Pros & Cons
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- Outstanding noise cancellation
- Superb sound quality
- Long battery life
- Built-in heart rate monitor
- Useful Live Translation capabilities
- Comfortable, secure fit
- Waterproof
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- No user-adjustable EQ
Apple AirPods Pro 3 Specs
| Active Noise Cancellation | |
| Battery Life | Up to 8 hours for earbuds, and 24 hours with case |
| Charging Support | Lightning, MagSafe, Qi Wireless, USB-C |
| Chip | H3 headphone chip; U2 chip for case |
| Connection Type | Bluetooth |
| Hands-Free Siri | |
| In-Canal Seal | |
| On-Ear Controls | Volume swipes; press and press-and-hold gestures (ANC/Transparency selection, calls, playback, Siri, track navigation) |
| Spatial Audio | Personalized Spatial audio with Head tracking |
| Transparency Mode | Standard and Apdative Transparency |
| True Wireless | |
| Type | In-Canal |
| Water Resistance | IP57 |
| Water/Sweat-Resistant | |
| Wireless |
To the untrained eye, the $249 AirPods Pro 3 look almost the same as the AirPods Pro 2, yet Apple has reimagined them, pushing beyond just audio and into the health and fitness category. They pack recalculated AI-based smarts and support features like hearing protection, live language translation, heart rate monitoring, and fitness tracking. Pair these advanced functions with leading noise cancellation, superlative audio, and long battery life, and the AirPods Pro 3 easily replace their predecessors as our Editors' Choice winner for noise-cancelling earbuds. Simply put, if you use other Apple products, these are the best earphones to buy.
Design: Small Tweaks Make a Huge Difference
Unless you inspect them closely side by side, you'd never be able to tell the AirPods Pro 3 from the AirPods Pro 2. They carry over the same basic look, which means they have a white bulb atop a white stem with some small black patches.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)Apple has reduced the size of the buds and redesigned them to fit more naturally into your ears. Each pair of AirPods Pro 3 comes with five eartips (rather than three), so you can find the set that best matches your ears and generates the most secure fit. Further, the eartips include a thin layer of foam under the silicone to give them some structure and assist with passive noise isolation. These changes make all the difference in the world.
I haven't used my AirPods Pro 2 in ages because the buds simply won't stay in my ears. They loosen and fall out in a matter of minutes, no matter how firmly I push them in. The AirPods Pro 3 fit much better, remain secure during movement, and are comfortable to wear for hours at a time. In fact, they are some of the most comfortable earphones I've worn and feel better than the $299 Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds and the $299 Sony WF-1000XM5.
The controls are the same as ever. One press plays/pauses media or answers/mutes a call, two presses end a call or skip forward a track, three presses skip back a track, and a press-and-hold switches between listening modes. Swipe up and down the stem to adjust playback volume. Though these controls make sense, I often find it difficult to find the right spot on the stem and end up accidentally doing something I didn't intend. Perhaps I'm just thick-fingered, so your mileage may vary a bit here. You can change a few of these controls, such as what happens with a press-and-hold gesture (activating Transparency mode or Siri).
(Credit: Eric Zeman)Apple hasn't shared the technical details for the drivers, so we don't know their size or frequency range. Apple only says they have custom high-excursion drivers with custom high dynamic range amplifiers. They connect to your devices via Bluetooth 5.3, which is somewhat surprising, since Bluetooth 5.4 has been around for years, and some accessories are already adopting Bluetooth 6.0.
The buds support AAC, AAC-ELD, and SBC, which is a short list of codecs. I'd have preferred to see Bluetooth LE and LC3. The Bose buds support aptX Adaptive, and Sony's support LC3 and LDAC for higher fidelity listening.
The AirPods may not technically have Bluetooth multipoint, but what they do have is much better. Thanks partly to Apple's custom H2 chip, your AirPods will automatically pair with and connect to any other Apple products you own, like your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, or Mac. I can't overstate how seamless this process is and how clutch it can be when you need or want to change connected devices in a hurry.
Apple has boosted the IP rating from IP54 to IP57. This means the AirPods are mostly protected against dust and can easily handle sweat and pouring rain. You can even drop the buds in a puddle without worry. Together with the more secure fit, the AirPods Pro 3 are compelling fitness companions for runners and beyond.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)The charging case is nearly identical to the Pro 2's but slightly larger. It measures 1.86 by 2.45 by 0.86 inches (HWD) and weighs 1.55 ounces, including the buds. The Pro 2's case is just a couple of hundredths of an inch shorter and narrower, but the same depth. The Pro 3 case is still small and slick enough to easily slide into (and out of) your pocket. You can plug a USB-C cable into the port on the bottom for charging, or place the case on a MagSafe charger, Apple Watch charger, or any Qi-certified charger for wireless charging.
