AirPods Pro 3
Apple (video, MacRumors, Hacker News):
AirPods Pro 3 deliver unbelievable sound quality and the world’s best in-ear Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) — removing up to 2x more noise than the previous-generation AirPods Pro, and 4x more than the original AirPods Pro. The updated design helps AirPods Pro 3 fit even better and provides greater in-ear stability during activities like running, HIIT, yoga, and more. For the first time, users can utilize AirPods Pro 3 to measure heart rate and track over 50 workout types with the new experience in the Fitness app on iPhone. Live Translation also comes to AirPods, making face-to-face conversations easier by helping users connect even if they don’t speak the same language.
Still $249.
Previously:
Update (2025-09-10): Tim Hardwick:
Apple’s Live Translation feature, unveiled during its AirPods Pro 3 announcement, is expanding to older models including AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation and AirPods Pro 2.
a reminder that if you use the Apple Store app — not the Apple website — you can engrave AirPods with your Memoji.
Update (2025-09-12): Juli Clover:
There were rumors that the AirPods Pro 3 Charging Case would get smaller, but that didn’t happen. It’s actually bigger than before, but it is a little less heavy. There’s no button on the back, with Apple swapping to the same hidden capacitive button that’s on the AirPods 4 case.
Audio quality is clearly better on the low end, with better balance. Active Noise Cancellation is also 2x better, though Dan wasn’t able to test the AirPods long enough to definitively confirm Apple’s claims.
Live Translation is available for in-person conversations, and it worked during a test with a Spanish speaking Apple employee.
Update (2025-10-07): Tim Hardwick:
In iOS 26, Live Translation enables hands-free communication by allowing users who don’t share the same language to speak naturally while wearing AirPods. For conversations with non-AirPods users, the iPhone can display live transcriptions horizontally, showing translations in the other person’s preferred language. Keep reading to learn how to use it.
I expected Apple to make them sound more “consumer friendly” by emphasizing more of the bass and treble, just like what they did with the AirPods 4. And they did.
[…]
Expect your average consumer and YouTuber to say they “sound better”, especially with the bass boost. This will be in the majority.
While the audiophiles and people who prefer a more neutral sound will absolutely not like it.
In the review video below, our own Dan Barbera shares his thoughts on the AirPods Pro 3, after testing them for nearly a week.
Apple’s AirPods remain, for me, the most difficult product not to buy. I enjoyed my AirPods 2 while they lasted, and using a set of wired headphones afterwards does not feel quite right. But these new models still do not have replaceable batteries. It is hard to write this without sounding preachy, so just assume this is my problem, not yours. I continue to be perplexed by treating perfectly good speaker drivers, microphones, and chips as disposable simply because they are packaged with a known consumable part. The engineering for swappable batteries would be, I assume, diabolical, but I still cannot get to a point where I am okay with spending over three hundred Canadian dollars every few years because of this predictable limitation.
You can’t beat the sound isolation of a good set of over the ear headsets like the AirPods Max or Bose Quiet Comfort line, BUT the AirPods Pro 3, with the good fit from above, have finally fixed that for me. The improved sound quality and fit get’s rid of bubble head.
[…]
Battery Life – while you can’t really test battery life when you get new tech, my test on Saturday was 8-10 hours with no problem in transparency (or as I like to call it – hearing aid mode). […] My AirPods Pro 2 have about 4-5 hours of transparency mode, and so getting thru an entire day with AirPods Pro 3 in transparency mode, is a game changer.
I’m writing this on day 6 using these things, and I gotta say, I don’t get it.
Don’t get me wrong, these are very good on the whole, but they’re very good in all the ways the AirPods Pro 2 were good already.
[…]
I still hear the world around me, and it was “if you didn’t tell me it was better, I wouldn’t notice it had changed”.
[…]
The battery should last longer when wearing them for long sessions, but you’ll have to charge the case more often.
[…]
The charging case is a bit bigger. It still fits in my coin pocket, which is what matters most, but it is a bummer that the case got bigger while my effective battery life got worse.
The AirPods Pro 3 are as unfixable as ever.
I find it quite disappointing but of course unsurprising that I cannot take a hearing test with my new AirPods Pro 3 on my iPhone 16 Pro running the latest iOS 18.7.1 update. These are all things that are less than a year old.
