Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation review: the best open-ear buds for iPhone

Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation: Two-Minute Review

The Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation might not look much different to the third-generation AirPods at first glance, but they're effectively all-new, inside and out. The design has been streamlined for a better fit, the speakers have been upgraded, and the addition of the Apple H2 chip means that many of the best features of AirPods Pro 2 have trickled down to Apple's new entry-level earbuds.

It makes the AirPods 4 with ANC a very tempting option among the best AirPods – nearly all the perks of AirPods Pro 2, but with the open-ear style that some people much prefer, at a mid-range price of $179 / £179 / AU$299. They only have one problem: the aggressive and regular discount pricing of AirPods Pro 2, which often brings them down to around the same price as AirPods 4 with ANC, or even slightly cheaper. In that case, I'd recommend getting AirPods Pro 2, as long as you don't mind the in-ear tips.

Compared to the regular AirPods 4, which are cheaper at $129 / £129 / AU$219, you're getting a few extra features here. That includes active noise cancellation (obviously) with Adaptive Audio and a Transparency mode, wireless charging, and a speaker in the case to make it easier to find by blaring a noise via the Find My app.

Obviously, the active noise cancellation is the star of the show. It doesn't entirely block out the world around you in the way that the best noise cancelling earbuds do – remember these are open-ear earbuds – but when paired with music, it can reduce loud rumbles, like a jet engine, down to a drastically reduced sound.

I think folks who desire the ability to block out the world around them without fully sealing off the ear will find a nice middle ground here, and it's easily the best ANC for these kinds of earbuds. The Transparency mode, as well as how these pick up the user's voice, is very well done and sounds incredibly natural – and the microphone quality is top-tier among the best wireless earbuds, too.

Like AirPods 4, you've got gesture support to respond to Siri by nodding or shaking or head, auto-switching between Apple devices, audio sharing with other AirPods, and Personalized Spatial Audio, which works extremely well.

Overall, the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation are easily the best open-ear buds for Apple users, thanks to all the Apple smarts they bring – but AirPods Pro 2 are a superior buy overall, and are so regularly available for the same price as this model, that they're what I'd recommend for most people.

Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation review: Price and Release Date

The Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation are priced at $179 / £179 / AU$299. They were released on September 20th, 2024.

In theory, this sits neatly between the cheaper $129 / £129 / AU$219 entry-level AirPods 4 – which don’t include noise cancellation, or wireless charging a speaker in the case – and the AirPods Pro 2 at $249 / £229 / UA$399. A halfway-house.

In practice, the AirPods Pro 2 are very regularly available for $179 or less, or £179 in the UK – and they offer extra features and superior sound compared to the AirPods 4 with ANC.

Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation review: Specs

Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation review: Features

The AirPods 4 with ANC offer several useful features that make them an excellent choice for anyone with an iPhone, and ideally who’s even further invested in Apple’s device ecosystem.

After unboxing, you just need to flip the lid open and hold the AirPods 4 near your iPhone to start the pairing process. You’ll see a prompt appear on the bottom half of your screen and can tap ‘Connect’ to pair the AirPods 4 with your iPhone and your iCloud account for easy syncing between any Apple devices you’re signed into. I found that this process took just a few seconds to complete.

Fast-pairing and quick switching between devices have long been staples of AirPods, and they perform well here. Right after pairing, I was able to begin listening on my iPhone, and I could instantly switch to listening to audio on a 14-inch MacBook Pro or an iPad just by starting to play it there instead. I found that this can be unhelpful – auto-playing videos on websites can trigger it, for example – but when it works how you want it to, it’s the slickest system on the planet.

One helpful feature here is the arrival of gesture controls, enabling you to easily answer or dismiss a call with a simple head nod or shake. While testing with this turned on, it could clearly come in handy when your hands are full or when walking around town and you don’t want to break your movement. It works for things like calls or fitness tracking suggestions from the Apple Watch.

You get audio feedback to tell you that the motion is registering, and you need to nod or shake a few times for it to fully confirm. It works reliably, though not everyone on the team loved this (some felt like the motions needed were too exaggerated and felt odd), and it doesn’t do much for you if you don’t have Siri notifications turned on for AirPods – I don’t, usually, because I don’t like my music being interrupted by all that noise.

The AirPods 4 with ANC can also be controlled like the first-gen AirPods Pro, with squeeze controls on the stems. A single press lets you play or pause, while a long press lets you switch between active noise cancellation or Transparency (including Apple’s Adaptive Audio mode, which is a blending of Transparency with some ANC). I really like this system because you can control the earbuds with gloves on, unlike a touch-based system, and you’re not pushing the buds into your ears to control them.

You cannot, however, swipe or down on the stem to adjust the volume, like you can on AirPods Pro 2. As an AirPods Pro 2 user regularly, I missed this a lot, and it’s a disappointing omission given that even most of the best budget wireless earbuds offer this.

