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AirPods Pro 2 Users Report Issues With Connection Randomly Dropping

MacRumors said:


Some users of the second-generation AirPods Pro are reporting ongoing issues with their brand new earbuds randomly disconnecting from their devices as they listen to music or watch a video.

airpods-pro-2.jpg

According to user reports on the MacRumors forum as well as readers of MacRumors that have reached out to us directly, the new AirPods Pro may sometimes randomly disconnect from an iPhone while playing music or watching a video. In other instances reported by users, an iPhone or iPad may show the AirPods Pro as connected, but no audio is actually played. Reports suggest the bugs are sporadic and not caused by anything specific, with no clear fix.
Such problems are not entirely unique to the second-generation AirPods Pro, as customers of the original AirPods Pro that launched in 2019 have reported similar issues in the past. The new AirPods Pro, having launched three years after the original, has caused some users to be frustrated that bugs related to connectivity are seemingly not yet addressed.

The new AirPods Pro began arriving to customers on Friday, so it's still unclear just how widespread the bug is. Users facing similar issues with their new AirPods Pro are encouraged to make sure the AirPods and their iPhones are updated to the latest firmware and iOS version. The latest firmware for the second-generation AirPods Pro is 5A377.

Article Link: AirPods Pro 2 Users Report Issues With Connection Randomly Dropping
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I think some of this may be an issue with bluetooth on iOS 16/iPhone 14. In my car, the phone will auto-connect to Bluetooth on my car stereo, play for about 1-2 minutes and disconnect. Bluetooth was completely reliable on my iPhone 11(iOS 15.x). Sometimes during my drive I can get it to reconnect, but it will cut out randomly after that. That seems to match some of the behavior described here.
With my AirPods Pro 2nd gen, I have weird panning issues, or volume dropping out for a few seconds on one side or the other.
Now that I have my Airpods and iPhone updated, my Airpods experience matches my HomePod mini experience. Flaky but mostly working.
 
I think most if not all of these complaints have got something to do with the inability to use these AirPods properly. Try, to begin with, to discover that there are several ways to connect AirPods to different devices. As far as I'm concerned the simplest and best way is to let AirPods only connect automatically to the device they were last connected to. In all other cases you connect them manually, which at least with iPhones, iPads and Macs is a piece of cake.
 
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rcoranje said:
I think most if not all of these complaints have got something to do with the inability to use these AirPods properly. Try, to begin with, to discover that there are several ways to connect AirPods to different devices. As far as I'm concerned the simplest and best way is to let AirPods only connect automatically to the device they were last connected to. In all other cases you connect them manually, which at least with iPhones, iPads and Macs is a piece of cake.
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The whole point of going with the AirPods family is so that you don't have to do it manually, it's supposed to just work seamlessly.
 
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dadiy said:
So far mine have been fine, but upgrading from the original AirPod pros has been a bit underwhelming. Hardly the life change ijustine described it as. I just hope the claim of battery life is true as my 14 pro max which is worse than a year old 13 pro max with 80% battery health.
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I stopped watch iJustine long ago. She’s just a shill for Apple
 
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I've had this issue constantly with my pros. The original pods work perfectly, but the pros suck. I'm pretty sure it has to do with the overengineered auto switching system thats almost as smart as Siri...
 
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Oh Lordy. I think this is enough to convince me not bother about AirPods Pro 2 cause AirPods Pro 1 performs just as bad in terms of connectivity. The irony is, my other pair of generic Bluetooth headphone, that cost about half as much, has more stable connection than whatever magic chip Apple decides to put in. The only thing that pair missing is ANC. I doubt the value proposition of those expensive disposable earphone is as strong as they would like you to believe.
 
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I’ve been having pairing issues with my original Air Pods Pro and my new 14 Pro.

I really couldn’t tell if it’s the phone, or the air pods, or iOS 16. I was almost ready to return the phone in case it was a hardware problem.
 
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gluckett said:
The whole point of going with the AirPods family is so that you don't have to do it manually, it's supposed to just work seamlessly.
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They do work together seamlessly, but if you have two active Apple devices nearby the AirPods can’t know what device to connect to. It’s as simple as that. In other less decent words: RTFM’s.
 
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rcoranje said:
They do work together seamlessly, but if you have two active Apple devices nearby the AirPods can’t know what device to connect to. It’s as simple as that. In other less decent words: RTFM’s.
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Well, when one device is locked just sitting on the table, and the other is playing a video, it damned well better know which one is active. That's not in TFM!
 
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So sorry to read about the issues folks are having. May I recommend people always include their HW and software versions. (I know some people do this, but it would be great if everyone did which will help others with similar set ups know what to possibly expect.) Mine are working fine with limited testing.

My HW:
iPhone 11 Pro (16.0.2)
AirPods Pro 2nd Gne (Firmare: 5A377)

Status: Working as expected. Somewhat noticeable wind breakthrough in ANC when running (not as bad as 1st gen issues). Total listening time: About 2 hours including 90 mins running and some static (e.g. not running) movie viewing and music listening. No calls yet.