Two flights behind me with the new AirPods Pro 3. For context, I couldn’t wear the 2s. They felt okay in my ears, but after about 20 minutes of wearing them my ears physically hurt. I’m not sure what was going on, but I tried them on multiple occasions and just couldn’t get around it.
The 3s have not had this issue for me. For my <2 hour flights, I’ll bring these and never my on-ear Bose again. The space savings is great and the noise canceling is every bit as good. For longer flights, I’ll probably bring the Bose because 2 hours of (any) ear buds is just irritating enough that I’m ready to get them out.
I regret to say, not only do I think the AirPods Pro 3 are a disappointing update for me, I think they’re actually a downgrade over the AirPods Pro 2. I’m finishing this review at the airport gate, waiting for my flight to board, and the AirPods Pro 2 are currently in my ears.
[…]
The main downgrade for me is that for the first time in literally the entire history of Apple making earbuds, I lost the ear lottery this time, and these simply do not feel good in my ears. To be clear, they stay in there quite nicely, even over several hours, but if I wear them for more than 30 minutes, they become actively painful. I’ve tried every single tip size that comes in the box, and all of them have this issue.
[…]
iFixit’s teardowns confirm the battery change, with the new case sporting a 344 mAh battery with the Pro 2 case having a 398 mAh capacity.
The AirPods Pro 3 got early overwhelming raves but as more folks have tried them in more ears some of those first blush raves have been joined with more tempered opinions. Apple made a big deal about improvements in both the sound AirPods Pro 3 deliver and also how much testing they did to find the best fit for the most people. In my experience Apple scored a hit when it comes to sound and noise cancelation, but a more of a miss when it comes to fit.
See also: Lodewijk Vos.
Update (2025-10-30): Basic Apple Guy (Mastodon, Hacker News):
My trouble came at 39,000 feet when I first noticed a high-pitched whine coming from my left AirPod. The issue was that the AirPod’s ear seal kept loosening, leading to a noise-cancellation feedback loop and a painfully loud piercing screech from the AirPod. Attempts to readjust worsened the feedback, especially if I accidentally covered the external microphone with my finger. This happened multiple times, making the experience so unpleasant that I eventually switched to my spare EarPods for the remainder of the flight.
[…]
While researching this, I did happen upon a thread on Reddit which confirmed that others have reported a similar issue, principally with the left AirPod on flights, just like I tried to describe above[…]
My main gripes specifically with AirPods Pro 3, which I’ve not seen in any other review;
- Because the rubber tips vary in size, the case has to accommodate the largest. This means if you’re using small tips, there’s a lot of spare room, which means the AirPods can easily be mis-seated, breaking the charge connection.
- The case is substantially bigger than AirPods 4 with ANC. I would say ~40%.
- The volume swipe on the stalk action is very tricky to trigger.
- Any stalk action is a bad idea when it’s so easy to unseat them. I skip songs with a double press regularly, and nearly every time I had to push in and rotate after.
Some AirPods Pro 3 owners have been experiencing a problem with a static-like sound when Active Noise Cancellation is on but no media is playing, according to complaints on Reddit and the MacRumors forums.
Update (2025-12-19): Juli Clover:
We shared the issues back in late October, and despite two subsequent firmware updates, the problems haven’t been solved. Apple released AirPods Pro 3 firmware version 8B25 in November, and firmware version 8B30 on December 10.
Feedback from users who have installed the firmware updates indicate that the noise issues have not been addressed. Affected users are hearing static noises with Active Noise Cancellation on, sometimes with media playing and sometimes without. There have also been reports of problems with latency and sound syncing when watching videos.
Some AirPods Pro 3 users have had their AirPods replaced by Apple, but replacement earbuds have had the same issue, so it’s not clear if there is a hardware fix for the problem.
AirPods Pro 3 are rolling off the shelves sufficiently that Apple now doesn’t care to fix glaring bugs in the firmware. Used to say AirPods are the best products from the Tim Apple era, but this is such a new low.
1 Comment RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
>Expect your average consumer and YouTuber to say they “sound better”, especially with the bass boost. This will be in the majority.
>
>While the audiophiles and people who prefer a more neutral sound will absolutely not like it.
Feels like Apple is going to do a "Photographic Styles" to AirPods at some point, as a fancy name for what's mostly just an EQ.
