Apple AirPods Pro 3 Review: Disappointment of the Year?
The AirPods Pro 2 has been the default recommendation for wireless earphones since its release, so how does its successor measure up?
The Apple AirPods Pro 3 arrive with big expectations, building on the reputation of the incredibly well-respected AirPods Pro 2. On the outside, the design feels familiar but with subtle changes: a larger case and earpieces that fit more securely due to a deeper nozzle and reshaped shell. That added security is a win for active use, but comfort may suffer—what once felt effortless with the AirPods Pro 2 now risks soreness over time with the 3.
But sound quality is where the disappointment reeeeeally set in for Resolve and Listener. Apple has taken the Pro 2’s safe, natural tuning and pushed it toward a bold, V-shaped profile: booming bass, sizzling treble, and a midrange that’s excellent but unfortunately gets overshadowed in practice. Instead of refinement, the result is an incoherent listen: sluggish and muddy in the lows, sharp and sibilant in the highs. Where the AirPods Pro 2 —perhaps even by accident—appealed to the sensibilities of hard-to-please audiophiles, the Pro 3 comes off as exaggerated and fatiguing.
Ironically, the non-sound features are nothing short of world-beating. The Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency modes leapfrog the AirPods Pro 2 considerably, with unprecedented clarity and cancellation, and reduced occlusion effect in both modes. Integration with Apple’s ecosystem remains seamless, and for fitness, podcasts, or commuting, the AirPods Pro 3 will likely still remain a top contender.
But when judged through the lens of livability and sound quality, the AirPods Pro 3 are a major letdown for Resolve and Listener. What could have been a subtle refinement turned into what may be the biggest audio disappointment this year—a product that trades the essentials (comfort and natural tuning) for spectacle and fit security, leaving fans of the AirPods Pro 2 wondering why Apple has seemingly abandoned its best sound signature ever.
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(Andrew Park) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver) (Andrew Park) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver) (Andrew Park) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver) (Andrew Park) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver) (Griffin Silver) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver) (Griffin Silver) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver) (Andrew Park) (Griffin Silver)
All right, so this is the Apple AirPods Pro 3. It is the new hyped product that everybody's talking about, and so now we will too. I spent a ton of time listening to this and measuring it, and I'm now ready to give you my opinion. And also joining me for this review is listener, and you may have seen some of their videos. Talking about this product last week, going through all the different ways in which everybody else is doing this wrong. So having done this correctly, let's now talk about the AirPods Pro 3.
Just a disclaimer to get some of this out of the way. Nobody sent these to us. We just bought them. We're not on the Apple payroll. I don't know if we need to say that, but no, nobody's paid us to say anything about these. So let me just make that as clear as possible. All right, so first of all, let's talk about the build quality, the design, and the comfort. And of course, the case, because they're very similar to the AirPods Pro 2. Griffin, what are your thoughts on the AirPods Pro 3 as an evolution from the AirPods Pro 2 in terms of its ergonomic design and the rest of the form factor going on here?
Yeah, sure. So starting with the case, it is a little bit bigger. As someone who used the AirPods Pro 2 case as a fidget toy, like all the time, this took a little bit of getting used to. Opening the case, yeah, the earpieces do look different and they definitely do feel different in the ear. I would say kind of as an evolution, they're a little bit different in terms of their ergonomic scheme. Like they're clearly meant to fit more deeply into the ear, both because of the longer nozzle, but also just because of the... Shape of the shell and, frankly, that just doesn't work as well for me. I liked when I first tried it, that it felt a lot more secure than the original ones, but after some time spent using it, it really just makes the area around the entrance of the ear canal pretty sore for me. After a little bit, so yeah, I just found for comfort the AirPods Pro 2 to be overall better because the security was never really an issue for me anyway. There. I don't know. What about you? How did you find the comfort?
For me, the comfort was fine. I think one of the intended advantages of the AirPods Pro 3 over the AirPods Pro 2 is that it's going to fit more securely. I do feel that that's the case. But similar to you, I never had major issues with the AirPods Pro 2. I think that the exception for this, though, would be in situations where, if I'm running, I clearly am not the kind of person who runs often, but maybe I should. So maybe I should be using this more. But no, the point is more that, like, for their intended.
Advantages of being better at you know a sports-like product or something for active use I can see this being better than the AirPods Pro 2 because it does seem to fit a little bit more like it's a little bit more in me.
