This is the review of the comparison between two earbuds from two popular brands in the market. The comparison here is between the Sony WF-1000XM3 and the Apple Airpods 2. There is not a wide range of difference in their price range but still, there appears some difference in their features and performances. To know which one is better than the other, go to the detailed review.

Sony WF-1000XM3	Apple Airpods 2
BUY NOW	BUY NOW
PROS	PROS
Active noise cancellation works exceptionally well. The audio quality is great. EQ adjustment allows for musical tweaking. Battery life is excellent.	Great connection. Really portable. Better battery than previous model thanks to H1 chip.
CONS	CONS
No waterproofing. Frequent fliers may miss a cable option. No wireless charging. No on-earbud volume controls.	Not the best fit. Sound isn’t great. Terrible/no isolation.

SPECIFICATIONS:

Detail Review:

INTRODUCTION:

Sony WF-1000XM3

The Sony WF-1000XM3 is from a truly wireless earphone range, which is widely regarded to be the new Airpods killers. These earphones are boasting an impressive spec sheet, offering up to eight hours of listening per charge, digital audio upscaling, and also, these are one of the few true wireless earphones on the market that are offering active noise-canceling. So, near the current market leaders with noise-canceling, the XMM3 headphones are the best ANC headphones on the market.

Apple Airpods 2

The Airpods with a wireless charging case cost one hundred and ninety-nine dollars, and then the Airpods without a wireless charging case cost one hundred and fifty-nine dollars. When the Airpods 2 came out, they were kind of a weird thing and we were honestly expecting them to be dark in a way but they weren’t kind of but currently as of.

DESIGN & BUILD QUALITY:

Sony WF-1000XM3

As far as the charging case, this is easily one of the more elegant charging cases on the market. The soft rubberized body is complemented beautifully by the copper color slit. So, it’s not that you’ll inevitably spoil the matte finish with your fingerprints. At the bottom of the case, we have the USB-C charging port, some subtle Sony branding on the top surface but otherwise, the design is pretty sleek and minimal. The lid is held magnetically closed but can be lifted fairly easily to reveal the earbuds.

The earbuds continue this sense of premium quality with a really clean design, high-quality materials, and an excellent build quality. The outside surface features one of the microphones used for ANC and voice calls, and there’s also a large multifunction touchpad. We also have some left and right indicators, which correspond to the inside of the charging case and an angled silicone ear tip for improved ergonomics. The shiny black plastic you can see on the opposite side of the connector pins is actually an ambient light sensor, which is used for the auto poor system. On the outside edge, there are also LEDs that can indicate pairing status, battery levels, and charging information.

Apple Airpods 2

As far as the design, the Airpods Pro is going to be shorter and also just a little bit fatter but they feel great in your ear and the fact that they are short is better than the Airpods 2 because with the long stem in the Airpods you may have a problem if you are gonna be taking your shirt off and they’re less likely to get hung up on your shirt and fall off, and that has happened to me so many times.

But the main difference with the design is that the Airpods Pro have customizable tips, so in the box, you get three different pairs of tips small, medium, and large, and you can just pull one off and then push one back on which will allow for you to get a better fit depending on your ear size but you can’t do that with the Airpods as the tips are replaceable in this.

COMFORT:

Sony WF-1000XM3

The base of each year tip is actually made from a rubberized material to provide extra grip in your ears. This helps massively not only with achieving a tight seal but also to prevent these from slipping out during use, and I did find that these stayed in my ears completely fine without ever feeling like they were slipping. The earbuds are definitely on the larger side and aren’t as subtle in your ears as some of the competitors. But they don’t feel bulky or heavy in your ears at all. The majority of the earbud is held outside of your ear and I expected these to perhaps feel as though they were pulling downwards but this wasn’t a problem at all. The earbuds feel light and are actually surprisingly comfortable to wear. If you want to wear these for long periods of time, you shouldn’t have any issues at all.

Apple Airpods 2

I hope they keep those Airpods designs, the original ones because those ones fit in the ear the best, the other ones they kind of hurt the ear after a little time. For me personally, I haven’t had any issues with the Airpods as far as being comfortable actually, when I put them in my ear I don’t feel them at all. But with the AirPods Pro, they are comfortable but because the ear tips are in your ear and they’re kind of making a seal leave you filled them a little bit more than you do with the Airpods.

