Same here. My wife washed the old airpods so she got me some new and "better" AirPod Pros. They looked perfect and since I did not really care about getting other ones I did not much research. In any case they looked genuine and worked for a while until their flakiness got on my nerves and I went to a slightly embarrassing Apple appointment where I was told there were scores of service requests for this particular serial number. She got her money back since at least in our country EBay the company is now the seller and could not run away and as it was bought with PayPal...
What convinced me that they were originals
- packaging looked genuine
- paired out of the box without much hassle
- showed up as air pods with serial number
Lesson learned and bought the new ones and these were the differences:
- print inside the lid was 20% larger in original
- packaging of original was not shrink wrapped
- slight off-colour white of the packaging
- the lightning port of the fake was not feeling right
- the button on the case did not click distinctly
- the button on the case did not enter the special mode after 10 seconds like original
- ANC of original light years ahead. More modes displayed on the menu.
With hindsight the biggest give-away probably were the
- shrink-wrap plastic around the package
- lightning port feel
- much, much lower microphone quality. But since I never checked that out myself as I don't use them much for talking and so complaints from others were not so frequent.
- imperfect find-my performance but since I did not care about this feature much I suspected I mis-clicked somewhere and gave up.
- transitions from case to ear to case with sometimes not registering that it was back in case (contact issues in the case?) not so reliable with impact on battery.
- battery erratic behaviour
I guess if I would have been in the market for them and then bought them I may have found out immediately but so I just started feeling Apple starts slipping on quality with new products more complex but worse. As I got them as a replacement and just wanted to get on with listening during my walks they were able to fool me. They are certainly good enough to fool casual buyers and they are certainly bad enough to hurt Apple's reputation for quality products.
What convinced me that they were originals - packaging looked genuine - paired out of the box without much hassle - showed up as air pods with serial number
Lesson learned and bought the new ones and these were the differences:
- print inside the lid was 20% larger in original
- packaging of original was not shrink wrapped
- slight off-colour white of the packaging
- the lightning port of the fake was not feeling right
- the button on the case did not click distinctly
- the button on the case did not enter the special mode after 10 seconds like original
- ANC of original light years ahead. More modes displayed on the menu.
With hindsight the biggest give-away probably were the
- shrink-wrap plastic around the package
- lightning port feel
- much, much lower microphone quality. But since I never checked that out myself as I don't use them much for talking and so complaints from others were not so frequent.
- imperfect find-my performance but since I did not care about this feature much I suspected I mis-clicked somewhere and gave up.
- transitions from case to ear to case with sometimes not registering that it was back in case (contact issues in the case?) not so reliable with impact on battery.
- battery erratic behaviour
I guess if I would have been in the market for them and then bought them I may have found out immediately but so I just started feeling Apple starts slipping on quality with new products more complex but worse. As I got them as a replacement and just wanted to get on with listening during my walks they were able to fool me. They are certainly good enough to fool casual buyers and they are certainly bad enough to hurt Apple's reputation for quality products.