Using AirPod Pros 3 with Android

I wear headphones a lot and I like the option of wearing over-ear and in-ear headphones at any one time; I find that I prefer my over-ear for deep work sessions but in-ear are much easier for video calls or casual listening as I'm cooking dinner, walking the dog or on the train to the office.

One thing I have always struggled with is comfort, particularly for in-ear headphones. I am an Android user and have always hunted for comfortable headphones that can be worn for long durations of time through the day. I love everything about the Pixel Bud Pros from Google except that they always irritate my ears and become uncomfortable after less than an hour.

Your mileage may vary here; I suspect comfort when it comes to in-ear is a very subjective and personal experience! Maybe I have very wonky ear canals :)

One brand of in-ear that is always mentioned when it comes to comfort is the AirPod Pros. As an Android user I've always assumed they are off limits; the integration in iOS seemed to be a huge part of the experience and I wasn't willing to move from Android to iPhone purely for the headphones.

But, with the release of the AirPod Pros 3, and learning that prominent tech Youtuber Linus Sebastian (of LTT) is an Android + AirPods user, I decided to take the plunge - purchasing via Amazon who I know are very good at quickly processing returns, in case it all went wrong!

One week later and I've used my AirPods extensively and I'm pleased to say they have been a very good purchase indeed. I've worn them to the office, on a 3 hour train trip (in both directions), in the office, at home for video calls, and at home whilst chopping up veg for a stir fry, and I've been nothing but impressed. The limitations of Android have been easily worked around - more on that below - and they are extremely comfortable for long listening sessions.

One thing to note from this review: I am not an audiophile! If you are after deep, technical reviews of the sound profile, this is the wrong place to look. To me, these sound great, but I'm not the one to judge!

The overall impression

These AirPods are the comfiest pair of in-ear headphones I have ever worn; I think I could wear these all day without any discomfort and that alone has made them a very good purchase. The ANC is exceptionally good - to me it sounds at least as good as my Sony over-ear MX4s in a much smaller form factor. It was almost unbelievable how quiet it was sat on a train hurtling from London to Manchester in a busy carriage filled with people and noise.

AirPods and Android: the good

1. Pairing the pods with any non-Apple device has been easy and works just like any other pair of headphones. I was a bit worried that they would require an iOS device for initial setup, but that wasn't the case and they worked out of the box on my Android phone.
2. One issue is that your phone won't tell you the battery life of the pods or the case; but the CAPod app has solved that problem for me. There are many apps for AirPods on the store, but this one has worked well for me despite the low reviews. When the pods are connected I can use the app which will tell me the battery life and give me a heads up for charging.
3. Without an iPhone, it's hard to change the AirPod settings because you are limited to the touch controls. Thankfully this has never been a big thing for me - I rarely, if ever, want anything other than full ANC. I've found the controls pretty easy for play/pause/skip and that's enough for me. If you do need this capability, you can customise the controls to setup toggles between modes, but you need an iOS device or MacBook to do this.

AirPods and Android: the bad

1. The "out of ear" detection has been unreliable for me. This doesn't work out of the box, but all the AirPod apps on Android try to enable this. I tried it numerous times, and across multiple apps, but they fail to detect removal from the ear the majority of the time. For some unknown reason the left ear was far worse for this than the right. I've dealt with this by getting into the habit of hitting pause before removing them - something I didn't have to do with my Pixel Buds - but this isn't a huge downside for me and something I can easily adapt to. I'm not wearing mine in environments where I frequently need to quickly remove them and care about pausing my audio. This also might be something that can be improved by a firmware upgrade on Apple's side - I think the Android apps read the same sensor information that iOS devices would.
2. You have to have an iOS / Mac device to get firmware updates. I have a MacBook Pro for work, and my wife has an iPhone, so I ordered these in the knowledge I could use either of those devices to get any firmware updates. If I didn't own a single Apple device, I think I would have reconsidered. Apple do say you can book an appointment to upgrade in store (!) but that's not a realistic option for me. As a side note, the firmware update process is frustratingly opaque. You have to have your pods charging, in the case, in bluetooth range of your device, and they might upgrade. There is no way to force an upgrade / force it to check for one.

Conclusions

I am very, very content with my decision to try the AirPod Pro 3s and the slight rough edges about the Android experience are more than compensated for by the overall comfort and ANC performance. I wrote this blog post because I spent some hours researching AirPods & Android before hitting purchase, so I hope this post might help you if you're unsure or considering it.