I thought this was a very good year for Apple's September event, and I pre-ordered everything as soon as I could. Well, everything besides the new AirPods Pro 3. See, I love the AirPods Pro (on a recent episode of Comfort Zone I called them the best product Apple's made in a decade), but I didn't feel a pressing need to get them right away.

Then the impressions and reviews dropped, and the consensus seemed to be that these were an astounding achievement across the board and were low-key the best upgrade of all the products announced. I scampered off to Best Buy's website, which had them available for release day delivery, and I ordered a pair.

I'm writing this on day 6 using these things, and I gotta say, I don't get it.

Don't get me wrong, these are very good on the whole, but they're very good in all the ways the AirPods Pro 2 were good already. Let's go down the list of changes form the Pro 2's and see what's different.

  1. 2x better noice cancellation. I guess this is a bit better, but in my day-to-day, the difference is negligible. I still hear the world around me, and it was "if you didn't tell me it was better, I wouldn't notice it had changed".
  2. Heart rate sensing. I'm happy this exists, but I wear an Apple Watch, so it's unlikely this will ever be something I personally use.
  3. 8 hours of battery life per charge, 24 hours total when recharging with the case. This is a classic good news bad news situation. The battery should last longer when wearing them for long sessions, but you'll have to charge the case more often. This will vary by person and use case, but personally, I never wear mine for more than 6 hours at a time, so this is actually a downgrade.
  4. Better dust and water resistance. This is good, and as someone who runs in the rain whenever I can, this will give me more peace of mind, even though I've never had an issue with my AirPods Pro 2.
  5. The charging case is a bit bigger. It still fits in my coin pocket, which is what matters most, but it is a bummer that the case got bigger while my effective battery life got worse.
  6. Sound quality. This one I can't really notice, I'm just not good at determining headphone sound quality, but it's still really good to my ear. People who know this stuff better than I do tell me it has more bass than the pervious model, which doesn't impact me much as someone who mostly listens to audiobooks and podcasts on mine. It really let down Linus Sebastian, who deeply loves the outgoing model, for example, but some other people seem to dig it.

This isn't a review, it's more an impressions piece, because yeah, of all the things I bought this week from Apple (and it was a lot), I think these are the least worthwhile purchase for me. I really didn't see that coming.

And no, I didn't mention live translation since that's available on the Pro 2 as well.