The new AirPods Pro are the only new product I have bought in this cycle so far. They arrived Friday but I did not have time to set them up until yesterday afternoon. First pothole was that my iPhone 11 Pro (on 15.6 at the time) needed upgrading to take advantage of all the features. I aborted the set up.

I then decided to go straight to 16.0.2. (I am guessing 15.7 would have sufficed for the features.) An hour later, I came back to pairing the new APPs. That all worked fine, and I then experimented with the personalized spatial audio set up. I found it very difficult to actually hold the phone the right distance without looking at it to scan the ears from each side. I am sure I looked ridiculous. (Note to Apple: Add voice prompts instead of a variety of mostly indistinguishable beeps and chimes.)

Next I played some recent movies to hear how those sounded. I tried Dune (2021) (fine but not actually in Atmos on the phone) and the director's cut of Star Trek The Motion Picture which did have Atmos. That 2nd film sounded great with effects and music but I did not love the way the voices sounded. I left the APPs in fixed spatial audio mode.

Next up was a variety of musical tracks. Those mostly sounded great. ANC was perfect inside.

Today I went for a 90 min run with the APPs. Listened to an audible audiobook for part and music for the rest. Both sounded great. I did notice some wind noise which reminded me of the original APPs trying to deal with my rapidly changing position vs the wind and not keeping up with the cancellation. Not terrible nor as bad as 3 years ago, but not perfect. The rest of ANC was great. In fact, maybe a bit too good for outdoor running near cars. I will form a solid opinion on that in a few days. (My pace today was 10 min/mile, and there was a light breeze.)

As to this thread's subject, no drops at all (so far!) in my audio with the iPhone. I have not tried them on my 13" iPad Pro (2021) or 16" MacBook Pro (mid-2019) yet.

I did notice that the firmware has already updated but I don't know if that happened before my run today or not. I guess it must have between my movie/music watching and before I ran since they charged overnight and have not been charged since my run.

Lastly, I opted for personal engraving. No cute emoji but rather my initials and year which will help me distinguish them from my 1st generation pair and likely the additional 2nd set I will buy in 2023. (I run marathons, and even with my 4 hour running time, supposedly below the life of the device, they always lose power before I finish. And this happened 2 weeks ago on my recently replaced 1st gen ones due to the dreaded crackle - glad that is still covered.) I absolutely love that the engraving (and not just emojis) show up in the iOS interface. Such a simple thing, but that did give me joy and also provides actual function.

Best of luck to everyone else and hope for clear, uninterrupted audio ahead for all.
 
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t0rqx said:
“Yes we forgot. You need to upgrade to an iPhone 14 to make it work seamlessly.” These bugs are exactly the signs of a company on their prime and derailing from what made them great in the first place.
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Oddly enough I am having similar issues with my 1st Gen AirPods Pro and my iPhone 14 so may be an iOS 16 issue.
 
nmco88 said:
I’ve been having pairing issues with my original Air Pods Pro and my new 14 Pro.

I really couldn’t tell if it’s the phone, or the air pods, or iOS 16. I was almost ready to return the phone in case it was a hardware problem.
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Same here. I think it may be iOS 16 more than the hardware.
 
GDMcG said:
Same here. I think it may be iOS 16 more than the hardware.
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Yea it feels like it. It’s hard to reproduce but definitely feels worse with my 14 Pro on 16.0.2 than my 12 Pro with 16.0.1, hoping it’s the software.
 
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Something I’ve been noticing with mine is I’ll be listening to music normally but after 15 minutes or so the quality will drop by half and it sounds like I’m back in the 90’s with a free pair of headphones they used to give you on long flights. Pulling the buds out and putting them back in seems to resolve the issue but it’s becoming annoying due to the frequency of the issue.
 
I have a lot of these problems with mine. Also some kind of weird warble, almost like cross talk or it can’t decide which earpiece to send things through.
 
KPOM said:
True. In particular, the feature that switches between different Apple devices automatically doesn't work as well as it should.
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This problem causes Airpods and Apple to be seen as a joke amongst business people who just wont use them.
(Unless you have no other Apple sources like a Mac or iPad. Then you can use them with one iPhone).

You should be able to lock Airpods to one device which connects as soon as you activate them.

And please don't point me to the MR and other solutions online which just don’t work.
 
GDMcG said:
Oddly enough I am having similar issues with my 1st Gen AirPods Pro and my iPhone 14 so may be an iOS 16 issue.
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Probably goes the other way around too. Need to upgrade to the Airpods Pro 2 if you purchased an iPhone 14 for seamless integration. First signs of forced upgrade (like many times before). This and iOS16 is indeed really buggy. Prioritization always lies with new products as they make the future revenue. In this case Apple dropped the ball for both products.
 
I confirm I'm having the same issues: volume slider in lockscreen widget seems to vibrate left/right, connection keeps dropping until I put them back in the case and take them out again and reconnect.
 
dannyyankou said:
Well I guess I'm not going to upgrade. My originals are starting to have the static issue again, I guess I'm getting them replaced again.
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By static issues do you mean the rattle? Mine had the rattle and was replaced. I may be experiencing that again but am not fully sure yet.
 
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