Everything New hi everyone Aaron here for zolot and today Apple released a new airpods Pro firmware update bringing it to version 7A 294 this is for the airpods pro Supported Devices second generation with both USBC and lightning as well so it's only available to the public right now for these particular airpods however it's for preparation of iOS 18 so iOS 18 brings some new features and changes unfortunately there's no firmware update available for airpods Pro airpods 3 airpods 2 2 or airpods Max maybe they'll release it a little bit later but most of the features are on airpods Pro 2 anyway now in order to check the version How to Check AirPods Firmware Version that you currently have installed well if we go to the airpods 3 we'll just open these up as an example connect them to my iPhone this is running iOS 18 RC we'll go into the airpods 3 that doesn't have a firmware update and if you just go into your airpods scroll to the bottom you'll see the current version I've already updated my airpods Pro 2 and the actual lightning version came out before the USBC version so it did take some time to actually install after many people realized the update was out so if we go back in here scroll to the bottom you'll see the latest version of 7A 294 that's the current version that Apple released today and we have a case version at least my case is currently at 70880 so that's the current versions I have that brings the new iOS 18 features now if you're wondering how to install How to Install AirPods Firmware this this is a little bit tricky if you were running the beta you'll need to turn that off so let's go into the developer settings if you are running the beta I'll go on a different phone that's running that you'll see it's not here in my settings now I have my airpods connected to a device with the developer settings this actually had to be enabled using xcode and if we scroll down to the bottom of settings you'll see it here and again if we scroll to the bottom of developer settings we have pre-release beta firmware for airpods testing you'll need to make sure this is turned off for your airpods that you're actually testing out and once it is then you can actually just wait for them to update now typically in order for them to update what I do is basically put them in my ears connect them to my device listen to a little bit of music then once it's playing I'll just take them out of my ears put them in the case close it set it next to my iPhone lock the iPhone and walk away usually within 5 to 15 minutes they'll update on their own and then the next time I open them up go back into them they typically are connected so again we'll wait for them to connect there we go we'll scroll to the bottom and then they'll just be updated unfortunately there's no update button and it's not very easy to do now New Features, Changes and Updates as far as new features well if we go to Apple's website about firmware updates for airpods scroll down you can see the latest firmware versions here with 7A 294 we have a long paragraph here with a few sentences explaining what's actually new instead of just bug fixes and other improvements they're actually telling us what's new with this update so the first thing that's new has to do with one you receive an incoming notification or call or maybe a message from Siri from someone else or a different app you'll actually have the ability to nod your head yes or no to respond to that this works pretty well and needs to be enabled if you go into your settings for your airpods again you'll see it looks a little bit different for noise control but if we scroll down we actually have an option for this for head gestures if we go into head gestures and it's enabled you can actually nod your head up and down or left or right when you actually turn turn this on for the first time it will sort of walk you through how this works and then you can customize this for accept reply or decline dismiss this works really well and actually sounds like there's a little ball rolling around inside the airpods when you're trying to respond to these notifications and so what I mean by that is maybe you're responding yes you'll hear this ball bounce around in your airpods it's just a sound they've added that uses the motion accelerators or accelerometers and it sounds great you nod your head left or right to say no and you can hear a ball bouncing back and forth it's pretty great sounds sort of like a pinball bouncing around and works great it's a great way to let you know you're actually making the movement and making it work additionally the airpods now have voice isolation when on a call so similar to what the phone can do it's specific to airpods Pro 2 now so not only do you have noise cancellation here but when you're on a phone call let's try that out when you're on a phone call with the latest update just go into your control center tap on your phone controls and you now have the option for standard voice isolation or automatic you can change that back and forth and you'll either see wide spectrum if it's available but voice isolation is the new one working directly from the airpods themselves something else they've added is low latency for games so if you're playing games on your iPhone or iPad you actually now have low latency enabled and improved 16bit 48 khz audio when chatting with teammates and other players so that's something they've added they've also added improvements to personalized volume so you'll see some new controls here