Apple AirPods Pro 3 reviewed: feature-packed

Apple’s take on noise cancelling earphones made for movies and music and more gets better this year, with potentially the world’s best tech in the AirPods Pro 3.

When it comes to listening to music on your phone, everyone had choices. You can opt for a wired pair of earphones — a pair you might have sitting around that you’ve relied on for ages — or you can make your way to where all the technology is: truly wireless earphones with plenty of capability.

Earphones aplenty seems to be the name of the game lately, because they are positively everywhere. Everyone makes them, and finding the ideal pair often comes down to how much you want to spend and what device you’re connecting it to. These days, most of the feature sets are much for muchness, and so you might just find yourself buying a pair because, well, it looks good enough.

Some earphone models are definitely better than others, though, and one that has been consistently strong is Apple’s AirPods Pro range.

A pair of active noise cancelling earphones from the maker of the iPhone made to work with the iPhone and Apple’s other tablets and computers, the AirPods Pro are the next step up from the excellent AirPods earbuds, with the “pro” model providing greater isolation and sound.

Six years on from their original launch, the AirPods Pro 3 look set to go beyond mere noise cancelling earphones, bringing a fitness feature and some of the best noise cancelling tech to a familiar shape and design. Are these the year’s best earphones around?

Design and features

Now up to its third generation, the AirPods Pro 3 are clearly an evolution on what worked prior, as Apple tweaks the design.

The same basic shape is here — an earphone on a stem — but the look is that little bit different. AirPods Pro 3 have been redesigned to add more stability, fitting into the shape of the ear a little differently, which some people will feel.

Apple doesn’t cite the driver size specifically for the AirPods Pro 3, except to say there’s a custom-build Apple driver and a custom-engineered amplifier, as well as a vent system to handle pressure equalisation, inward-facing microphones, beam-forming microphones, and a chip system controlling the audio and noise cancellation with computational audio.

You’ll also find a little more in the AirPods Pro 3, with a heart rate sensor, accelerometers for motion and speech, and support for ultra wideband radio to find your earphones in the MagSafe charging case.

That case also sees improved water and dust resistance, supporting IP57, a change from IPX4 on the previous model (and a change that extends to the AirPods Pro earphones themselves).

In-use

Outside of the case, wearing the AirPods Pro 3 is easy enough, taking them out and sticking them into your ears. The fit is a little different from the previous generation, but it does grow on you, and Apple includes five different tip sizes this time, so you have the best chance to get a solid AirPods fit.

Once they fit — and you can test that fit using a test in the AirPods settings on an iPhone — you can either talk to the AirPods using Siri, or control the stems by squeezing them.

Squeeze it once to pause and play, twice to skip forwards, and three times to go back. Squeeze a stem for longer to switch cancellation modes, and also swipe up and down on the stems to change the volume, raising it or lowering it.

It’s pretty easy to use, and you can even trigger aspects, such as squeezing the stem to fire the camera.

Support for live translation is built in for iPhone owners, as well, handy if you need to translate what’s going on around you, though it’s one of those extra features you mightn’t touch, compared to say listening to music.

Performance

And music performance is where things get a little interesting, not necessarily because the AirPods Pro 3 are good or even bad. They’re just… different.

Some tracks sound staggeringly good, with a punchy yet balanced delivery. Others feel restrained and harsh at times, with the volume increasing almost randomly for little to no reason.

As usual, our test is performed with the Pickr Sound Test, a playlist you can use on Spotify and Apple Music to test your own headphones with, and it starts with the electronic of Tycho and Daft Punk, each of which offer a relatively balanced sound with surprisingly meaty bass.

By comparison, the mids and highs come across scaled back, but are punchy, and as punchy as what Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Cut To The Feeling” comes across as.

Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk” borrows the same vibe — clear and punchy and easy to listen to — as does the rock of Muse, David Bowie, The Beatles, and the Deftones.

Many tracks sound excellent through the AirPods Pro 3, with a dynamic and detailed delivery. The problem is this doesn’t stay this way for all tracks.

In Ariana Grande’s “Into You”, the bass is so hefty, it seems to scream for restraint, and the volume is pushed up in the chorus more than it should. This isn’t what normally happens, which begs the question: why?

The mix on Maroon 5’s “Animal” is overly spacious, as if the soundstage was expanded unnecessarily into a large hall, and comes off shallow while the bass rooms. And confusingly, it also raises the volume in the chorus once again, just like the Ariana Grande track.

Even our one Rage Against the Machine track offered up the same problems: fluctuating volumes with an overly harsh delivery at times.

It’s an interesting problem that suggests Apple’s Adaptive EQ could be getting in the way of some tracks. The system, which is designed to take into account your ear geometry, fit, and the track itself, might just be a little too aggressive at times.

