Apple on Tuesday unveiled the AirPods Pro 3. Three years after the release of the AirPods Pro 2, the AirPods Pro 3 comes with significant upgrades featuring a better Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), a new heart rate sensor during workouts, and improved battery life.
The AirPods Pro 3 come with an updated design. Apple says it utilised over 10,000 ear scans with more than 100,00 hours of research to make the AirPods Pro 3 the “most secure and best-fitting ever.” The new AirPods Pro come with new ear tips infused with foam that are available in five different sizes. They are also IP57 rated, which means they provide more sweat and water resistance than the previous generation.
According to Apple, the AirPods Pro 3 provide up to 2x more effective ANC over the previous generation and 4x more effective noise reduction over the original AirPods Pro. Battery life is now better, and Apple is promising up to eight hours of music playback with ANC enabled; this represents a 33 percent increase in battery life over the AirPods Pro 2.
For the first time in any AirPods, Apple has included a custom-built heart rate sensor in the AirPods Pro 3. “AirPods Pro 3 introduce a custom photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor that shines invisible infrared light pulsed at 256 times per second to measure light absorption in blood flow,” Apple wrote in a press release. “Combined with sensor fusion from the AirPods Pro accelerometers, gyroscope, GPS, and a new on-device AI model on iPhone, users can start up to 50 different workout types, track their heart rate and calories burned, close their Move ring, and earn awards in the Fitness app,” the company added. With Apple Fitness+, AirPods Pro 3 users can now monitor real-time performance metrics such as heart rate and calories burned, directly onscreen.
With iOS 26, the AirPods Pro 3 is capable of Live Translation. The hands-free feature is made possible by Apple Intelligence and computational audio. Live Translation on AirPods is still in beta but is available in English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish, and will be coming to four more languages by the end of the year: Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese (simplified). As per Mac Rumours, Live Translation will expand to AirPods 4 and the AirPods Pro 2.
The AirPods Pro 3 is priced at $249. It is available for pre-order already and will be available in stores from Friday, September 19.
