They’re the matte black Android and Apple compatible ‘AirPods’ we’ve been demanding since day one, with wireless charging, voice control, Bluetooth 5.0 and even, according to the website, an “H1 chip”, all for less than £40, and all thanks to a mysterious British startup.
It’s no exaggeration, but these bargain-priced BlankPods (£39.99) – costing a staggering £160 less than the £200 AirPods with wireless charging case – are an exceptional imitation of the Apple originals, and it’s little wonder, given that the website openly admits, “our primary objective to create wireless earphones which closely replicate the ones from leading competitors, both in quality and design”.
BLANKPODS
Next to a pair of AirPods, the BlankPods case looks virtually identical. Same size, same curves, same lightening port (cable supplied). The silver hinges have the same opening mechanism and boast a suitably satisfying magnetic snap closure, too. Inside, the attention to detail continues, with each ear bud looking so authentic it’s a wonder Apple’s army of lawyers haven’t strong-armed the company already.
Give the hinge a push, however, and there’s plenty more give than the original, and the case itself is also lighter and less robust. It’s also in a matte black plastic that scratches far easier than the high-gloss white. A closer inspection reveals the hinge might actually be plastic, not metal, but the aesthetic remains the same.
There’s no discernable difference in the way the buds fit – by which we mean, it’s incredible how something can feel so precarious, but never fall out. The user controls are virtually identical, and here’s the impressive bit; they connect to your iPhone in precisely the same intuitive way as the original AirPods, complete with connection pop-up window, stylish graphics and instant usability. The only way to tell them apart at set-up is the use of a marginally different headphone image.
The BlankPods don’t connect as seamlessly to an Android smartphone – no pretty pop-up graphics, just the usual check-list in the Bluetooth menu – but they did synch reliably each time. If, for some reason, you want to give the impression you’re an iPhone user, or just really love the AirPod aesthetic, you’ll not find a better option.
Performance stats hold up with many true wireless options on the market, although battery life at 3.5 hours is meagre, even if you can top up to give 24+ hours via the case. You can skip, access Siri/Google Assistant, play/pause as normal, and they connect instantly when you put them in and pause if you remove one for a conversation.
Sound
BlankPods review These AirPod clones cost just 40
BLANKPODS
It’s a remarkable effort, but they forgot one vital thing; sound quality. There’s an unescapable thinness to the audio, especially when you turn them up to block out background noise. They’re not an enjoyable headphone to listen to. There is a lack of warmth, a lack of space that is undeniably present in more expensive earphones.
n contrast, these cheap-pods also underline what Apple got right with the AirPods. In the past we’ve been fairly disparaging about the sound quality of the AirPods, but after about 20 minutes plugged into the BlankPods, we were longing for Apple’s infinitely superior levels of sonic mediocrity. Make no mistake, the originals sound terrific in comparison.
However, at £40 we didn’t expect audiophile levels of sound quality. Perhaps more so than in high-end hi-fi, in the world of budget audio you get what you pay for. And in truth, we didn’t, and perhaps shouldn’t, expect very much of anything for this modest amount of cash.
Legal or not?
Passing round the BlankPods to colleagues, every single person failed to realise these were not in fact Apple product, even those who examined the earphones closely.
Imitation AirPods are nothing new. A casual search on Alibaba will reveal multiple versions from as little as $6 (£4.98) some purporting to also include the H1 chip. The US has BlackPods, which too claims openly to have an H1 chip and offer the same feature as the BlankPods.
If you’re wondering how Apple can stand for such blatant imitation, the company will not offer any official response and merely directs people to its intellectual property guidelines page where it lists a “non-exhaustive” number of its trademarks. It also has a section for people to report “knockoff products” but offers no guidelines on what might be considered counterfeit.
After a few days of attempting to speak to someone at BlankPods, and initially being told it would not be possible to speak to him via telephone, CEO Ollie Pallister returns our calls. He sheds some light on the legality of the BlankPods, and that H1 chip.
“My private supplier in China gets the chips. We haven’t directly copied the chip,” Pallister says. Then why call it H1 chip? “The system replicates it. It’s the exact same. But it’s not the same chip if you broke [the BlankPods] apart, it just replicates all the functions.” Isn’t it misleading calling it the H1 chip? “No, because it works exactly the same way,” he reiterates.
“Before BlankPods I was drop-shipping the previous version on eBay and marketing them as AirPods, so Apple blocked it as I was using its trademarked name. Since then I got legal advice and was told you can’t copyright a functional product. You can copyright the ingredients. If we copied everything, we’d be in trouble. Everything [on the BlankPods] has been replicated closely, but not exactly. If you open up our earphones they do not look the same inside. We use different materials. Ours are a lot lighter, for example. The LED light is situated in a different place,” Pallister says.
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Siva Thambisetty, an associate professor in intellectual property law at London School of Economics and Political Science, however goes further, suggesting that these imitations could possibly be beneficial to the perception of Apple’s AirPods, and might explain why the company does not expend time and money in legal action.
“If I was to speculate on why they are not aggressive about pursuing competition, I would look to the source of the value of these AirPods,” Thambisetty says. “The market for Apple products is very mature, so those looking for the original AirPods are unlikely to be satisfied by an imitation even if the technical quality is the same or similar. This would mean that the trademark value of these products is of far greater significance than the technical features. Perversely, then you could argue that the greater the number of imitations, the greater the value of the ‘undiluted’ original.”
Verdict
The BlankPods work reliably well and tick almost all the boxes (except for that vital sonic one). When being used for handsfree calling they’re reliable, and while call quality isn’t exceptional, the earphones still quickly tell you who’s calling, albeit in an unfamiliar robotic accent.
For traditionalists, BlankPods are also available in white, and the company is currently taking pre-orders for a Pro version (possibly with or without noise cancellation, this is unclear from its website) for just £74.95. So if you don’t care about musical sound quality, just the beauty of quality industrial design (wherever it may have originated from) and functionality, they’re an absolute bargain.
If you want something that genuinely compares to the original AirPods, you may well have to pay for the original – and steer clear of anything that appears too good to be true.
