Airpods: the infamous Apple product-made-meme that was released in December 2016.

My first reaction to their release was, “Wow, those look stupid.” At the time, I didn’t consider myself willing to take money out of my pocket to buy those things to dangle out of my ears. However, after much thought, about a year after, I bought them.

I loved them. From the beginning, they changed the way that I listened to music every day. I didn’t have to worry about the wires tangling when taking earphones out of my pocket. I didn’t have to avoid certain objects to prevent the awkward little head jerk caused by the wire getting caught on something. It didn’t feel like my head was being anchored down to my phone when listening to music as I walked down the hallway.

After using the Airpods for the past year and a half, I’ve finalized my opinion on them. There are definitely many beneficial aspects, but also the inevitable downsides to the Airpods. First, they just look stupid because the white sticking out of the ears just catches the eye every time. Also, apparently they’re pretty easy to lose, although I haven’t had that problem yet. The sound quality isn’t the greatest, and some sound also leaks to the people around you, which does annoy me at times. There are also some other small things like how they’re really hard to clean, especially the case itself. However, these are the only real downsides that I felt when using Airpods.

In my opinion, the Airpods really are a revolutionary device by Apple. Yes, there are several other completely wireless headphones on places like Amazon, but they aren’t able to connect as easily and quickly as the Airpods do. They’re also quite affordable landing at a price of $160. Compared to other good-quality, reliable, wireless headphones on the market, the Airpods are fairly cheaper. For me, they also fit very well and comfortably in my ears as opposed to other people’s comments. And most definitely, the advantage of having no wires at all when listening to music completely outweighs the disadvantages of the Airpods. What I mean is that I’m willing to sacrifice any day a little bit of the sound quality, aesthetic, and battery life for the comfort of being able to just pop out the Airpods from my pocket every morning on my way into school with little to no effort.