AirPods Pro 3 vs Pro 2: Should You Upgrade?

Tom's Guide

Kate went hands-on with the AirPods Pro 3 at the Apple event. In this video she runs through the upgrades between AirPods Pro 3 vs. Pro 2 to come up with an early outlook on whether it will be worth upgrading your wireless earbuds based on battery life, design, noise cancellation performance, and new features like Live Translation (which actually will come to AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods 4 with ANC!) The AirPods Pro 3 even keep the same $249 starting price, would you consider that a W? Let us know!

Transcript

00:00Hey guys, here's one of your first looks at the new AirPods Pro 3. Now you know I've been using

00:04the AirPods Pro 2 for a while, and while they were great, Apple has made some meaningful

00:09improvements this time around, so let's get into it. So what's new? First, battery life jumps to

00:14eight hours with active noise cancellation that's up from six. You get up to 24 hours total with the

00:20MagSafe charging case, and just five minutes in this case gives you up to an hour of playback.

00:24Although these do look very similar to the AirPods Pro 2 at a glance, the AirPods Pro 3 buds

00:31are in fact smaller. They also come with a new extra extra small ear tip, giving you five sizes

00:37total for a perfect fit. Plus, Apple has added IP57 dust, sweat, and water resistance for the first

00:44time. We're also getting the built-in heart rate sensor for workouts without an Apple Watch. This

00:50is a pretty neat addition. You just open the workout app on your phone with iOS 26, start a

00:55workout. There are 50 workouts supported, and your AirPods will track your heart rate. No Apple Watch

01:01needed. They even sync with Apple Music to automatically start a playlist for your session.

01:07Of course, I also need to mention live translation for real-time conversations between supported

01:12languages. That's powered through an iPhone with Apple intelligence, so actually AirPods Pro 2

01:18and AirPods Pro 4 with ANC will also support live translation, and as long as two people are

01:24having a conversation with any of these three buds, you won't need a phone to play the middleman or have

01:30that other half of the conversation. Now for audio quality, I got to listen to a couple of tracks,

01:35and the active noise cancellation does feel stronger. I can't actually say twice as strong as Apple

01:41advertised, but in the demo area, it was like the room disappeared.

01:45I wish I had the noise canceling on the whole time. It would give me less of a headache from being in

01:50here. Of course, the results depend on having the right ear tips, but needless to say, I think it's

01:55impressive. I'm impressed. Apple also apparently updated the microphone architecture for better

02:00voice isolation on calls, which I will absolutely be testing more over the next few weeks. AirPods Pro

02:072, the microphone quality has probably been my biggest complaint, so curious to see how much better it is.

02:12Quickly to recap, AirPods Pro 3 build on the Pro 2 with longer battery life, stronger ANC, a more

02:19comfortable design, heart rate tracking, live translation, and IP57 durability, and all of this

02:24comes in at the same $249 price as the AirPods Pro 2. If you travel a lot, work out, or just want

02:33Apple's best earbuds, I have a feeling these are going to be hard to beat, and I already know Apple is

02:38going to be selling quite a lot of these things right here. So that's my first hands-on with the

02:44AirPods Pro 3. I will be testing them more over the next few weeks, but from what I've seen so far,

02:49Apple has hit the mark. If you do want me to dive deeper into features like heart rate tracking or

02:54live translation, drop a comment below, and don't forget to subscribe for more hands-on reviews like

03:00this one. I'm thinking we'll do an episode of Setup Essentials, but again, let me know what you'd like

03:05to see. Thanks for watching, guys. I know this was a quick one, but appreciate you making it to the end.

03:10I will catch you next time.

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