At Potosi High School, every time you walk down the hall you will see someone with wireless earbuds listening to music. The most common type, Airpods, are lightweight wireless earbuds designed by Apple. Airpods have various models with different prices ranging from $129 to $249. The cheapest AirPods are the generation 2 model, which cost $129. This is the model I will be focusing on in this article. I am going to be comparing them to a cheaper option of a wireless earbud, the JLab Go Air Pop.

The Apple Generation 2 AirPods are a very nice earbud that offers many listening perks. They have a very strong battery life that offers more than 24 hours of charging in the charging case. Placing your AirPods in this charging case will give you up to 3 hours of listening in only 15 minutes. At full charge, they will give you up to 5 hours of listening time, and 3 hours of talking time, as they also have a built-in microphone. The Gen 2 AirPods also have a built-in Apple H1 chip. This H1 chip delivers a faster stable wireless connection to your devices allowing you to switch from device to device two times as fast. These are not the only advantages of the AirPod as it also has optical sensors and motion accelerometers that work together to automatically control the audio experience.

Brayden Edge, a junior at Potosi High School, purchased his own pair of AirPods about 3 years ago for retail price. Brayden said, “My AirPods were a bit more expensive than they should have been. After using them for a year, my battery life started to go downhill and they began to die quicker than they should.” Brayden also talked about some of the benefits that his AirPods do offer. “My AirPods are small and fit well in my ears and they have some pretty cool features too. I am able to skip songs, pause music, and answer calls just by tapping the side of the earbud themself. The charging case feature is pretty nice too.”

The JLab Go Air Pop are $20 wireless earbuds. This Cheap pair of wireless earbuds offer a lot of amazing features similar to the Airpods. These earbuds have a charging case similar to the AirPod with an integrated USB. This charging case offers 32+ hours of playtime at full charge. The JLab earbuds also have touch sensors, dual connect, EQ settings, and they offer a two-year warranty. The reviews on this product were also very good as it was reviewed at 4.8-5 stars. This is pretty good overall, as there are 795 five-star votes, 167 four-star votes, 6 three-star votes, 6 two-star votes, and 2 one-star votes. 

Liam Allison owned a pair of JLab Go Air Pops before purchasing his Airpods. He was pretty happy with the performance of his cheap earbuds. He said, “They had really good quality for only costing 20 dollars.” He also talked about how the durability was impressive. Liam said,  “The durability they had was really good, I even ran them through the wash a few times and they came out working just fine.” Since Liam also has AirPods, I asked him to compare the two. Liam said, “The AirPods are a bit more comfortable, and the sound quality might be a little better, but otherwise they go pretty hand-in-hand.”