Apple says its latest generation of ultra-wideband chip works better with its Find My network than before, making it easier to find lost buds. The Find My network can give precise directions from 1.5 times further away than the Pro 2 case, giving you a little bit more reach. I tested this by placing the AirPods Pro 3 in my backyard and walking away from my house. Sure enough, I was able to locate them easily and get turn-by-turn directions with my iPhone from more than a block away.
Battery life has improved as well. Apple has extended the playtime with active noise cancellation (ANC) from six hours for the Pro 2 to eight hours for the Pro 3. You'll get closer to 10 hours in Transparency mode. The case holds an additional two charges, so you get a total of 24 hours of ANC listening from a set of fully charged buds and case.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)App Experience: Deep Ties to Everything Apple
There is no dedicated app for your AirPods. Instead, everything you need to manage them is in your iPhone's settings menu. Thankfully, you only need to open the charging case near your iPhone and the AirPods pair automatically. By the time you open the settings app on your iPhone, the AirPods are already connected and accessible from the menu.
(Credit: Apple/PCMag)You can do more to control AirPods than just about any other pair of earphones available. No standalone app provides this level of system integration. You can rename your AirPods, use them to assess your hearing health, change the stem controls, manage how they handle calls, turn on advanced features like the camera shutter remote, access head gestures and Spatial Audio, take an acoustic seal test, and adjust your privacy settings. It's almost overwhelming.
One thing you can't do? Tune your own EQ. If you want to adjust the sound, head to Settings > Music > EQ, where you can choose from 22 different EQ presets or switch the EQ off. Only on a Mac can you create your own EQ curve. For whatever reason, Apple hasn't brought a user-adjustable EQ to its AirPods or other products for many years. This continues to be irksome to those of us who prefer our own settings to nebulous presets.
(Credit: Apple/PCMag)However, the AirPods settings menu does let you activate the Adaptive EQ feature. This tool measures your inner ear and surroundings and adjusts the sound to match. I found the results to be a little hit or miss, though they were consistently better than not using an EQ at all.
Heart Rate and Fitness: A New Selling Point
One of the biggest new features to reach the AirPods Pro 3 is their ability to measure your heart rate. Light-reading sensors built into the buds can track your ticker without requiring your Apple Watch. You do have to have your iPhone nearby with the Apple Health app to collect the data from the AirPods, but this additional tool opens up a new way to gather health and fitness information during workouts. In addition to your heart rate, the buds can track your calories burned and deliver prompts from Workout Buddy, Apple's new AI-powered voice coach.
(Crfedit: Eric Zeman)Apple says it custom-built the heart rate sensor, which is the company's smallest ever. It uses invisible IR light that pulses 256 times per second to read your heart rate. It works with internal accelerometers and gyroscopes and, together with new algorithms, generates highly accurate results no matter what you're doing. The company drew from 50 million hours of fitness tracking data via its recent Apple Heart and Movement study, which had some 250,000 participants.
Now, you can use the AirPods Pro 3 and your iPhone to track more than 50 workouts, including basics such as indoor walking and outdoor running, to advanced activities such as kickboxing and HIIT. The revised Apple Fitness app includes easy-to-use menus that let you select and launch these workouts, add music, set timers, and more.
I performed some basic measurements by putting the buds in my ears and going for a walk. The Fitness app recorded the workout time, distance, calories, elevation, pace, and heart rate, and generated all the graphs and charts we expect to see. For example, the Heart Rate section of the app detailed how long I spent in Zone 1 and Zone 2 during the workout (not enough of either). Apple Fitness synced this information with the Apple Health app, where you can share it with your healthcare providers if you choose. The one thing the buds didn't track was my step count, which was a little disappointing. I was hoping to assess the accuracy against my Apple Watch; alas, you need the watch (or your phone) to track your steps.
(Credit: Apple/PCMag)Workout Buddy is a feature of the Apple Fitness app that you can elect to use or not. It provides vocal encouragement, workout details (such as when you reach milestones), and more. I tested it for just a moment and found it distracting. When I'm listening to music, I don't like any interruptions. The encouragement seemed to drag on too long and made me miss sections of songs I wanted to hear. You may feel differently about it, however.