Everyone I've heard get this product, whether they like the fit or they don't, they all agree that it's more secure. So I think you know, mission accomplished on that front. But unfortunately for me, the comfort was like the main thing I liked about AirPods Pro 2 even more than its sound quality, which we'll get into. But the AirPods Pro 3 being not as great for me comfort-wise is a pretty huge bummer. I'm not gonna lie.
Actually, did you end up using any of the other tips? It comes with a whole bunch of different tips, which is nice.
Yeah, man. So I 100% like ran the gamut and kind of tried everything. The smaller tips and a deeper insert did seem to sound a little bit better, but because it brought the like bulbous part of the shell. Closer to the ear canal entrance and kind of rubbed up against the ear more when I did that, it was just even less comfortable than the medium and large tips. I just found that with the medium and large tips, there was— I don't know if it was like more bass or less in the low treble, upper mids region— but I just got this sense that with shallower insert and the larger tips, even though comfort was better, there was just this kind of cloudiness to the sound and the bass got way more prominent in the mids, which, yeah, just made it even less fun to listen to. So I ended up landing on something somewhat similar to the AirPods Pro 2, but sized down by one size. So on the AirPods Pro 2, I used left ear large, right ear medium. On the three, I used left ear medium, right side small or extra small. How about you? Did you have to like experiment a lot to get a tip that I guess worked ideal for you?
I ended up using just the default mediums. I got to be honest, like I didn't notice that much of a difference overall for the sound switching between the tips until they started to like clearly not fit. Like I know that one of the things about this, which we'll get into when we talk about the measurements in general, is insertion depth for people who are unaware, it does actually impact how the sound propagates at your eardrum. So it is the kind of thing that is worth experimenting with. But for me, I didn't notice that much of a difference with this one, even though it is in theory possible. So let's talk about the sound and it's impossible to talk about the sound for the AirPods Pro 3 without talking about the measurements and how they are conducted, because this is one of the most notoriously difficult products to measure. But I want to stress that as much as this incurs a lot of suffering on my part, having to do the measurements, this is actually a feature that gives this platform an advantage over basically all other in-ear products. There's something that this product does. That none of them do. And that is that the sound is going to be the same for this product under, what do we want to say, like two kilohertz, regardless of who the person is.
And for those who are unaware, this is not the case. For other in-ear products. So for wired in-ear headphones or any other true wireless product, that is not the case. And so with the AirPods Pro 3 and 2, you have this really unique advantage. And so despite the fact that it makes it frustrating as all hell to measure, this is a good thing. And we want to see more products have this kind of thing. But that also doesn't necessarily mean that it sounds good. And so I think that's what we're going to talk about now. So I want to get your take. You've been listening to this. You got this on Friday and been listening to this for a while. So what's your subjective sense of the sound here of the AirPods Pro 3?
Yeah, sure. But first, I definitely want to give a shout out to Headphones . com, who's a sponsor of this channel. It makes all the content on this channel possible, as well as all the measurements, which we're going to get into in this section, would not have been possible without the financial support of Headphones . com. So headphones . com obviously supports us doing this, but they also support a bunch of educational content, fun videos. They also sell headphones, IEMs, DACs, amps, speakers, cables. So if you want to support all the stuff we do on this channel, definitely consider making your next headphone purchase at headphones. com. We're going to have a forum post with more of the measurements for this device than you're going to see in this video, because frankly, there's a lot going on under the hood here that people are going to want to see. So check the forum link in the description to see that. But now it's time to talk about the sound. So the AirPods Pro 3 is definitely a V-shaped in-ear headphone to a T, right? It has a big, thumping, large sounding bass response. And then it's got a really, you know, bright, sizzly, airy treble response to it. And then, you know, it has a mid-range that, frankly, is really good. Like, better than most in-ear headphones I'm aware of. But you never really get to enjoy it. At least I didn't. because the bass and the treble are so overwhelming that I just think it's a kind of incoherent, messy sounding listen that, for the music that I know is well recorded and, you know, no sounds a certain way, it made that music sound pretty weird. So yeah, unfortunately, as someone who really wanted to love the AirPods Pro 3, because I really do love the AirPods Pro 2, it just doesn't land for me the same way, and it's a lot less safe and normal of a listen.
