Review: Apple AirPods Pro 3

Apple’s AirPods Pro are the best-selling headphones on the planet for good reason. Through the first two iterations of its high-end earbuds, they provided industry-leading noise canceling and call quality, as well as good sound.

The AirPods Pro 3 are better than ever, with much-needed improvements like increased battery life joining nice-to-have additions like twice the sound reduction (according to Apple) and heartbeat monitoring, and software extras like real-time translation.

The third-gen AirPods Pro are the best sounding, easiest to use, and most life-proof buds for iOS I’ve tried. Are buds from Google, Sony, Bose, and others as good or better in some ways? Sure, but the AirPods Pro remain an excellent product from a brand that knows a thing or two about audio. They’re the best headphones for iPhone owners who want a seamless experience and are worth an upgrade from older versions if you’ve been dealing with steadily depleting battery life.

Small Changes

Photograph: Parker Hall

You probably know what the AirPods Pro look like by now. These won't be visibly different, unless you're standing six inches away from them. The latest white elephant trunks are just a bit smaller and easier to fit in more ears, thanks to some ungodly number of laser ear scans the brand claims to have done between the last gen and this one.

It shows: Multiple folks with smaller ears tested our review units and said they fit better (or fit for the first time at all) than any AirPods before. They come with four sets of ear tips, ranging from XXS to L, and they’re thicker, with included foam to block more sound than the previous all-silicone tips.

The buds themselves look a but more stubby and a bit more curvy than the models that came before, but not so much that you would be able to tell the difference if they were in someone’s ears without close inspection. They're a tiny bit heavier (0.25 grams) than the old model, but that's not noticeable to me.

The same mildly flat indent on the stem of each bud indicates the location of the touch/squeeze controls, and there are black spots where heart rate sensors, wear detection sensors, and microphone ports hide. As with previous models, silvery tips bless the end of each elephant trunk, where a beamforming mic aims at your lips for maximum fidelity. These are all familiar, refined design cues from previous AirPods, and they are better executed than ever, even with such slight changes.

Well-Supported

Review: Apple AirPods Pro 3

I’ve been very impressed with Apple’s software support when it comes to AirPods Pro; last year it added a bunch of free hearing health features as a software update. That trend continues here with the addition of real-time translation and heart rate monitoring on these buds.

The translation can be activated by squeezing both of the buds at once, at which time any Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone (any iPhone 16 Pro or later with the feature on) will pull up the Translate app on iOS. Siri will then listen to the speaker in front of you and translate what they are saying in real time, provided they are speaking English, Spanish, German, French, or Portuguese. I tested this with my multilingual wife, who found it to be very accurate with her Spanish phrases.

This is great for multilingual work or education environments in the United States in particular, as well as for travel, and should help folks who struggle with more advanced phrases or need to deliver a more nuanced message in their native language.

I’ve seen this feature enabled on headphones like the Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 (which do this, but using Google Translate). Side by side, Google’s Buds and associated app offer many more languages and bit better translation (my Thai mother-in-law was very excited at how well it worked with Thai, which isn't available on AirPods Pro 3), but Apple’s version is still more than welcome.

Plus, the popularity of AirPods Pro means that more folks will start using these tools. For its part, Apple says more languages are coming soon. It will be adding support for Chinese (Mandarin, Simplified), Chinese (Mandarin, Traditional), Japanese, Korean, and Italian by the end of the year.

The heart rate sensor is another nice addition. The new sensors, which we first saw on the Powerbeats Pro 2 earlier this year, make the AirPods Pro 3 a real pair of workout earbuds. We compared the real-time heart rate results to multiple other fitness trackers and found them to be surprisingly accurate given that they’re taking readings from your ears.

An upgraded IP57 rating (as compared to last gen's IP54) means these buds can withstand just about anything you’d throw at them in a workout, barring actual swimming. Battery life is also improved, with eight hours with ANC on, two hours more than the previous model and finally enough for a full Western workday.

Sound On

Review: Apple AirPods Pro 3

The drivers inside the AirPods 3 are more than adequate for all types of music. They have a pretty noticeable V-shaped EQ curve that makes them sound somewhat like a caricature of acoustic recordings at times, but it’s not anything horrific.

These headphones are so boosted down low that I found myself dipping the 60 Hz on my Spotify App on iOS—you can make similar changes in Apple Music. This predisposes that you know this is an issue, or care; these sound decent even with the driving bass and too-bright-at-times highs you get with tuning like this, in particular when you’re working out. Tunings like this also help the ANC feel like it is working better, because they erase any high-end or super-low-end sounds that might squeak through.

I liked listening to Julian Lage's “Auditorium," which is modern acoustic jazz with bright guitar and groovy bass hiding between speedy brushes on a snare drum. Each instrument was distinct and very forward in the mix, giving what could be a sleepy song a sense of immediacy I've rarely experienced on earbuds. That said, most folks are gonna be slamming Taylor Swift or Billie Eilish or any number of modern hip-hop artists through these, and they do reward pop mixes more than anything else. Ginuwine's “Pony” comes through with low end so deep you feel like you're boating slowly through a swamp, the sizzling digital hi-hats and the group vocals surfing the wake.

Noise canceling is excellent, easily on par with the Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2 headphones I just reviewed (and which, coincidentally, Bose also claims offers the best noise reduction on the market). The new foam-lined ear tips on the AirPods Pro 3 create better seals and better passive noise isolation, and increased processing power means faster ANC response than ever.

It’s so effective that only the highest-pitched sounds make it through. I didn’t have time to fly with them in my review period, but testing with white noise and airplane sounds at high decibels on speakers showed off how well these headphones do in loud environments. They do so without any weird noise in the signal like more affordable buds can sometimes have. Noise is so low I couldn’t tell if I had broken an earbud on the intro to Andrew Bird’s very stereo recording of “Blood.”

If you are after Apple’s best and most iOS-compatible pair of headphones, you need look no further: The AirPods Pro 3 offer the brand’s finest mix of features, fit, and usability. That said, there are also great models from Apple-owned Beats, like the Powerbeats Pro 2 that are worth considering if you don’t need all the bells and whistles, and want something that is even more geared towards workouts.

If you are an Android user (or don’t mind giving up some Siri-specific features), there are a myriad of excellent earbuds in the same price range from Sony, Bose, and others that are worth considering. But I suspect if you’re reading this you’re mostly concerned about whether or not the new pair is a worthy upgrade over the old one. To my ears, the AirPods Pro 3 are the best AirPods yet.