in iOS 18 you can enable that and it will adjust the volume of media in response to your environment so this works pretty good but I prefer noise cancellation on its own so those are the major improvements of course with some of the adaptive audio settings that we get with iOS 18 and some changes here but in general those are the major changes however Apple did mention some new changes coming soon that are pending FDA approval so if we go to Apple's website Hearing Test and Hearing Aid Features here scroll over these have to do with hearing Health you'll see it says coming this fall and if you scroll down it will say that it's coming this fall in an update but basically you'll have a hearing test feature as well as a hearing aid feature so you can test your hearing by tapping on the screen when it goes back and forth now we may need another firmware update for the airpods for this but again if we scroll down it'll give results for your hearing aid test and then you can actually enable them as a clinical grade hearing aid option so this is something again that's coming a little a little bit later that isn't here just yet if you go into the health app you'll see the same thing so if we go into Health here we don't see any updates here just yet but if we go to browse and go to hearing we have different information about hearing health and different loud noises with understanding hearing loss and much more so this is great it's coming a little bit later but again may require a different firmware update or may just work with this and it's not enabled just yet a few things I wanted Connectivity to mention when using this you may have already noticed how fast it connects to everything so just opening and closing it connects really fast to my device you'll see it's already connected here connected already and additionally switching between devices is super fast so if we go over to the iPad here now if Fast Switching I hit play on the iPad you'll see it's already playing here it's up in the upper right but if I go back to the iPhone hit play it switches right away again I'll go back to the iPad it switches again it's super fast in switching it works with a Mac works with iPad or iPhone I haven't noticed any difference as far as overall battery life it seems to work just as well as I would expect and noise cancellation throughout using the betas while I'm not sure it's any different now has been really phenomenal I use these to mow the lawn and I can barely hear the tractor so I'll listen to music or a podcast while mowing the lawn and use my airpods Pro 2 and they definitely cancel noise pretty well the only catch is you need to make sure that it's not on adaptive audio as it will sort of reduce different sounds based on that I turn all of this on just turn on noise cancellation and it takes care of the overall issue so in general this should be a big Improvement we'll see improvements with airpods 4 with personalized spatial audio and noise cancellation there as well overall sound Sound Quality quality remains mostly the same now from the betas it actually seemed to improve a little bit so if you're not on one of the betas and you're installing this for the first time you may notice some more pronounced bass it just seems to be pretty decent overall but I wouldn't expect any changes too much there it's mostly with the latest features with noise cancellation working a little bit better the only downside I've seen is Bugs when using these with a Mac I've edited some videos and sometimes they sort of start to lose their overall bit rate or connectivity kind of crackle a little bit and then they'll reconnect just fine or I can disconnect them from the Mac place them back in my ears and they work just fine that's only in that specific scenario though so maybe I have too many Bluetooth devices around or it's just something to do with that it doesn't happen on other airpods such as the airpods max but it will on the other ones that go in your ears one thing I Please Do This Apple would love to see Apple update is the ability to update your airpods directly from this app or at least this menu when there's a new update available it could let you know here and then you could just update initially these updates were only available for the lightning version I have USBC so it was a little bit difficult to get them to update so hopefully they'll do that in the future where they'll just tell us and tell us what we need to do to get them to update maybe we'll see that in a near future update I've been asking for this for years it seems pretty reasonable and I would like to see that with things such as the apple pencil as well we had an update for that as well today other than Which AirPods do you use? that though I think it's a pretty good update for the airpods Pro 2 they keep getting better and so far it doesn't look like we're having a replacement unfortunately we did get some new colors for the airpods max but they haven't changed anything internally it seems but maybe we'll get some surprises in the future with a change there either way I'm excited for what Apple has with airpods 4 let me know if you've seen any other changes with this latest update with the firmware I'd love to hear from you in the comments below I'll link this Conclusion wallpaper in the description like I normally do and if you haven't subscribed already please subscribe and if you enjoyed the video please give it a like as always thanks for watching this is Aaron I'll see you next time