There’s actually no controllable equaliser on the AirPods Pro, and also no way to turn off the Adaptive EQ, either. You can control the “Adaptive Audio” setting, but that seems to be more about how much noise gets in and out, and less the equaliser.

We can’t help but think an equaliser could fix all of this. With most other earphones, you can change the sound signature to make it more for genres or just left as a “signature sound”.

Apple could theoretically do the same, and let you turn its automatic and adaptive EQ feature on and off to find out whether that’s the cause. But because you can’t — because we can’t — we simply have to assume that the automatic equaliser is the reason some songs work brilliantly and others do not.

One thing is clear: as good as the AirPods Pro 3 are, they’re not quite as well-rounded as the AirPods Pro 2.

Noise cancellation

When it comes to noise cancellation, that’s another story altogether.

Apple has made huge strides with active noise cancellation, delivering what it calls the “world’s best in-ear active noise cancellation”, and it may well be right.

The system boasts up to twice the cancellation compared to its predecessor, and up to four times the original pair, using a combination of computation audio and improvements to the ear tips to make bring this system to life.

At the ear tip level, Apple is using a tip made of silicone and foam to block out more sound, resulting in a material that isn’t a huge leap from what Sony tried in its WF-1000XM4, another pair of earphones that came with a combination of materials, again using silicone and foam.

Apple’s approach means the ear tips are doing some of the improved isolation work, with the rest from a combination of microphones and computational audio delivering the improvements.

And my, what an improvement.

Throw the AirPods Pro 3 in your ears and the world just fades away, as if you’ve suddenly turned down the volume knob on reality. Some sounds bleed through, but this is some of the best noise cancellation around.

The noise cancellation is so good, that as I was typing this review, I almost missed the already-late train I was waiting for because I couldn’t hear it. I had spent so much time gazing into the screen of the iPad I was writing in that I missed the sound entirely of the train.

That’s a first.

Spatial audio

Another part of the AirPods Pro 3 is support for spatial audio, something Apple practically introduced into headphones several years ago with support for both an expanded audio track using Dolby Atmos on the phone for movies and also for music as part of Apple Music, while its earphones and headphones also support head-tracking to make that experience better overall.

Head-tracked spatial was there at the end of the original AirPods Pro life, and was also there in the second-gen model released a few years ago.

Unsurprisingly, Dolby Atmos spatial audio forms a part of this release, offering more head-tracked audio for Atmos tracks, as well as regular stereo sound that is upscaled to match the spatial sound (should you choose to turn it on).

It’ll switch on for iPhone with Apple Music, which works with specifically-engineered tracks found on that service. If you don’t have an Apple Music subscription and you listen with Spotify, you’ll miss out on spatial, at least for now (until Spotify adds that feature).

With movies, it’s a little more balanced, and you can hear spatial on the iPhone and AirPods Pro 3 with more services. Watching compatible movies and shows on Apple TV and Netflix worked, giving you a sense of surround sound by simply moving your head.

Atmos on the AirPods Pro 3 isn’t necessarily improved from previous generations, but it’s just as dynamic as it ever was, and could make your listening experience that little bit better.

Heart-rate monitor

One of the more unusual features in the AirPods Pro 3 isn’t actually there for sound, but rather your fitness. It’s a little like the Beats Powerbeats Pro from last year, but made a little differently, with support for heart-rate tracking from your ears.

Beats didn’t do it first — Jabra was there a few years ago, and Sennheiser afterwards — but Beats has been dabbling with heart rate tracking from your ears using the sensor out of an Apple Watch, giving you a little more information when you decide to work out with the earphones.

Apple is following a similar strategy, but using a custom heart-rate monitor and not just what the Apple Watch uses.

If you don’t use an Apple Watch, it means you now get heart-rate tracking for workouts from your ears, and if you’re someone who already uses an Apple Watch, you get a combination, with the app taking the best reading from either gadget.

Battery

As you use the AirPods Pro, you’ll need to chew through the battery, just like any other pair.

With this pair, however, the battery is interesting, having improved in listening time, but reducing the overall life for the recharge case, needing charging a little more often.

Officially, there’s up to 8 hours of listening with noise cancellation switched on — which is the default mode for anyone with a pair of ANC earphones — but you’ll also get up to 10 hours when ANC is switched off.

That’s just for the listening; the case offers an extra two charges, making it roughly 24 hours all up with active noise cancellation or up to 30 without.

These times are about normal, but not game-changing. We don’t have any major complaints, though. While you can get better battery life with some other pairs, a run time of eight hours of use and a total of 24 all up is actually roughly the norm, and totally fine.

