[willyyr]

Since you mentioned: "be on a conference call". There is nothing more annoying then a participant in a conference call (or any call) using AirPods especially when they are at a busy place. My experience is that you hear everything around them and most of the time they are hard to understand because of how the voice is picked up. I always ask them to switch back to the phone so i can understand. Not sure if the new version improves that or if it's just my experience.

[eeeeeeeeeeeee]

Yep, I own AirPods and they are terrible when walking around town. Every person I talk to has commented on it. Which never happened with the regular wired ones.

I still enjoy them for music. But the battery life alone for calls is weak — I only get about 1 hour of talk time.

[Jerry2]

>walking around town

You don't want to walk around the town with earphones that isolate too much. My coworker was hit by a car as he was jogging while wearing IEMs. He couldn't hear the car horn and he was hit by a driver who couldn't stop his car in time. He didn't suffer any major injuries but he learned his lesson and now only jogs with open earphones.

[eeeeeeeeeeeee]

That’s why I wear AirPods, because they don’t isolate inbound noise.

I’m talking about external background noise that the mic picks up.

[mod]

I find that interesting. I often talk on my airpods while driving, and have done so in both of my cars. One has incredibly loud road noise (like I think there is a problem), and the other has no A/C and I live in the south--so, windows open.

In both cases I have received no complaints, and have even inquired about how the noise is recently. People can't hear my obnoxiously loud road noise at all, it gets canceled out.

[paultopia]

This is definitely true, but it's a terrible idea to be on a conference call in a busy place anyway. It's incredibly obnoxious for everyone around one. My use case is just sitting in my relatively quiet office; without headphones the person in the next office over can hear everything, with any other headphones there are annoying wires and such.

[bluedino]

Not really the Airpods fault there.

[zachberger]

Sure it is, most phones have outstanding ambient noise cancellation, something that AirPods does not seem to have.

[sa1]

Ambient noise cancellation is not the same thing. Most headphones do it passively by having a closed-back design. It blocks noise from reaching your ears, not the microphone.

Active noise cancellation is not the same thing either. See https://krisp.ai/ for what you really need, and this is not something best done at the physical device level.

[ericd]

Pretty sure they're referring to ambient noise cancellation using the microphones to make it so the background noise doesn't come through your microphone to the other participants while on a call.

[jmole]

Airpods are much worse than Earpods for conference calling, no matter what the situation.

[ogre_codes]

Maybe there are some headphones with better ambient noice cancellation, but AirPods don't seem any worse than the wired headphones I've used until this point. I just stopped doing conference calls at Starbucks or I go outside where noise cancellation works a lot better.

When I got hired for my current job I did both interviews from the parking lot of a local Starbucks for exactly this reason.

[allworknoplay]

I'd argue it is -- my earbuds stick the mic right near my mouth, and I can hold it nearer if needed. Not so with airpods?