Odd AirPod

July 21, 2023 11:51 AM

Why do my left and right AirPods discharge at very different rates?

My AirPods are at most a year or two old. I charged them overnight and used both of them at the same time today, but now one shows 93% charged and the other 67%.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HoRFoo1WDdI5Iiowkle11kmJUxoCCet5/view?usp=drivesdk

Is this big variance within a normal expected range? If not, what might explain it?

posted by Dansaman to Technology (6 answers total)

One answer for this is if you used them for a phone call, it only uses one airpods microphone, and not the other one, so one will discharge faster.

Another option is that if you often use one airpod (just the right one) or even just for phonecalls, that airpod will have more cycles on the battery, resulting in the capacity to be lower than the less dominant pod.
posted by bbqturtle at 12:04 PM on July 21, 2023

What may be happening is that they are both discharging at the same rate, but one doesn't have a good connection to the charging case. I've seen this happen once with AirPods, and frequently with two other brands of bluetooth earbuds. It's annoying.
posted by adamrice at 12:13 PM on July 21, 2023

This happens to me sometimes. I find resetting them usually fixes it.
posted by General Malaise at 12:50 PM on July 21, 2023

I have the unequal charging problem. Cleaning the AirPods and case with a Q-Tip dipped in rubbing alcohol sometimes helps.

If the problem persists, you can get the wonky AirPod and/or the wonky case replaced through AppleCare. I replaced a set of Airpods piecemeal for exactly this problem through the AppleCare process.
posted by shock muppet at 12:56 PM on July 21, 2023

Is one of them listening in case you say "Hey, Siri" and using up battery? You can test this by going into the settings for your Airpods, going into "Microphone" and selecting the one one that discharges more slowly as the default microphone Airpod. See if the charging pattern flips over.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 12:57 PM on July 21, 2023

My understanding is that the one that you put in first becomes the "Main" and is used to sync with the other and to act as the microphone. Over time, that will cycle the battery more and lower its relative charging ability. If you always put your AirPods in your ears in the same order, try switching it up from now on to level out the higher batter demands for the one acting as the main AirPod. But even if the battery condition is good on both, the main AirPod will discharge quicker.
posted by qwip at 3:16 PM on July 21, 2023