This Common Habit Can Make Your AirPods Battery Feel Worse

AirPods represent a quintessential Apple product to the extent that they just work, and they've only gotten better since their initial release in 2016. Over the past few years, Apple has slowly but surely iterated on the design, while simultaneously introducing new models and adding clever new capabilities, like Spatial Audio and ever-improving Active Noise Cancellation. Overall, Apple's AirPods are arguably one of the company's most frictionless products. Still, every once in a while, you might notice that one AirPod loses battery a lot faster than the other one. In fact, this happened to me just recently. I was at the airport during a layover for a few hours. I had my music playing, and at a certain point, I noticed that one of my AirPods had 74% battery remaining while the other one had dropped to just 13%. 

If this situation has ever happened to you, it's not necessarily a fluke or something caused by a faulty battery. Interestingly enough, the way you're using them might be the culprit. More specifically, if you happen to be in the habit of using one AirPod while leaving the other one in the case, you might be inadvertently degrading your AirPod's battery. Indeed, this is exactly what happened to me at the airport. I left one AirPod in and put the other one in the charging case because I wanted to be able to talk with my friends, make sure to catch important announcements, and even chat with airport retail staff if making a purchase. And sure, I could have used Transparency mode, but sometimes it feels rude to have a conversation with someone who has both AirPods in. So, while taking one AirPod out can sometimes be convenient, doing so can adversely impact your battery life.

If you're charging one AirPod more than the other, that AirPod actually goes through more charge cycles. And the more charge cycles it goes through, its overall capacity to hold a charge starts to degrade. Indeed, this is why Apple has an iPhone feature called Optimized Battery Charging, which reduces battery degradation by charging your iPhone to 80% and only upping it to 100% before you wake up or need it.

Batteries age faster when sitting at 100% for extended periods of time, and the science behind this has been covered in various peer-reviewed journals. Specifically, academic research has shown that a fully charged lithium battery experiences mechanical strain at and around the electrodes, which can lead to the warping and swelling you often see with old batteries. Put simply, keeping a battery at a high state of charge for prolonged periods of time adds more stress to the battery.

So all that to say this: If you're constantly using one AirPod while the other one is in its case, you'll eventually start to notice uneven battery performance. You can reduce the impact of this problem by making sure to always use both AirPods at the same time. If you have AirPods Pro, make sure to use Transparency mode if you want to be cognizant of your surroundings. If you have regular AirPods, make sure to take both AirPods out when trying to have a conversation. The key is to treat AirPods like a pair and not as two separate earbuds. In doing so, you'll ensure that the batteries maintain a similar level of battery performance throughout their lifetime.