But at the same time, though I do like the way the Airpods feel in my ear because they don’t create that seal when I’m walking around and I can still hear my environment, I can still hear the cars on the street, I can still hear somebody walking up behind me, and I don’t have to take these out in order to talk to someone. But with these Airpods Pro, because you had that really nice tight seal, you either have to take these out to talk to someone or you can enter the new transparency mode.

FEATURES:

Sony WF-1000XM3

Each earbud has its own touch control system and this can be customized in the companion app. By default tapping the right earbud will play or pause your music, and a double-tap is used to skip forward and a triple tap to skip back. The double-tap is also used to answer or hang on phone calls using either earbud and they will automatically change the control scheme during an incoming call for this, which is pretty good. Tapping and holding the right touchpad will invoke your phone’s voice assistant. The left earbud by default will cycle through the different levels of ANC from noise-canceling to ambient sound, which lets you hear your surroundings or turn these off altogether. If you tap and hold, you can invoke quick attention, a feature we’ve seen before with Sony’s headphones.

Quick attention temporarily lowers your music volume and turns on ambient sound to the max, so that you can clearly hear surroundings whilst you’re holding the touchpad. As soon as you let go, the music will turn to normal at whatever ambient sound mode you were using resumes. This feature is super handy to quickly hear what’s going on around you without having to permanently change your settings. It works really quickly and in general, the touchpad sensitivity was really well balanced. The earbuds differentiated between taps really well, and this is one of the best touch control schemes from any earbuds so far.

The controls are fast, accurate, and it didn’t have any issues with registering commands as I have had with some of the competitors such as Airpods. A nice addition is that the touchpad deactivates when you take the earbuds out of your ears to help avoid any unwanted presses. The controls are pretty intuitive, and there’s a good range of options here but I have to say that’s not having volume control is definitely a drawback. A lot of people want to be able to change the volume directly from their earbuds and to be honest, these earbuds could be large enough to have a PowerBeats Pro style volume button at the top of the earbud. But if Sony had to leave this out to prevent the earbuds from becoming too bulky then I am okay with this omission.

As I mentioned before, you can change up the touchpad controls to your liking in the Sony Headphone Connect app. Here you can set either earbud to operate playback controls, cycle through the ambient sound mode, turn off the touchpad completely, or directly access the Google assistant. If you want to make things simpler, you can have both earbuds do the same thing, so you don’t need to think about it. Since you can use either earbud on its own, you have the option to change the controls to something more appropriate for single earbud use, which could be really useful if one of your earbuds runs out of battery. I definitely think that volume control should be an option here though. So, hopefully, this will become introduced with a software update in the future.

I carried out the microphone test for call quality while the sound quality isn’t bad in quiet environments. I did notice that the volume can often fluctuate and this is especially a problem if it’s loud or windy outside. If you want to use these earbuds for phone calls then it is possible but quiet environments are definitely recommended.

Apple Airpods 2

There is not that much that has changed in Airpods 2, and these things really haven’t fallen down in the price market too much. My experience with them so far for the last couple of months has been great. I own the Airpods once before this and these are honestly really great headphones, I really have nothing else to say about them, they’re really really easy to get, they’re super easy just you take them out of the box or you take them out of the charging case, you plug them in and you’re set. It’s so easy to even switch from a MacBook to an iMac to an iPhone with the Airpods which is so good. These Airpods do have some cool capabilities that the older ones didn’t have. The H1 chip which I guess allows you to pair it easily, I guess a really good thing.

The “hey Siri” support is also an amazing thing and the best thing about these Airpods are is that I’ve never accidentally enabled it, which is so awesome. With the iPhone, with so many things, when I had that enabled it would always pick up random things even the Google Home that thing always goes off but this thing, it never accidentally enabled. I do have it enabled in the settings which are really good and then never enabled by itself, which is awesome. Other than that, everything’s pretty much been set for these things.

The original Airpods battery cases have held up pretty well too but I’ve seen a lot of people complain about the battery life and those ones at least the battery life, I really hope at some point Apple can push the Airpods battery life how they did for the iPhones and hopefully, they can do that same thing for the Airpods and other Apple accessories like the Apple watches and stuff, that way we can kind of see how our other Apple accessories are doing and I would love to see the battery life for the Airpods. My battery life for these things has been pretty good, I love that charging blinking indicator on the front every time I plug it in and I can kind of get an idea with the battery life for these things.

