I have a theory about why one AirPod’s battery seems to consistently drain slightly faster in a given pair of #AirPods. This is in the case of listening to music, where the audio processing and output would be fairly balanced (ie, unlike a case where only one AirPod is being used for a phone call).

Here it goes… #

Each AirPod is an independent Bluetooth device working in coordination and presenting themselves to the source as a single device (MAC address). This means that only one of them (“primary”) is actually transmitting data to and from the source device, and is then passing data over to the “secondary” AirPod. This extra overhead means one drains slightly faster than the other.

Now this could be (and probably is) mitigated by dynamically switching the role of “primary” back and forth every so often to even out the energy use.

To note #

I considered the possibility that both AirPods are listening for data to their shared MAC and only one is sending transmits back to the source device, but I think the inconsistency of signal from the source to each of the pair would make this glitchy or otherwise unreliable.

Anybody out there know for sure?