As far as noise cancelling goes, I have always stuck to Bose products. They were some of the first to even offer noise cancellation. Any lead from being early is gone now though, and strictly comparing airpods pro and the QC II earbuds, they are about equal with differing strengths and weaknesses. Fo
r sound quality, they are almost indistinguishable to me. Bluetooth earbuds are not known for their sound quality in either case, so both are fine for what they are. No clear winner in this category. For comfort, Airpods win. They are smaller and lighter and still manage to stay in my ear-hole just as well as the QC-II buds. For convenience, it's sort of a toss-up; the winner depends on what you want. If you want perfect integration with your iPhone with no third-party apps, plus find my (device) iPhone compatibility, Airpods are the way. If you want (in my opinion) better touch controls and a little more control over ANC besides just "transparent" or "passthrough", the Bose buds win. For portability, they both have cases that pretty easily slip into that smaller pocket of Jeans most everyone has. The difference in case size is significant, however; Airpods easily win this category. The case is both smaller and thinner while still being clearly higher quality than the Bose bud case. In my case the size does not matter because they both fit with my car keys in that pocket, but YMMV. For quality, apple (of course) is the clear winner. The construction of their products, as always, leaves little to be desired from pure quality points of view. The case has a metal hinge and is generally much more solid feeling, with no wobble in the lid nor looseness to the chassis. The Bose bud case, while larger, feels more flimsy in general, having some play in the lid and a mostly plastic construction. There may be a metal pin holding the lid in place, but without breaking it I can't verify that, so for all I know it is all plastic construction. The buds for both are fine, but Apple still seems to have higher quality construction if only by a small margin. As for battery life, on a single charge neither of them can make it through the work day without returning to the case at least once. Perhaps one has more case battery than the other, but I have never run out of case battery. YMMV Last but not least, the noise cancelling ability. This was an unexpected tie, both are better or worse in some scenarios. Apple buds excel particularly at passthrough of your own voice; self-voice will sound more natural than I have ever heard for passthrough on ANC devices. They also seem better able to adapt to external sounds while in passthrough, the main example I noticed being when I get in my car and shut the door. When wearing the Bose buds in passthrough, when I shut the car door behind me full noise cancelling kicks in for a couple seconds, which is a little annoying; the airpods do not do that. If passthrough is your main concern, Airpods win. When it comes to ANC and sound isolation though, the Bose buds win by a narrow margin. They seal better in the ear thanks to their larger size, and the overall noise cancellation seems slightly better than the Airpods. Overall neither is clearly better than the other. I have both and switch between them at a whim, which to me is telling that this largely comes down to user preference. Do you want a smaller case with better construction and passthrough? Airpods win. Do you want better noise isolation and (presumably) better battery life? Bose wins. Is price the deciding factor? The winner would then go to whichever is on sale.
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