The biggest question is that should you pick up the Airpods 2 either the charge in case of wireless charging case or should you pick up the Airpods Pro. For me personally, my specific ear type, they don’t work well with the Airpods Pro, I’ve had those for a little bit and I didn’t really like it that much, there’s definitely some really cool features for those headphones but I still do like my original Airpods 2, whether the charging case or not they’re the same thing it does really matter. I like those type of headphones or and I really hope Apple never really goes down the road of Airpods Pro and I hope they don’t just sell those that by themselves.

BATTERY AND ITS LIFE:

Sony WF-1000XM3

As far as the battery life, these earbuds are offering six hours of listening with ANC turned on or eight hours with ANC turned off. The charging case then provides three additional charges offering up to 32 hours of total battery life or 24 hours if you use ANC, which is fantastic. This is one of the only truly wireless earbuds offering ANC to still offer one of the best battery lives on the market is seriously impressive. From my testing, I did lose an hour self listening when using the digital sound enhancement engine or the earbuds equalizer but this is to be expected.

The case uses the latest USB-C connection for charging but offers a pretty decent fast charge for the earbuds too, with a 10-minute charge providing one and a half hours of listening. A full charge of the earbuds will take around 90 minutes and charging both earbuds in the case fully, will take around 3 hours. As I mentioned earlier, the only disappointing thing was that the case doesn’t support wireless charging.

Apple Airpods 2

In my opinion, the battery life on this charging case has held up pretty well on the original Airpods. They’ve been lasting pretty long, they say about like five hours of listening time on one charge, and I think that’s about the case but to say more than 24 hours of listening time with the wireless charging case. But here’s the thing the same case is the wireless charging case and the other case both have the same amount of battery life, apparently from what they even claim. 

Its case can charge the Airpods when you put them back in it, and Apple says you can get around twenty-four hours of use out of it whether it’s wireless or not which is really good. The Airpods can get you around five hours of use when you listening to your music or your movies but if you want to talk about Talktime it can get you around three hours.

SOUND:

Sony WF-1000XM3

When it comes to sound quality quite simply, these are the best sounding true wireless earphones out there. What really struck me is how incredibly crisp and clear the sound is. The detail is fantastic, you can distinctly hear the individual instruments, and you can really appreciate the separation on the soundstage.

The audio is just really well-balanced, and even straight out of the box, the earbuds sound really good. But I think you’ll get the most out of the audio by using the built-in equalizer. Personally, I think the exciting equalizer really enriches your music. It definitely adds a lot more thump into the bass but maintains that fidelity in your music.

Apple Airpods 2

As far as sound quality, the Airpods really sound good and that’s because Apple has reengineering the internals and with all the different chipsets and stuff like that to make them sound better. Also, it does have an adaptive EQ so, that means it’s gonna be kind of adjusting to your ears into a lot of different things that variables to make sure the music sounds the best. You can hear all the details and the sounds and I never had an issue with the sound quality on the Airpods, and maybe that’s just me because I’m just used to these for working out and just walking around.

I think they sound just fine but the reason why these Airpods Pro sound better is because they do have customizable tips, so when you put them in your ear it makes a really nice seal in your ear that keeps the sound from leaking out, and also keeps the sound from getting in. They don’t sound the best, they’re not the best in terms of the bass, and all that but they’re good enough for the price.

WHICH ONE IS BETTER?

In my opinion, the Sony WF-1000XM3 is better than the Airpods 2 as it has a noise cancellation feature that Airpods doesn’t have. These are some of the more expensive true wireless earphones on the market but these are not quite as much as Sennheiser’s or the PowerBeats Pro but at two hundred and twenty-nine dollars, these certainly aren’t cheap. The XM3s are an excellent pair of earbuds if you want a great pair of noise-canceling earbuds and if you are able to afford the high price tag, I don’t think that you to be disappointed.

Expert Reviews of Sony WF-1000XM3:

By liveatpc.com
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By goodhousekeepin.co.uk
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Expert Reviews of  Apple Airpods 2:

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By gadgetsnow.com
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By TheStraitsTimes
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By goodhousekeeping.co.uk
Apple’s Airpods were one of the first pairs of truly wireless headphones to hit the market, as the two earbuds had no cable joining them and made them really wire-free. Now, Apple has launched a new version that has a couple of handy bells and whistles…

By IndianExpress
I doubt if there is one particular earphone that is more popular than the Apple AirPods. In the US for instance, you would see everyone from Silicon Valley CEOs to construction workers wearing them all the time. A recent trip to Hong Kong exposed me to…