They work perfectly 95% of the time, but that 5% I'm doing the dance of closing the AirPods case multiple times, hovering the case all over the phone, unlocking/re-locking until it decides to work again. This was the case on my 6s and 11. No feedback or errors, just frustration. My friends also enjoy their AirPods but acknowledge my experience isn't out of the ordinary.
At the gym packed with people using AirPods, my pair will sometimes cut, for just a split second, and is a constant reminder that I'm using bluetooth. I'm not disputing that the overall experience isn't better with AirPods, because it definitely is, but for me it hasn't been as smooth as promised. Especially at the cost of my headphone jack.
To Apple's defense, I don't think there is a wireless pair of headphones in existence at the moment that could handle that scenario better than them, let alone handle the switching scenario at all. I tried the hyped up Sony wireless earbuds that were released in August and promptly dubbed as airpod killers, and they do not support switching between multiple devices at all. Like, it isn't even a bug, it is straight up a feature that doesn't exist. If you want to switch devices, you have to reset the pairing and restart the whole process every time you want to switch the device. Returned them as soon as airpods pro came out, zero regrets.
I’ve been using my original pair for almost two years, then switched to airpods pro a couple of months ago. First year was on an android phone, after that it was on different iphones. At no point have i had any connection issues or had to fiddle with settings or pairing after the initial setup (which was as easy as just tapping the case with my phone).