Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation review: Meet me in the middle

I wouldn’t say I was always an AirPods fan – the first design was questionable at best, but that was the opinion I held back in 2016 before using them. Never judge a book by its cover they say. After actually trying them, my opinion changed considerably, and that was entirely down to their functionality and convenience. They were second to none at the time and they remain my headphones of choice for day-to-day use. 

Apple’s AirPods have come along way in 8 years, not just shrinking in size and upping their comfort game, but in introducing a host of features that make them even more desirable for Apple users. The Apple AirPods 4 come in two models – one with active noise cancellation (ANC) and some additional extras, and one without the ANC and extras but with the same sound architecture. I’ve been using the Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation ahead of their release and this is what I thought compared to my trusty AirPods Pro 2nd Gen. Can the mid-range AirPods 4 with ANC cut it?

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The Disconnekt Downlow

Apple’s AirPods 4 with ANC offer a comfortable fit, good sound quality and decent active noise cancellation considering they don’t have silicone tips. If active noise cancellation is your main priority, I would still recommend the AirPods Pro 2nd Gen over the AirPods 4 with ANC, for both sound quality and a more natural ANC. But, if you aren’t a fan of silicone tips or you’re looking for something a little cheaper, the AirPods 4 with ANC deliver balanced sound, a superb feature set for Apple users and a happy compromise of features and price.

Buy for £179 on Amazon

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The reasons you should choose the Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation

I’ll be very upfront here: the AirPods 4 with ANC had a pretty tough job on their hands. When I started testing these, I was no longer somebody who had never used AirPods. Instead, I was somebody who had used Apple’s top-tier AirPods Pro 2 for a couple of years. It’s fair to say that my expectations were high for these new mid-range AirPods.

A little mean, perhaps, to hold the AirPods 4 with ANC to the same standards as the AirPods Pro 2 given the Pros are more expensive. But the Pros aren’t that much more, especially on shopping holidays like Prime Day and Black Friday, so the AirPods 4 with ANC had to be good enough that they were worth the extra cash over the standard AirPods 4 (without ANC).

It’s lucky then, that the sound quality is decent and well balanced – something the AirPods 3rd generation offered when they launched back in 2021 and the AirPods 4 have improved upon. The AirPods 4 with ANC don’t deliver quite the same clarity as the AirPods Pro 2, but that’s to be expected. Vocals were still detailed, there was a healthy amount of bass and you’ll find good distinction across various tracks and genres. They are solid performers overall and the fact that they don’t quite match the AirPods Pro 2 probably won’t matter given there’s a good chance the AirPods 4 with ANC will appeal to those coming to AirPods for the first time or upgrading from the AirPods 2 or AirPods 3, rather than those downgrading from the AirPods Pro 2.

AirPods 4 with ANC are also excellent for calls. It sounds like an obvious statement to make given I’ve just highlighted their decent sound performance but you’d be surprised how many in-ear headphones are great for music and awful for calls. I use AirPods more for calls than anything else – unless I’m commuting and then it’s music and podcasts that take over my ears – and the AirPods 4 with ANC offer a brilliant experience. You need to give them around 20 seconds to kick in properly, but that’s the same for the AirPods Pro 2 and once they do, you and the person you’re talking to will experience great call quality whether it’s an hour of chat or a rapid 5-minute catch up.

The AirPods 4 with ANC’s design is very comfortable, for my ears at least. The trouble with no silicone tips is that it is harder to ensure a good fit for everyone and so while the AirPods 4 with ANC sat nicely and securely in my ears, there’s a chance not everyone will feel the same despite Apple’s best efforts analysing 50 million data points of thousands of ears. Ultimately, I recommend you try before you buy to make sure they are right for you. I found them more comfortable than the AirPods 3 and while they aren’t as secure as the AirPods Pro 2, sometimes it’s nice not to have the silicone seal. Compared to the AirPods 3, the angle of the contour has been refined, and the width of each AirPod has narrowed. I also thought the AirPods 4 with ANC snapped into their case better than both the AirPods 3 and AirPods Pro 2.

When it comes to active noise cancellation, the AirPods 4 do a pretty good job, though it sometimes feels over-processed compared to the AirPods Pro 2. They will cancel out enough background noise to make the ANC worth turning on, but there was some hollowness, a little like my head was in a box, compared to the more natural experience you get on the Pros. The AirPods 4 with ANC block out the traffic on a busy road, a kettle when you’re making a cuppa, and I replicated a plane’s engine nose on the Sonos Roam 2 speaker too in order to test the ANC against the AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods Max. The lack of silicone tip does make a difference to the acoustic seal, requiring listening at higher volumes on the AirPods 4 with ANC and as I mentioned, more processing to effectively block out the background noise. But overall, the AirPods 4 with ANC delivered enough peace to make them preferable to those AirPods models without ANC.

You lose a little bit of battery life with ANC switched on – Apple claims the AirPods 4 with ANC will offer up to 4 hours listening time with ANC on compared to 5 hours without, and that’s reduced from the AirPods 3 that offer up to 6 hours. I found 4 hours with ANC on to be about accurate, but the case offers up to 30 hours and there’s quick charging too with 5 minutes of charge offering up to 1 hour of listening time.

