$20 challenge: bargain lossless audio or basic, bloated sound?
Sometimes, you just don’t want to write what you gotta write. See, not only have I been practically begging Apple for USB-C audio on an iPhone for actual years, I’ve also championed Apple’s cheap – at one point, free – wired Lightning-ported EarPods as better than any AirPods on the market. So this is awkward, to say the least.
Bring a USB audio termination and EarPods together (which, it turns out, has been in the pipeline for a very long time) and I should be laughing all the way to my Apple Music Lossless playlists, right? Wrong.
Not even a timely wired AirPods Pro April Fool joke earlier in the year was enough to deter me from thinking this was a great idea – still I dreamt of feeling Tim Cook’s shiny-white USB-C-terminated wires grazing my cheeks softly as I turned my head. And I do so love a bargain! See the super-cheap J-Lab Go Air Pop earbuds, FiiO’s new inexpensive USB-C DAC, or IKEA’s $12 shower speaker for starters.
However, the unfortunate truth is that having spent a long listening session with the new EarPods, my excitement diminishing as each bloated and dynamically lean track presented itself to my ears, I have to confirm that I do not think Apple’s latest $19 EarPods are the right choice if you just splashed out on an iPhone 15.
There, I’ve said it. Nobody hates being proven wrong more than me.
I write this with an extra-heavy heavy heart because you see, these EarPods do support lossless audio – which is something no AirPods can currently offer using your iPhone (the AirPods Pro 2 are getting lossless, but only with your Vision Pro headset. Oh, you don’t have one of those? Join the club).
So, something that has long been a touchy subject for Apple – the fact that you need wired headphones and a standalone DAC to get at Apple Music’s own Hi-Res Lossless output – has been softened here; you’re getting lossless access for the princely sum of $19 that connects straight into your new iPhone 15.
