Today, I’m taking a look at the AirPods Pro 2 and testing if they’re suitable for your gym routine. Listening to music while pumping iron or hitting intense cardio sessions is great for staying active, and many may expect Apple’s earbud offerings to be just what Arnold ordered. While the AirPods Pro 2 are certainly adaptable for any situation, they’re not perfect in every situation. Here’s why I think you’ll love ‘em, and why you may want to shop around if you’re solely looking to hit the gym.
Quick Look at the AirPods Pro 2
If you have an ear for audio, there’s a lot to like about the AirPods Pro 2. With drivers and amplifiers powered by the mighty H2 chipset, these earbuds deliver booming, high-fidelity sound in a small package. The chip is also responsible for delivering low-latency lossless audio while offering dynamic noise control features, including transparency mode and active noise cancellation.
The earbuds are capable of delivering devastating lows and crushing highs, so no matter what type of music you’re into, the AirPods Pro 2 make you feel like you’re in the studio with your favorite artists. Naturally, personalized Spatial Audio only adds to the experience.
What makes these great for virtually anyone is the portability and battery life. Offering up to 6 hours of listening time with Noise Cancellation features enabled, you can also get up to thirty hours of battery life using the charging case. Supporting both USB-C and an Apple Watch charger, you have plenty of options when it comes to juicing your Pods. It’s rare for me to need to charge mine for more than ten minutes, making things super quick and efficient.
Staying Fit with the Right Fit: Sizing Your AirPods
I’ve been using my AirPods Pro 2 for quite a while now, and they’re my current go-to headphones. I use them for all my exercises, including long-distance biking and pumping iron at the gym. For the most part, I really like them, though this statement comes with an asterisk.
Let’s talk about your ears. Getting the best experience from your AirPods means ensuring you go with ear tips that properly fit. Meant to create an “acoustic seal” around your ear holes, Apple provides four sizes of silicone tips with your AirPods: XS, S, M, and L. These sizes are going to play a key role in your listening experience, so ensuring the right fit is essential. Finding the right size can be easy, assuming you know how to replace the ear tips and perform an Ear Fit Test on your iPhone.
Having the right fit not only gives you the sound quality and features the Pods provide, but ensuring they’re snug is especially beneficial at the gym or during a workout. While I love my AirPods, even the most secure fit may have issues with staying in your ears during intense workouts. This is especially true for exercises where your hands/arms get near your head, such as skull crushers.
This isn’t a problem during workouts/training sessions where you can use a free hand to jostle the Pods back into your ears, but having one Pod falling out of your sweaty ears while your hands are occupied will annoy you. Maybe it’s because you can hear it fall to the ground and watch it bounce around. While this has only happened to me a handful of times, this is a situation where it really only takes one time to cause issues.
Other Small Issues
Two other things I want to briefly talk about when it comes to the AirPods and the gym are the length of your hair and the AirPods’ touch controls. While the former isn’t going to apply to everyone, having long hair and AirPods in your ears can create some awkward moments during workouts if you leave your hair down. Since no one can tell you’re listening to music, you’ll often find yourself in the middle of a conversation with someone trying to get your attention. Is this the fault of the product? No. But it’s worth mentioning, especially for those with long hair.
Concerning the touch controls, overall, they’re fantastic. Being able to pause, skip tracks, and adjust volume directly from the Pods rather than reaching for your iPhone is a godsend. The controls themselves are super intuitive, making things incredibly easy for the most part. However, pausing music takes one button press on the touch control, and moving to the next song takes two presses. Getting this right 100 percent of the time can be tricky, to the point where accidentally pausing your music can get annoying, and fast.
While neither is a major issue, both can cause enough problems that you should be aware of.
The Final Word: Are the AirPods Pro 2 Good for the Gym?
Looking at the product as a whole, should you buy the AirPods Pro 2 exclusively for the gym? I would say no, but it greatly depends. If you focus exclusively on cardio, you’ll likely never notice any of the problems I mention. If you lift, you may find yourself experiencing these problems often, situation depending. Personally, you should consider something like the Beats Fit Pro, which are made specifically for active use.
However, that doesn’t mean the AirPods Pro 2 aren’t great at doing what they do. The portability and battery life alone make them practically essential for anyone who wants high-fidelity sound, simply by reaching into your pocket. In fact, the negatives of using them at the gym are far outweighed by the positives, simply by the portability and quick charging standards. With the Pods in their charging case, the whole thing takes up the space of a box of Tic-Tacs, meaning carrying them around is no different than carrying a Zippo lighter.
If you want earbuds that are going to be really good for versatility and portability, the AirPods Pro 2 should be your go-to. However, if you’re looking for earbuds or headphones specifically for the gym, I would explore your options. In a perfect world, I would suggest doing what you can to try before you buy.
While the AirPods Pro 2 are great for the gym, I wouldn’t say they’re perfect for the gym. The battery life, sound quality, and portability make them an essential item for my daily habits, but looking at them exclusively for the gym has me feeling folks should shop around and see if something is more suitable for this specific need.
yeah, I went back to my over the ears in the gymnasium
The recent deal Amazon has for the Beats Pro is making me want to take the plunge, but I can’t justify purchasing a second pair of headphones when the AirPods Pro overall treat me so well.