I hope they've made the metal contacts inside the case a bit sturdier, because I'm often getting one or both of my AirPods drained to 0% when I take them out of the case, due to contact issues (I assume).

mostly likely you need to clean your case

Always do when this happens. I blow into it, and there's no visible dirt on the metal contacts either. Also, a friend of mine also reported the same for their AirPods Pro 2.

It is pretty hard to see in the case and what I found is even when it looked clean, when I used a tool to dig around a bit there was almost always some gunk in there causing the charging issues.

Honestly the most frustrating thing about the pros tbh.