We'll continue testing the health and fitness features and report back
Live Translation: Get the Conversation Going
In addition to heart rate tracking, Live Translation during calls and in person is the other new tentpole feature of the AirPods Pro 3. Similar to how Google does things with its Pixel Buds, Apple requires you to download the languages you need translated beforehand. At launch, the AirPods support English (UK and US), French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. More languages, including Korean, Japanese, and Mandarin, will be added by the end of the year. All the language processing is being performed on-device, rather than in the cloud, which speeds up performance and improves security. You need an iPhone that can run Apple Intelligence for Live Translation to work. The other person does not need AirPods or an iPhone.
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To initiate Live Translation, you must say, "Siri, start Live Translation," press your iPhone's Action Button, or press and hold the stems on both AirPods. The AirPods use a combination of ANC, beamforming mics, the new H2 chip, and Voice Isolation to make it all work.
I tested the feature by having a conversation with a Spanish-speaking relative. I launched Live Translation with a press of the Action Button, and she spoke several sentences. There is a short delay, but the AirPods quieted her voice via ANC, so it didn't distract me from the translation coming through the earphones. Apple says the tool is listening for complete phrases and sentences to better understand context and colloquialisms. This means there were pauses to the translation as she spoke, so the AirPods and phone could listen and then translate.
In the end, it worked fairly well. Other live translation tools I've tested require similar pauses while performing calculations. I showed my relative the transcript of what she said, and she agreed it was mostly correct and what she intended to say. Speaking of which, you can have your iPhone produce a live transcription on the screen to make it easier to understand. Moreover, if the person you're speaking with doesn't have a phone, you can speak English and have it translated on screen to one of the languages listed above to show that person what you're saying. I'm sure everyone's mileage will vary here, but it's a compelling new feature, particularly for those who travel.
The AirPods Pro 2 will soon gain access to Live Translation through a software update. Like heart rate monitoring, this is a feature that Bose and Sony simply don't have.
Ear Health: Putting You in Charge of Your Hearing
Apple continues to target ear health with the AirPods, with Hearing Test, Hearing Assistance, and Hearing Protection. Apple claims that the improved silicon and algorithms in the AirPods Pro 3 make these features even better.
Your iPhone's settings menu encourages you to take a hearing test during the setup process. The test is more accurate thanks to the improved fit of the buds. With the Pro 2, you had to take the test in a relatively quiet space. With the Pro 3, you can take the test just about anywhere you are, no matter the level of background noise.
(Credit: Apple/PCMag)For hearing assistance, Apple says the Pro 3's Conversation Boost tool and Transparency modes are the big winners. Conversation Boost dials up the voice of whomever is speaking near you so you can hear them better while tamping down the surrounding din. If you need the Hearing Aid feature, you can run the AirPods for up to 10 hours in Transparency mode with the Hearing Aid turned on. Last, you can use the Hearing Protection feature to save your ears from loud environmental noise. I've found this feature works really well when you do something like walk past a noisy construction site, or when a large group of motorcycles rides past. But Hearing Protection is not strong enough for environments like concerts, where the peak volumes may reach 125dB, well above the threshold for hearing loss.
Noise Cancellation: Equal to Bose, Better Than Sony
Apple's marketing materials claim the AirPods Pro 3 provide the "world's best in-ear active noise cancellation." I think that's a somewhat subjective functionality to boast about, but I can say that the AirPods Pro 3 are significantly better than the Pro 2 and match the latest Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds in cancelling environmental sound.
A few things are helping here. To start, the revised fit and new foam-lined eartips assist in forming a better seal in your ear canal and physically prevent more sound from reaching your ears via passive sound isolation. Apple also has new ultra-low-noise microphones and more advanced computational algorithms to help generate the inverse sound signal to reduce unwanted noise. According to Apple, this means the AirPods Pro 3 block twice the noise of the Pro 2 and four times the noise of the original AirPods Pro.
(Credit: Apple/PCMag)The first time I sampled the Pro 3's ANC was in the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple's headquarters during the iPhone 17 launch event. Apple allowed attendees to don a pair of AirPods to see how they reduced noise. The buds practically silenced the sound created by hundreds of people yapping away in the cavernous event space.
