Review: Twelve South AirFly

AirFly from Twelve South lets you use your AirPods or wireless headphones with any wired headphone jack. Say you are on an airplane with in-flight movies or TV—with AirPlay, you can listen wirelessly. If you happen to spend time on a treadmill or stationary bike at the gym, you can listen to TV with your AirPods.The new AirFly is a tiny Bluetooth device smaller than a box of matches and weighs just 15.6g. You can plug any audio source into its 3.5mm socket and once paired with your AirPods or Bluetooth headphones, you can listen wirelessly. Even though AirFly is small, it contains a rechargeable battery that provides power for about eight hours of listening. Pairing your AirPods is a snap and AirFly remembers them so the next time you use them, connecting is simplified. It comes with two 6 inch (15.5CM) cables. One is for charging from any USB charger and the other is a 3.5mm-to-3.5mm audio cable. These cables are short to eliminate cable clutter when in use. It take two hours to fully charge the AirFly, and when fully charged the AirFly lasts about eight hours, there is a single button on the front of the AirFly, used to turn the unit on and off and for pairing. There are two ports on the bottom: Micro-USB for charging, and a headphone jack.

To pair the AirFly to your AirPods for the first time, you hold down the button on the front of the AirFly for 10 seconds, then you hold down the white button on the back of the AirPods case. But you only have to do this pairing the first time that you connect. In the future, you can just turn on the AirFly and your AirPods will automatically connect.
To switch from using the AirFly to using your iPhone again, just hold down the button on the front of the AirFly for five seconds to turn the unit off. Then open up the Bluetooth settings on your iPhone and tap AirPods to connect them again. It is even easier to switch from the iPhone back to the AirFly; just turn on the AirFly by pressing that front button for five seconds, and your AirPods will automatically disconnect from your iPhone and connect to the AirFly.

Although our world is rapidly going wireless, there are still a number of locations where wired audio jacks still exist. The AirFly is an accessory that bridges the old and new technologies, designed and built with the quality that you expect from Twelve South.