Apple’s hotly anticipated September “Glowtime” event has come and gone, and it brought with it a wealth of new hardware announcements.
Highlights include the company’s new line of Apple Intelligence (AI) focussed iPhone 16 handsets, new AirPods 4 earbuds and a very modest update to its existing Apple AirPods Max over-ears.
But did it do enough to keep audio and hi-fi enthusiasts excited? Here’s what our team of hi-fi and home cinema experts had to say on the topic.
The AirPods 4
The AirPods 4 are the latest wireless earbuds from Apple, and according to the tech giant a massive sonic upgrade on their predecessors.
This is great, but they've been met with cautious curiosity as much as excitement by the What Hi-Fi? team. One key reasons is the arrival of an AirPods 4 with ANC variant, which aims to let them deliver advanced active noise cancellation, despite featuring a tipless design.
If the buds succeed, this would potentially give them a unique position in the wireless earbuds market, which is why they caught the eye of our hi-fi and audio editor, Kashfia Kabir.
The AirPods 4 with ANC are an unusual proposition: an open-ear design that aims to offer effective sound-blocking? These two concepts might seem contradictory, as the lack of eartips sealing off your ear canal means the AirPods 4 won't block as much noise as the AirPods Pro 2 or other ANC buds with eartips. But maybe they don't have to. Many people like the less intrusive open-ear design, so how well Apple implements its ANC tech in this design and which frequencies it decides to cancel out will be crucial – will it be a satisfying ANC experience at all? It will be fascinating to see if Apple can pull off this challenge, but if it can crack this particular egg successfully, then it could usher in a new generation of open-ear designs with ANC – hopefully at stilll reasonable prices, too.
Despite this our staff writers were slightly less enamoured with them for two reasons. First was Lewis Empson, who has continuing misgivings about a different feature, previously limited to the AirPods Pro 2, coming down to the AirPods 4.
Apple’s new AirPods 4 with ANC are right up my street as, to me, they seem like the perfect alternative to the pricier Pro 2 model. That being said, Apple has been pushing a feature on its wireless headphones for some time now that I just can’t get behind, and the AirPods 4 are the latest to fall victim to it. Dynamic Head Tracking, also known as the feature I immediately turn off when I use a pair of AirPods, is just awful in my opinion – maybe I don’t understand the true potential of it, but why would I want my audio to only play in one ear if I turn my head away from my iPhone? It’s not immersive, it’s just annoying. If I buy myself a pair of AirPods 4 with ANC later this year, I promise you now that the first thing I’ll do is switch Spatial Audio to “fixed” in the settings menu.
Fellow staff writer Harry McKerrell was also on the fence, arguing the AirPods 4 don't deliver one key change we've wanted from Apple AirPods. Specifically, an affordable option.
We spent a lot of the build-up to Apple’s Glowtime event speculating that we might finally end up seeing a budget, sub-£100 / $100 pair of AirPods. The AirPods “Lite” as they’ve been colloquially dubbed, were potentially slated to arrive to give Apple fans a cheaper way of joining the iconic white earbuds club, yet their failure to launch will have caused consternation for many, myself included.
The AirPods Max 2024
Ahead of the event there were a number of rumours suggesting Apple would launch a next-generation upgrade to its five-star, Award-winning AirPods Max over-ear headphones. Sadly, come the event what it actually brought to the table was a very modest spruce, which left some, our editor-in-chief (me) included, a little disappointed.
Prior to the Glowtime event, rumours suggested Apple was going to release a next generation update to its AirPods Max over-ear headphones. Instead what we got was a tepid refresh that added new blue, purple and orange colour options and USB C charging. No audio upgrades, no ANC improvements. While this isn’t a huge surprise as the AirPods Max still sound great, to the point we continue to use them as a comparison point testing similarly priced wireless over-ears, this is a little disappointing. The Max are beginning to get a little long in the tooth, having launched all the way back in 2020. With new rivals appearing every week, and established competitors continuing to innovate at a faster pace, I can’t help but feel Apple could do more, especially if it wants the AirPods Max to maintain a place among the best wireless headphones.
The iPhone 16
Like most September Apple events, the iPhone was the focus of most of the keynote. This year the new iPhone 16 line was unveiled with an overt focus on how they're the first handsets "built around Apple Intelligence" – its version of AI. While there were plenty of robust discussions about how the tech will improve camera performance, recommendations and more, Apple was oddly silent on a few areas the What Hi-Fi? team care about, much to the chagrin of contributor, Joe Svetlik.
It was telling that one of the first things Apple told us about the iPhone 16 was that it comes in new colours. In terms of hardware, there's not much new – a couple of new buttons, bigger screens for the Pros and some minor camera upgrades – so Apple focussed on the software. Namely, AI. And while it has the potential to change how we use our phones, as it stands, it doesn't make much difference to us fans of music and movies on the move (it doesn't help that the AI isn't even available at launch). With the iPhone 17 rumoured to be a much bigger step on in terms of hardware, I'm happy to stick with my iPhone 12 Mini for now. And I reckon plenty of people will do the same and hold off upgrading for now.
Despite the lack of any formal announcements about AV improvements, some members of the team remain hopeful, including deputy editor Andy Madden, who pointed out we won't know the full story until we get them in for testing.
From an AV perspective, there doesn't seem to be much to shout about when it comes to the iPhone 16, save for slightly bigger screens on the new Pros. But this doesn’t mean we won’t find any differences in picture or sound quality compared to the iPhone 15. Apple doesn’t tend to talk about audio unless it’s a new tech (such as spatial audio) or it changes the speaker configuration on a device, but this doesn’t mean nothing has happened behind the scenes. Even the new A18 and A18 Pro processors could have an impact on proceedings, so I think we need to wait and see before writing iPhone 16 range off as just another minor bump in specs.
The no shows
While Apple unveiled a lot of new hardware at the event, there were a few noticeable absences and devices we'd really been hoping to see alongside the new iPhones and AirPods, especially for our home cinema editor, Tom Parsons.
While there was plenty to get excited about during Apple’s iPhone 16 event – particularly, for me, the larger screen of the iPhone 16 Pro Max – I also found myself frustrated by what wasn’t announced. It has been more than 18 months since the last HomePod was launched, and to my mind, that should be a much bigger family of products than it is currently. I’m also desperate for the once-rumoured Apple soundbar which, if it combined the Dolby Atmos performance of a pair of HomePod 2s with the smarts of the Apple TV 4K in a soundbar form factor, would be immense. There are rumours that Apple is planning to hold another event in October. Will HomePods or a soundbar feature there? It seems unlikely (highly so in the case of the soundbar, which may simply never exist), but I’ll keep hoping for now. In the meantime, I’m very much looking forward to testing the new iPhones and the AirPods 4.
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