Active noise cancellation isn’t very common in open-ear buds because their lack of firm seal in the ear makes it far less effective, but the AirPods 4 with ANC offer seriously impressive noise cancellation given this fact. In a crowded, bustling space, like a café or office, the hubbub is really reduced when music is playing.

On an airplane, they did a surprisingly good job too – you can get much more into your music with them, but they won't drown out the environmental noise as fully as the AirPods Pro 2 can. Without the full seal and as you move your head, ambient sound simply has more opportunity to enter your ear with this kind of design. Still, given the inherent issues with this type of fit, these effectively block out a lot of noise in a way I wouldn’t have expected.

The Transparency mode is good too, with any sense of robotic-ness in the sound pretty much removed; with Conversation Awareness turned on, you can also effectively have conversations with folks quite naturally, at times even forgetting these are in your ears. Your own voice, or in this case my voice, sounds a bit more natural and less processed as well.

The microphone quality is also basically as good as it gets for earbuds, with fairly-natural sounding speech that doesn’t suffer from the over-processing that can ruin some earbuds’ attempts at making you heard.

Like the AirPods Pro 2, the AirPods 4 support Apple’s Personalized Spatial Audio, which means they can track your head’s movement while wearing them to create the sense that you’re listening from within a set of fixed speakers, rather than from two tiny speakers right in your ears. I’ll talk about the quality in the next section, but the head-tracking itself is very accurate and lag-free, as with AirPods Pro 2. I don’t like to have this turned on for the music, but I always have it for movies – and like all AirPods, the Apple TV 4K is included in the Apple devices they seamless work with, and Spatial Audio is great there too.

They support Apple’s Find My service to track their location if lost – and using a speaker on the case, you can tell them to play a sound if you’re near them but can’t work out which jacket pocket you left them in. However, they don’t have the UWB location-pointing of the AirPods Pro 2, in which your iPhone can literally point an arrow to your AirPods.

They charge over USB-C or wirelessly, using Qi or Apple’s MagSafe charging. And there’s good news about their battery life, actually – while Apple rates them for a disappointing five hours of battery with ANC on, I measured them at 6.5 hours of continuous use, which is right where we want earbuds to be. With ANC off, I got 7.5 hours. Having Spatial Audio on as well will reduce this time further, though.

Now, we need to talk about what AirPods don’t do. Which is to say: almost all of this, if you don’t have an Apple device. They can be paired with any Bluetooth device, and will offer ANC and the ability to switch modes – but there’s no app on Android to customize modes, and you won’t get Spatial Audio support.

There’s also no auto-switching between devices that aren’t from Apple, even if you have an iPhone as your main device. Most of the best earbuds support multi-point Bluetooth that enables this across devices from different manufacturers, and we’d like to see this here, for the people who have an iPhone and a Windows laptop or Chromebook.

• Features score: 4 / 5

Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation review: Sound Quality

The AirPods 4 with ANC are remarkably close in sound quality to the AirPods Pro 2, and that’s without the buds providing a true seal of the ear. There’s a clear and rich audio mix that’s reaches deep into bass and elevates treble well, and has plenty of dynamic fun to it.

With a pop/EDM track like Apple by Charli XCX, you can see how the AirPods 4 handle layering of sound, with a surprisingly sharp bass track that doesn’t distort with the singer’s vocals on top at higher frequencies, with various electrical beats in between.

The AirPods 4 tend to handle almost all genres well, and even without a full seal, deliver a great balanced mix (balanced very closely to how the AirPods Pro 2 are) – although be warned that at higher volumes, you will have some sound leakage.

Listening to Rains Again by Solji, you can hear clearly the detail needed in the opening few seconds to make it feel like rainfall – an area that the cheaper AirPods 4 struggled with when I tested them. The AirPods 4 have a similar kind of detail in this moment as the AirPods Pro 2, though this rain sound comes across as slightly more treble-forward.

Bass is handled really well, with plenty of bounce, solidity and control to the line that powers Allie X’s Black Eye – and there’s good energy to the rapid higher-pitched opening salvo in that song.

When you hear cymbals in the treble, they have a good hard strike and shimmer to the sound to feel well realised.

The issues are all super-subtle – the difference between a really good presentation and an excellent one. There’s nothing fundamentally missing here, but AirPods Pro 2 has slightly more full, slightly more revealing, slightly more expansive sound.

The Darkness’ I Believe in a Thing Called Love never opens up quite as broadly here as it does on AirPods Pro 2 – it sounds a little narrower, and compacted – and when you hear the bassline under the vocals, this lacks a step of meatiness.

When tracks get dense, individual elements on the AirPods 4 with ANC are separated well, but feel relatively lightweight compared to the way AirPods Pro 2 keeps a better weight and presence to each element.

