Did You Know: The New Airfly Hides a Screen That Only Appears When It Has Something to Tell You

SAN FRANCISCO - Did you know that the newest Airfly, the little dongle travelers plug into airplane seatbacks so they can watch the movie on their own wireless earbuds, has a screen you cannot see? Twelve South put a display inside the matte plastic body of the Airfly View, which went on sale on Oct. 27 for $79.99. When the device is off, the front looks blank. When it has something to say, the text “glows through the black or dark blue Coastal body,” Nick Guy wrote in his Wall Street Journal Buy Side review.

That screen exists to fix the one thing nearly every owner of a Bluetooth transmitter has struggled with: pairing. Most of these adapters have no display, so connecting headphones means “a series of button pushes and flashing lights,” as Guy put it. The Airfly View instead spells out each step in words, in any of 24 languages, including Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese and Polish, The Verge reported. On its European store, Twelve South describes it as “a screen that guides you through setup and use, then disappears when you don’t need it.”

Screenshot: @verge on X

The company’s own pitch, quoted by 9to5Mac, is that the display “shows each step of pairing on its own display, in any of 24 languages, whether that happens at home the night before or at the gate before boarding.” Once you are on the plane and plugged into the seatback jack, it “shows which headphones are connected and how much battery is left, then turns off when it is not in use.”

Image: Twelve South

The menu is short. In photos on Twelve South’s product page, it lists Add Device, Forget, Mode, Language and Reset. You scroll with the volume buttons on the right side and confirm with the top button on the left, according to the Journal review, which found the buttons “lack a satisfying tactile response.” When headphones connect, the screen shows their name as they identify themselves over Bluetooth, which The Verge noted could help a family of travelers keep track of whose earbuds are on which dongle.

That matters because the Airfly View can feed two sets of headphones at once, so “couples, friends, and parents traveling with kids can watch the same movie, each in their own headphones,” Twelve South said in launch material quoted by 9to5Toys. It also supports Auracast, the Bluetooth broadcast standard, though The Verge pointed out that this depends on headphones that fully support the feature, “and not many currently do.”

Image: Twelve South

It is a small object. The Journal measured it at about 2 1/8 inches tall, plus a 2-inch audio cable, 1 3/8 inches wide and less than half an inch thick. Twelve South rates the battery at up to 16 hours, recharged over USB-C, with the remaining charge shown on the screen. The box includes a zippered hard-shell case and a two-prong adapter for the split headphone jacks found on some airplane seats.

Image: Twelve South

The screen comes with trade-offs. The older Airfly Pro 2, which has no display, is still listed on Twelve South’s site at $59.99 with a rated battery life of 25-plus hours. The Airfly View costs $20 more, has a shorter rated battery life, comes in Black or Coastal Blue, and sells for €89.95 in Europe.

The original Airfly arrived in 2018. Twelve South’s 41-second quick start video from that year promised eight hours of charge and walked new owners through setup. Eight years later, the Airfly can simply tell them, in their own language, and then go quiet again.