If you need more time with concurrent use (and always worn), you’ll want to consider a pair of larger headphones.

Value

Apple’s price tag also isn’t bad, thanks in part to the price largely staying the same, increasing in Australia by a grand total of $30. In this day and age, that just sounds like the increases to the cost of living as opposed to anything else.

The AirPods Pro first and second-gen were both $399, and the third generation is priced at $429 (or $479 in New Zealand). That’s hardly a price rise to be concerned about, and is roughly where other big names are placing their truly wireless noise cancelling options. Some are higher priced, so again, this isn’t a stretch from Apple.

For what you get, the value seems to pretty much be bang on where it needs to be. Not much more than $400, the AirPods Pro 3rd gen price makes sense. It could always be less — saving money is always welcome — but we have few quibbles with the price for what Apple has made, and for what Apple has delivered on.

What needs work?

Most of the AirPods Pro 3 experience is pretty solid, especially if you have an iPhone or iPad with an Apple Music subscription.

Living inside the Apple ecosystem makes the AirPods Pro better, but it’s not completely perfect.

The shape of the new ear-pieces may not be as comfortable as the gen two model, and even for this reviewer, it’s been a little trying at times. They fit and they hold better — we’ll definitely agree with that — but they can also take a little time getting used to. It’s a slightly different design, and it shows in the fit.

The question of sound quality is also one that needs to be talked about.

Our experience both with the Pickr Sound Test and without delivered great sounding audio, though some tracks clearly struggled. We’re not entirely sure whether it’s a problem of Adaptive EQ or even Dolby Atmos, but a handful of the tested tracks didn’t sound as good as with the AirPods Pro 2.

We’re not entirely sure the fix, and it could even be something as simple as Apple issuing a patch. But our experience tells us these AirPods could be a little better, ironing out these issues.

What we love

However, the problems were only there on a handful of tracks. In fact, on our 25 track test list, only three stood out as truly problematic, raising concerns about the Adaptive EQ. That’s not a lot of trouble, to be honest.

So what do we love about the AirPods Pro 3? The strength of the noise cancellation married to the support for Dolby Atmos spatial audio, which also works on movies, too.

The sheer combination of these features helps the AirPods Pro 3 to stand out. Granted, you need an iPhone or iPad if you want to experience both the way they’re meant to, but if you have any model from the current iPhone range, the AirPods Pro 3 should deliver.

AirPods Pro 3 vs the competition

It’s worth noting that there is a lot of competition out there Apple is competing with, most of which offer more than just compatibility with Apple products.

There are earphones from Bose and Beats and Nothing and Sennheiser and Shokz and Oppo and Bang & Olufsen and plenty of others. Lots of choices for lots of people.

In the world of the iPhone, the obvious competitors to the AirPods Pro 3 are Apple’s own ANC AirPods 4, plus Beats models like the Powerbeats Fit, which are similar to the second-gen AirPods Pro, but with a more fitness-friendly fit.

For top-class noise cancellation, Apple’s AirPods Pro 3 really compete best with the three reigning champions in this category: the Bose QC Ultra Earbuds 2nd-gen, the slightly older Sony WF-1000XM5 (which we expect an update for shortly), and this year’s excellent Technics AZ100.

From our own reviews and analysis, the AirPods Pro 3’s best competition likely comes from Bose, which delivers one of the best pairs of noise cancelling earbuds, complete with a variation of active noise cancellation that plays nicely with any mobile operating system, something not even the AirPods Pro do well with.

Final thoughts (TLDR)

For folks living in the Apple world, however, the AirPods Pro 3 are an easy choice because they just work.

That has long been a vibe and mantra of Apple, ever since Steve Jobs uttered “it just works”, and the AirPods Pro keeps that vibe going.

If you have an iPhone and iPad and Mac, and even an Apple TV, the AirPods Pro just work with everything. You can easily switch your wireless earphones from one device to another and use spatial audio between both and just typically rely on the knowledge that you have a pair of earphones that will support your uses and needs. They just work.

That’s not a vibe every pair of earphones offers. Things are a little more fiddly in the Android camp, even though there is definite support for multipoint and spatial in the world of Android, albeit it being different.

But back in the world of the iPhone, the AirPods Pro 3 are the must have earphones for anyone who wants to live in a bubble of their own sound. The AirPods 4 are a nice entrance, and particularly handy if you hate earphone tips, but the AirPods Pro 3 are better in so many other ways.

Offering incredible isolation and cancellation, not to mention lovely sound, the AirPods Pro 3 are the earphones to consider if you have an iPhone. Little changes, big deal.

There are some catches, and not every track may sound amazing, but they’re some of the best and most full-featured earphones around. These are the earphones for iPhone owners. They’re feature packed, for sure. Recommended.