Apple has announced its brand new AirPods 3 in October 2021. We reveal what they look like, how much they cost, tech specs, new features, and much more.
The third-generation AirPods 3 adopt an AirPods-Pro style look with shorter stems and a more contoured design that’s designed to better fit most ears. Apple says the AirPods have been created to sit at “just the right angle for comfort.”
To provide improved sound, Apple is using the H1 chip to provide an Adaptive EQ feature powered by computational audio. With Adaptive EQ, a microphone monitors for sound and then tunes low and mid frequencies so each user will get the best audio for their ear size and shape.
A custom driver and high dynamic range amplifier work together to bring powerful bass along with clean high frequencies, and the microphones are protected with an acoustic mesh to cut down on wind sounds.
Specs & features
The focal point for Apple’s announcement in terms of features was support for Spatial Audio, which was previously available on the AirPods Pro but not the AirPods 2. They also offer Adaptive EQ.
We’re intrigued to note that the AirPods 3 also have a higher estimated battery life than the AirPods Pro. The Pros are expected to last a total of 24 hours, like the AirPods 2, although Apple hedges this by saying “up to” for the AirPods 3’s 30 hours and “more than” for the 24 hours claimed for the other two. Perhaps they’re all a little closer than Apple would like us to think.
The new AirPods also offer speedy charging, although it isn’t entirely clear how this improves on the previous model. You can put them – or the AirPods Pro – in the charging case for just five minutes and gain an hour of listening time; the figures quoted for the AirPods 2, by contrast, are 15 minutes and three hours, which feels morally the same, although perhaps we’ve missed the point.
(How much battery life would the AirPods 2 gain from 5 minutes of charging? We’ll have to test that for ourselves.)
Incidentally – and in one of the few surprises of the announcement – the charging case is equipped with Apple’s MagSafe magnetic standard, so it will lock on to the sweet spot of a wireless charging pad (assuming it’s also MagSafe-compatible). On the company’s comparison page Apple says this also applies to the AirPods Pro, but we assume this is a retrospective upgrade applying to the cases supplied with any AirPods Pro bought from now on; we’ve never managed to get the case that came with our Pros back in 2019 to attach to a MagSafe pad.
The new AirPods 3 are both sweats- and water-resistant, Apple says, with an IPX4 rating for both the earbuds and the case, that translates into protection against “water splashing against the enclosure from any direction”. That’s splashing, not immersion: don’t take them swimming.
It’s far from the highest rating for liquid resistance (the second digit can go as high as 8 on commercial products and occasionally even as high as 9), but it’s an improvement on the second-gen AirPods, which did not have an IP rating at all. (That doesn’t mean they were completely lacking in protection, merely that Apple didn’t put them through the testing process.) And it brings the standard AirPods in line with the AirPods Pro, which is also IPX4… at least for now.