Later, I tried the Pro 3 earphones on a plane, where they easily dialed the engine noise way back to a dull, barely audible rumble. The plane's engines didn't vanish completely, but the buds reduced the whine enough that I could keep them at a comfortable listening level throughout the flight. The only voices I heard were those closest to me.
I also tested the buds against my 90dB lawn mower, loud music, coffee shop conversations, sports crowd cheers, and public transportation. No matter the environment or scenario, the AirPods Pro 3 significantly reduced noise across frequencies so I could forget my surroundings and enjoy what I was listening to.
Of course, ignoring the sound in your environment isn't always safe, which is why Apple tweaked its Transparency, Adaptive Audio, and Conversation Awareness features.
In Transparency mode, the AirPods seamlessly blend your music with your surroundings in a way that sounds more natural than what Bose and Sony deliver with their earphones. With Adaptive Audio, the AirPods respond instantly to the changing dynamics of your environment by raising and lowering the volume of audio to suit the scenario. Conversation Awareness works hand-in-hand with Transparency; you can choose for it to automatically kick on when you start speaking, so you can place your coffee order at the counter, and the AirPods will automatically lower the volume so you don't have to remove your earphones. Apple's implementation of these features is superior to the competition, including Google and its Pixel Buds Pro.
Sound: Apple's Best Audio Yet
If there's one thing I've disliked about Apple's AirPods over the years, it's the sound processing. I've always felt they overapply algorithms to clean things up, even when they don't need to. The result has been a bright, bouncy sound that may appeal to many, but to me comes across as too electronic and not analog enough. The AirPods Pro 3 take a massive step in the right direction, and the changed algorithms bring them close to perfection.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)Apple says the AirPods have an "entirely new multiport acoustic architecture" that modifies how sound moves into the earphones, to your eardrum, and back out. This deepens the bass response, broadens the soundstage, and brings more clarity to what you hear. Further, Apple's new Adaptive EQ, which adjusts the sound to match your ears, tweaks things in real time. The result is earphones with a more natural sound while maintaining the bright character and pleasing bass response for which they are known.
The pulsing bass beats that anchor The Knife's "Silent Shout" throb with deep energy, bringing a dimension to the track that the AirPods Pro 2 don't generate. You can feel the beat as well as hear it, making it easier to imagine yourself experiencing the track in a dark club. The entire soundstage is broader, and this breathes new life into the song. Apple has taken care to adjust the high frequencies, too, which have clearer sibilants. The snap of the snare drum and crash of the cymbals are cleaner and sharper than before, elevating the response.
The AirPods Pro 3 are one of the few pairs of earphones that can reproduce the powerful, deep bass line at the 34-second mark of Kendrick Lamar's "Loyalty." The sub-bass tones reverberate through the 20-second passage before the main verse kicks in and continue to fill in the low end as the song moves forward. Despite this pounding bass, Lamar and Rihanna's vocals are clearly audible and not overrun by other frequencies.
Bill Callahan's deep vocal sounds rich, natural, and full of resonance as he launches into his song, "Drover." This track is busy with quickly beating percussion, an acoustic guitar, and other instruments that fill the background and yet don't distract from the vocals. The violin sounds just right as it bursts with licks throughout the song, and the strummed electric guitar that sometimes warbles in the background is just enough to add to the vocals without taking away from them.
I find the AirPods Pro 3 make the biggest gains in acoustic and orchestral music, such as the opening scene to John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary. Tracks such as these benefit the most from the expanded soundstage and earphones' improved ability to handle the subtle characteristics of instruments like strings, the piano, small percussion instruments, and multiple voices. Put simply, you can hear more of everything. In fact, I heard some low-sounding drum hits in Adams' Gospel that I've never heard before when testing other earphones.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)Apple says it took care to adjust the Spatial Audio experience with Dolby Atmos recordings, and it's plainly one of the more significant improvements to the AirPods Pro 3's audio experience. When listening in quiet spaces, you can make out the placement of musicians within the room, instantly transporting you to the studio space or lounge where it was recorded. This is the type of detail that makes listening to music via headphones exciting.
The sound from the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds has more obvious tuning, with the highs and lows pushed to a higher degree. You might prefer Bose's sculpting to Apple's tuning or vice versa. Sony still supports the highest-quality source files and has the most natural-sounding audio of the three, but that doesn't necessarily make the WF-1000XM5 better—just different. Simply put, the AirPods Pro 3 are easily the best-sounding earphones Apple has made.