Apple announced plenty of exciting goodies at its most recent September launch event, including a series of Apple Watches and its first-ever folding phone, the iPhone Duo.
No new HomePods materialised, but hey, you're always going to be let down by at least one major omission. Another year and no HomePod Mini 2? No surprises there, then.
The Californian mega-brand also announced the next generation of its standard wireless earbuds, the AirPods 5, again splitting the new models into two main variants: the AirPods 5 and the AirPods 5 with wireless charging. The standard AirPods 5 will cost $129, while the AirPods 5 with wireless charging case will cost $149.
That's a departure from the fourth generation of Apple's core AirPods line, wherein the key delineation was made by the use or absence of noise-cancelling. Hence, the AirPods 4 and the AirPods 4 with ANC.
Many of the initial signs look positive. Apple is promising elevated sonic performance from the fifth-generation buds, teasing a "richer, more detailed sound across a wider range of ear geometries" alongside more immersive and dynamic spatial audio.
Noise cancelling should be better, too, with improved "computational audio algorithms" improving noise reduction by around 50 per cent. So says Apple, anyway.
Lots to be excited about, then, but one fly does appear to have landed in an otherwise tasty-looking ointment: those battery life numbers.
The standard AirPods 5 are teasing a paltry four hours of playtime from the buds with ANC enabled, which will creep up to around five hours when noise cancelling is switched off. The AirPods 5 with wireless charging, conversely, offer five hours of in-ear battery, with 22 hours with the charging case. That total just edges the 20 total hours of the standard model.
Those numbers seem bafflingly low, especially when compared with price-adjacent rivals. The Bose QuietComfort Earbuds (2024) deliver 8.5 hours of in-bud playback with ANC enabled, boosted to up to 12 hours with noise cancelling turned off. The cheaper Sony WF-C710N are also superior, again granting 8.5 hours of playback with ANC turned on, 12 hours with it off, and a total of 30 hours with the charging case in play.
It's not as if Apple has improved on its own last-gen offerings, either. The AirPods 4 delivered 4 hours of in-bud playback with ANC on, 5 hours with ANC off, and a total of 30 hours with the charging case. That means that in-bud playtime has gone down, and total playtime has actually decreased from one generation to the next. How has that happened?
It's fine for a more premium pair of earbuds to sacrifice a bit of battery life, or for a new generation to maybe lose out in this area because of the implementation of new features or hardware, but when the mainline AirPods already offered such mediocre figures, Apple couldn't really afford to lose much more. What will the sixth-gen buds offer? Three hours of battery life if we're lucky?
It won't be a dealbreaker for many, but those figures really do seem poor in an era when some rivals are pushing to almost double the in-bud playback time. It's not a disaster for Apple, but it means the onus is now on the AirPods 5 to deliver outstanding performance across the board – from sound to noise-cancelling – if they're going to justify such a glaring blind spot.
I might be wrong, but battery life figures do matter, especially when there's a fear of being left high and dry when your buds run out of charge, and you've no way of getting them powered again. I'm optimistic it isn't a decision Apple ends up regretting.
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