Spatial Audio here essentially gets rid of stereo’s left and right channels, with various elements of a track flowing around you. It’s a more immersive listening experience, and Apple’s implementation here is excellent. I particularly like spinning it with a live track, but I think the album version of Down On The Corner by Creedence Clearwater Revival is one of the best examples.

In my opinion, its best use isn’t in music, though, it’s in movies, where it does an amazing job of feeling like you’re sitting among some speakers, with your iPhone/iPad/TV as the screen at the front center, and a great surround system around you.

When you turn your head, the sound shifts in 3D like it would in real life in that setup. It means that movie soundtracks feel like they’re supposed to, and is also nice in that you feel less trapped in with the sound.

• Sound Quality score: 4 / 5

Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation review: Design

The AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation don’t stray too far from the working formula of Apple’s other earbuds. They opt for short stems like the AirPods Pro 2, or the AirPods 3rd Generation that these directly replace. The curved portion of hard plastic that sits in your ear has been slightly redesigned and is now more curved, to provide a better fit in the ear, and I found this very noticeable.

They sat cozily in my ears, and I comfortably wore them for over four and a half hours while on a flight and for countless hours with intermittent usage while working. They still just kind of plop in your ear and rest there. I didn’t have them fall out on any occasion, whether on a turbulent flight, while working out, or while walking indoors and outside in a bustling city.

When removing them, I could feel a sense that they had been in my ears – they’re not soft, after all, but they never felt like they were digging in or anything while wearing them, which can be a concern with all-plastic designs.

The case is downright tiny given the smaller footprint that the left and right AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation take up. It’s much smaller than the AirPods Pro 2nd Generation case, and is basically the smallest case on the market. It’s really quite impressive, and I’m a big advocate for small and slim cases – I think some manufacturers forget that carrying them around without them being a hassle is a big part of the satisfaction of wireless earbuds.

There’s no lanyard loop, unlike AirPods Pro 2. I don’t know why, and it seems a bit of a shame, though given the tiny case, there may simply be no spare space for it…

You still flip it open to take out or put back your AirPods 4, and this is the only part of the ergonomics I really struggled with. I found them harder to grab and remove than the AirPods Pro 2 (or AirPods 3rd Gen before them). You get used to the trick of it over time (they they’re partly tough because they’re held in so securely with magnets), but I wish they were a little easier to pop out.

There’s no physical button on the rear of the case for easy pairing, though. Instead, you’ll double-press a touch panel on the back to trigger pairing for other devices, or to reset them. I think this really needs to be a nice, clear physical button, as much as that ruins the perfect white poddiness of the design.

Similarly, the light on the front of the AirPods 4 with ANC, to indicate charging or battery level, now disappears into the white body when it’s not on – but that’s a nice touch, not a problem.

• Design score: 4 / 5

Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation review: Value

I have a lot of mixed feelings when it comes to the value of these earbuds. Here's my over-arching view, though, matching what I said right at the top of this review: AirPods 4 with ANC are the best open-ear buds for Apple users. You get a lot of smart and very useful features, in a great design, that sounds good, with the open-ear fit you want if you’re specifically look at this kind of bud. $179 / £169 / AU$279 is totally fair in that context, especially as Apple will likely update these with new features in the future, as it has AirPods Pro 2.

However, when you get into comparing them with earbuds that have in-ear tips, things start to wobble. That’s even within the AirPods line-up, because AirPods Pro 2 can now very regularly be found for the same price as these, if not a little cheaper. AirPods Pro 2 sound better, have better noise cancellation, and have several extra features, ranging from their hearing aid mode to their precise location tracking. AirPods Pro 2 might be priced notably higher officially, but in the real world, they’re much better value.

And then, when you go outside of AirPods, the Cambridge Audio Melomania M100 are the same price and offer exquisite sound and very strong noise cancellation, they switch between two devices, thanks to multi-point pairing – and are regularly discounted way below the AirPods 4 with ANC price. You don’t get Spatial Audio and other Apple-specific features – but for most people, music and ANC quality balanced with price is the essential thing, and the Cambridge Audio offer that in spades with extra cross-device flexibility.

But like I say, if you want open-ear buds to work with your Apple gear, the mix of design, sound quality and features here is easily worth the price.

Should I Buy Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation?

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How I tested Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation

Since launch, I've been testing the AirPods 4 with ANC as part of my daily routine, including using them on commutes, walking around the city, and in the office. I've used them with an array of Apple devices, as they are meant to be used.

I compared them to AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods 4 (without ANC) directly, as well as other earbuds and headphones. I tested Spatial Audio with Apple Music and Dolby Atmos movies from various sources.

I followed our primary earbuds testing methods as well, for elements such as sound quality and battery life – you can read more about how we test earbuds.

• First reviewed September 2024
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