to almost 100% inside of 10 minutes.
What About Apple’s AirPods Pro?
When it comes to AirPods Pro, things are a little different. You get things like active noise cancellation, improved speakers for better sound, and a more comfortable design with soft earbuds which sit comfortably in your ears.
In the context of how long they take to charge, because the AirPods Pro run on Apple’s H1 chip, they’re considerably faster than the standard AirPods when it comes to recharging.
AirPods will get three hours from 15 minutes inside the charging case, but Apple’s AirPods Pro will give you a couple of hours with just five minutes of charging, so if recharging speeds are important to you, as well as comfort and sound quality, you’ll want to go with the AirPods Pro.
What About The AirPods Max?
Apple’s first over-the-ear wireless headphones, the AirPods Max, are extraordinarily expensive. They’re great headphones too, and they’ll deliver 20 hours of music listening from a single charge, making them around 4x better than the AirPods / AirPods Pro from a battery perspective.
These headphones are CRAZY expensive, though, and for my money I’d much rather get a pair of Bose headphones. I think they look better, are more comfortable to wear, and, for the most part, cost quite a bit less than Apple’s AirPods Max headphones.
Again, when it comes to battery life, Apple’s AirPods and AirPods Pro are OK but when compared to other wireless headphone options they’re distinctly average. Nearly all of Apple’s main competitors deliver better battery life on their wireless earbuds.
And this is one of the main reasons why I stopped using my OG AirPods; I just couldn’t live with the middling-to-poor batter life, especially when I could get a better sounding pair of wireless earbuds for considerably less money.
And check out How To Update AirPods Firmware: AirPods & AirPods Pro!
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- The Best (And Safest) Way To Clean Your AirPods
- How To Fix AirPods That Sound Muffled
- Also, be sure to check out what Apple’s Spatial Audio is!
- And here’s how to connect AirPods to a Mac!