What the Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation could do better

A lot of what the AirPods 4 with ANC could do better is the same as what the AirPods Pro 2nd Gen (USB-C) could do better and it’s more to do with their features than the design or sound quality. Now, let me just caveat that the features offered by AirPods are excellent – they are the reason you buy AirPods as an Apple user. I’ll talk in a bit more detail about the features in a second, but as this is the section for a little bit of moaning (we all love a moan), I’ll just highlight some of the areas I think the AirPods 4 with ANC could improve. 

Find My notifications are one of those areas. The AirPods 4 with ANC have a speaker included in their charging case and that charging case also supports wireless charging, as well as the option to charge it using an Apple Watch charger, all of which I’m here for. The speaker in the case means if you lose your AirPods 4 with ANC, you can use the Find My app to ping the case and that makes them easier to find down the side of the sofa. It’s especially helpful given how diddy the case is now, but Find My notifications – which are when you get an alert on your iPhone if you have left an item behind – are both a blessing and a curse. They occasionally ping even when your AirPods 4 with ANC are with you, which will make you panic you’ve left them behind just as you’re boarding the train even though they are in your bag, exactly where you put them.

Conversation Awareness mode could be better too. It’s great when bump into someone when walking your dog: the track you’re listening to will automatically reduce in volume while you chat, then increase when you finish talking. But it’s not great during podcasts or audiobooks. The volume still reduces when it detects you talking but I don’t want the volume to reduce when I’m listening to an audiobook or podcast – I want it to pause so I don’t miss anything. Every single second of The 5am Club is really rather essential to be honest.

Or better yet, with Siri Interactions that now allow you to nod yes and shake your head to say no, Siri could ask me if I wanted to pause my book when I start talking and I could nod or shake to reply whilst still continuing my conversation.

Last thing I would like to have seen on the AirPods 4 with ANC is volume control on the stem, like the AirPods Pro 2. There is a Force Sensor on the stem of the AirPods 4 which allows you to play or pause audio, skip or go back tracks and transition between noise modes, but you can’t slide your finger up and down to change the volume like you can on the AirPods Pro 2. It’s not a huge deal, but it would have been nice to have.

Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation features

I’ve already mentioned some of the features offered by the AirPods with ANC but I’ll highlight a couple more here, because when it comes to features, these mid-range AirPods excel. There’s very little they don’t offer compared to the AirPods Pro 2 and they have more features than the top-of-the-range AirPods Max too thanks to running on the H2 chip.

Active noise cancellation is joined by Transparency mode, Adaptive Audio and Conversation Awareness. Adaptive Audio is probably my favourite of the modes as it blends ANC with Transparency, allowing you to still hear some of what is happening around you but getting rid of those hums and hisses. It blocks out a kettle but not a scream, for example.

There’s also Personalised Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking like the AirPods 3. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I like it and I think it adds something to compatible tracks, creating a more immersive experience and making it feel like the sound is coming from all around you, whatever direction you turn your head.

Announce Notifications have been around a while, and they see Siri read out notifications that come through to your iPhone or iPad. You can turn them off, but I like these too, especially the Announce Calls element as it means I know who is calling and what is happening without having to take my iPhone out of my pocket. Siri Interactions are almost an extension of those notifications, and new with iOS 18. As I mentioned, they allow you to nod to answer or shake your head to reject a call – or vice versa if you want – and they work very well. They might even be my new favourite feature, and they are certainly less awkward than shouting ‘no’ as you’re walking down the street to reject a call or tell Siri you don’t want to reply to a message.

Elsewhere on the feature front, the AirPods 4 with ANC will automatically switch between Apple devices connected to the same Apple ID – another one of the best things they do, and there’s one-tap connection for Apple devices too. Plenty of other headphones offer easy connection for Android now with Google Fast Pair, like the Sony ULT Wear, so it’s not as unique as it was when AirPods first launched. Still helpful to have though, even if we do now take it for granted. 

This isn’t an exhaustive list of features, but I’ve highlighted the most prominent ones and the newest ones. Voice Isolation is also a new feature and one that is offered on AirPods Pro 2 as well. Whether it made a difference to calls or not is difficult to tell, but no one who spoke to me on the phone when I was using AirPods 4 with ANC complained about how my voice sounded so I’ll take that as a positive. 

Should you buy the Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation?

Apple’s AirPods 4 with ANC offer a comfortable fit, good sound quality and decent active noise cancellation considering they don’t have silicone tips. If active noise cancellation is your main priority, I would still recommend the AirPods Pro 2 over the AirPods 4 with ANC, for both sound quality and a more natural ANC experience. But, if you aren’t a fan of silicone tips or you’re looking for something a little cheaper, the AirPods 4 with ANC do a good job and offer a happy compromise of features and price. 

They are quite expensive (probably around £20 more than I hoped for) and there are cheaper in-ear headphones with ANC on board, like Nothing’s Ear (a) that sit under £100. But for Apple users, AirPods 4 with ANC offer a superb feature set that’s not too dissimilar to the AirPods Pro 2, making them a compelling offering if your budget can’t stretch to the Pros. The AirPods 4 with ANC deliver balanced sound, great functions and a fit that I found to be comfortable and secure.

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