The initial reviews of the AirPods Pro were incredible, if not a little hard to believe.

It’s true that the noise cancellation is very good though. I work in cafes regularly and still find it sort of incredible how good they are at cancelling out background noise. If someone is having a loud conversation right next to you, you can kind of hear it if the volume is low enough. The background buzz of people talking is completely gone though.

They also, predictably, stay in my ears much more reliably than the previous AirPods. If you get them, definitely try all the tips. I used the medium ones for two weeks and they were fine, but the smaller ones fit even better.

Transparency mode is the killer feature I feel like nobody is really talking about — it’s audio AR. Paired with a future pair of AR glasses and maybe a watch, you can start to see the path to making smartphones obsolete.

The only (small) problem I have so far is that transparency mode is unusable with any kind of hat that covers your ears, which means I won’t be using it very much for the next few months.

Overall, I find the AirPods Pro very exciting.