Airpods are awesome yet annoying

Apple is pitching its new Airpod wireless headphones as ‘‘effortless’’ and ‘‘magical’’.

For my part, I’ve found them equal parts impressive and irritating.

I loved how easy they were to connect to my phone and being wire-free is liberating. But I missed having buttons to pause my music or adjust the volume. And at times, I found them just plain glitchy.

Airpods, which cost NZ$269, represent Apple’s attempt to move the tech industry from the old wired headphone jack to a wireless connection.

The company announced the devices in September at the same time it unveiled the iphone 7, which not so coincidentally lacks a headphone jack.

One of the best things about the Airpods is the simple fact that they are wireless.

It was liberating to use the Airpods – no wires, no fuss. And while I was somewhat concerned about losing one of them, they fit snugly in my ears.

Another great thing about the Airpods is how easy they are to connect to your phone and other devices – at least if they are all made by Apple.

The Airpods, which look like a wire-free version of the Earpod headphones Apple has for years shipped with its iphones, come with a matchbook-sized, flip-top charging case. When you open the top of the case, an image of the Airpods appears in an alert on a nearby iphone.

You can connect the headphones to your phone by simply tapping on the alert. You don’t have to go into your settings. You don’t go through the typically painful Bluetooth pairing process. Instead, it’s quick and easy.

Apple earns huge bonus points in my book for creating a new and better way to connect than the standard Bluetooth process.

But Airpods are clever devices in other ways too. Apple has designed them to recognise when they are in your ears, using both optical and motion-detecting sensors. Put them in, and they will automatically connect to your phone. Take them out, and they’ll disconnect.

If you are listening to music through them, you can pause it by taking an Airpod out of your ear. When you put it back in, the music will resume.

The Airpods don’t have any physical buttons. But if you do two quick taps on them, you can activate Siri, Apple’s intelligent assistant, on your phone. You can ask Siri to turn up the volume or to place a call. You can also answer a call or hang up by double tapping.

In general, these features worked pretty well for me.

One of the big concerns with wireless headphones is how long their batteries will last, something you don’t have to worry about with wired ones, which are typically powered by the headphone port.

Apple says the Airpods should provide five hours of ‘‘listening’’ time on a single charge.

I haven’t systematically tested that claim, but they seemed to offer fairly decent life. I listened to podcasts and music for close to an hour and a half and made and received numerous calls over the course of a day all on a single charge.

I found the sound on the Airpods to be OK, not noticeably different from what I get through my wired Earpods, but not as good as what you might hear through high-end headphones.

The Airpods are definitely better suited for Apple devices than they are for non-apple ones, but you can connect them to a Windows computer or Android phones via Bluetooth.