Apple announced the AirPods Pro 3 — their high-end in-ear wireless earbuds. Available beginning on Friday, September 19 at $249, the new model delivers substantial upgrades to audio quality and battery performance while integrating deep fitness and health monitoring capabilities. The earbuds retain the familiar outer design but feature significant internal changes aimed at both comfort and functionality.
The key features introduced in the AirPods Pro 3 and their direct impact on the user experience are outlined below:
Audio and Communication Enhancements
- Improved Active Noise Cancellation (ANC): New computational audio algorithms, foam-infused ear tips, and ultra-low noise microphones offer up to 2x more effective noise cancellation than the AirPods Pro 2 (and 4x more effective than the 1st gen AirPods Pro). Users should experience a noticeably deeper reduction in persistent background noise, making the earbuds more capable in highly noisy environments like airplanes or busy offices.
- Enhanced Sound Quality and Soundstage: Features a new acoustic architecture for spatial listening. Combined with improved computational audio, the AirPods Pro 3 should offer a wider overall soundstage and improved vocal clarity.
- Live Translation Support: Apple Intelligence delivers live translation to facilitate real-time, in-person conversations between users speaking different languages. At launch, the feature supports English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish.
- Conversation Boost: This feature automatically amplifies the speech of the person talking to the user and reduces background noise, a critical function designed to assist Hearing Aid users in noisy environments.
Health and Fitness Integration
- Heart Rate Monitoring: A new photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor has been built into each earbud, allowing users to measure heart rate directly from the ear canal during workouts. This enables accurate fitness tracking without requiring a wrist-worn device, integrating with the Fitness app to track over 50 distinct workout types.
- Workout Buddy: A new fitness experience, powered by Apple Intelligence, provides personalized, motivational insights and coaching during workout sessions based on the user’s history and data. (Requires an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone.)
- Fitness+ Integration: Fitness+ subscribers can now view real-time performance metrics on their iPhone directly from the AirPods Pro 3, including heart rate, calories burned, Move ring progress, and the Burn Bar, which is useful for competitive tracking.
Design, Endurance, and Sustainability
- Extended Battery Life: Battery endurance has been substantially improved, offering eight hours of continuous listening time with ANC enabled. In Transparency Mode, battery life is extended further to 10 hours of continuous use (a 67% improvement over AirPods Pro 2).
- Improved Fit and Stability: The design has been re-engineered to increase stability during movement and the AirPods Pro 3 now include five eartip sizes—including an XXS option—and new foam-infused ear tips to accommodate a wider variety of ear shapes and ensure a secure fit.
- Enhanced Water Resistance: The earbuds and the charging case now carry an IP57 rating, significantly increasing durability against dust ingress and water compared to previous models. This makes the AirPods more reliable for high-intensity workouts and exposure to rain or sweat.
- Recycled Materials: The AirPods Pro 3 are made with 40% recycled content, including 100% recycled cobalt in the battery and 65% recycled plastic in the charging case. The product packaging is also 100% fiber-based and recyclable.
- Case Tracking and Functionality: The charging case has been updated with the U2 chip, offering more precise location tracking via the Find My network.
