The first thing I did with the AirPods Pro 3 was try to shake one loose on a treadmill. I got the Pro 2s out twice a week for two years and they always slipped within a mile. The Pro 3s, with the new fit and the smaller stems, did not move. That alone would have been enough to make me upgrade, and I would have written that review.
The rest is bonus. Noise cancellation is meaningfully better than the Pro 2 — Apple claims something like twice the reduction, which is the kind of marketing math I generally distrust, but in practice the change is real. The drone of an airplane cabin drops to the kind of low hum you can sleep through. A coffee shop turns into a library. I have not tried them against the Bose QC Ultra side by side, but I no longer think about whether I should be using the Bose instead, which is the bar.
The heart-rate sensor is the surprise feature. It works through the ear canal, syncs to the Fitness app, and during a run it is within a beat or two of my Apple Watch. I don't need two heart-rate sensors, but if you've been resisting a watch and you already work out with AirPods in, this is a real reason to upgrade. Live Translation is the other new trick, and it does what it says — I had a halting but functional conversation with a hotel clerk in Lisbon — but the lag still gives the whole thing a video-call quality.
The catches are the catches every AirPods review has named since 2019. Battery is about six hours of ANC playback, which is short next to the eight-plus you get from a Sony or a Bose. The case is small and easy to lose, which I have done. There's still no high-resolution wired option; if you care about that you weren't shopping AirPods anyway. And the moment you try to pair them with an Android device, the magic evaporates — they work as plain Bluetooth earbuds, which is to say they work, but you've paid the Apple tax for none of the Apple software.
The ear tips deserve a paragraph of their own. Apple shipped five sizes this time, including an XXS for small ears and a foam-tipped option. I went down a size from the Pro 2 and it fixed two problems at once: the seal got better (which is what made the ANC jump), and the discomfort I used to get after about an hour disappeared. If your old AirPods always felt off, try the smaller tip.
Verdict: Buy these if you have an iPhone and you wear earbuds more than two hours a day. If you're on Android, the Pixel Buds Pro 2 are the equivalent and cost less.