Yeah, I have a little bit of a different opinion, maybe. I think this is just outright terrible. Like, this is borderline unlistenable to me. And so, in short, the bass quality is worse compared to the AirPods Pro 2. Like, I'm not talking about level. Like, I actually think, you know... It has lots of bass, but that's not the problem. It's just the quality of the bass got a lot worse. The mids are exceptional, and I agree there. The treble is horrible. The treble... I have this thing. I have a list of test tracks that I go through for every product that I review. And maybe I'll link that in the description. But it's music that I'm extremely familiar with. And I have a number of tracks that are basically like, 'Okay, if I'm listening to something, does it pass or fail for this track?' And every single track that I tried... the AirPods Pro 3 failed. And it's because of the treble. It has this kind of clenched sound to the whole thing, along with kind of like an upper treble peak of some kind. That causes it to be sibilant and clenched at the same time. It's almost like if I imagine that I spent the night partying and taking all kinds of drugs, and then the next day you're coming down from that, and you get that feeling of like that's the feeling I get when I listen to the Apple AirPods Pro 3. Not that I know anything about this. It's just sort of like, 'eeey,' like it just, it makes me make that face. Or another way to describe this is it's sluggish and slow sounding in the bass, while also being a bit stabby and sharp in the treble. So to me, it's not about the fact that there's more bass and treble here. It's that the bass and treble sound wrong to me. I like a little bit more bass and I like a little bit more treble, but the way that it's achieved more bass and treble here is the wrong way, in my opinion. And so I am massively disappointed because I am wearing the AirPods Pro 2 right now. I love the AirPods Pro 2. And I feel that the downside with the AirPods Pro 2 was that the treble was a little bit unrefined. So what I wanted from them was a slight refinement or a slight improvement to the treble. And what I got was more treble and less refined. So it's now just harsh and sibilant. And just not good. The one thing I will say though, is at the very least they did balance that somewhat with the additional base contour. It's almost as if you took the AirPods Pro 2 and then injected it with store demo mode and then crank that up to the max.
Yeah, man, I can't help but agree. I actually think the bass change didn't actually balance the treble change. I actually think it made it worse because they scooped out low midrange and upper bass and added treble. It just... kind of tilted a lot of their response, like basically everything over 100 hertz towards a kind of leaner, brighter sound. I don't have too much of an issue with the lower treble thing, like that five six kilohertz thing you'll see on measurements. It doesn't bother me at all. But yeah, the thing that is probably not as obvious, looking at like a B &K 5128 measurement, is the eight kilohertz on this. It really bothers me. And that rig does de-emphasize that. Peak a little bit, but yeah, that really bothers me. And then yeah, the air also really bothers me. That's what is such a shame about this, relative to AirPods Pro 2, because AirPods Pro 2, for me at least, didn't have that lower treble or upper treble issue. But it did have that kind of uh, 8 kilohertz thing, which was really my only complaint with that earphone. So it's really a shame that instead of fixing what I perceived to be the one issue with that earphone, they instead added another issue, and honestly made the 8 kilohertz thing a little bit worse as well. So Yeah, it's a huge bummer, especially because the midrange is so goddamn solid and better than the AirPods Pro 2 for me.
So let's talk a little about how this compares to the AirPods Pro 2. And if there is a scenario where somebody, where we might recommend the AirPods Pro 3 over the AirPods Pro 2 for sound quality for a certain type of person, despite the fact that we don't like it.
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think, oh my God, hold on. Sorry. My cat or my sister's cat is walking on the table right now. Yeah. So I don't know if this is feedback that Apple had actually received after the AirPods Pro 2 was released, but I've heard a few people online say things like. It sounds boring. It sounds dark. It sounds unengaging. I think what the AirPods Pro 3 does do is make for a more exciting, vivid, colorful, you know, potentially engaging listen for a lot of people. You know, even me— who doesn't really like the colorations they opted for— there were a lot more wow moments with the AirPods Pro 3. Where you know, either the kind of scratching on a on a bowed string instrument like a cello or a violin was was highlighted and brought forward in a really exciting way, or the decay and kind of womp of a bass drum hit really hard was brought forward in a way that was also like really engaging and fun and whatever. There were a lot of moments like that, but they were coupled with, in the same song, right after or right before those moments, really sibilant vocals or like really harsh snare drums. So, yeah, while I think there is maybe an audience for this kind of sound. It's really a shame that this sound is going to be replacing what the AirPods Pro 2 was, which was the audiophile's IEM, like the person who likes things like an HD 600 or 650. But that's what the AirPods Pro 2 has been since release. It's been this kind of all around kind of natural and normal sounding product that also has great features and great comfort. That, you know, just doesn't doesn't sound nearly as safe and isn't going to be something I can recommend as easily to people because of that.
Would you say that the AirPods Pro 3 now has technicalities?
I mean, that's the thing, though. I thought the AirPods Pro 2 had some decent technicalities. Like, I thought its presentation of, like, dynamics in the low end was actually pretty damn competent. And because of the tuning in the mid-range It also had more of a spaciousness effect to me at least where it didn't sound quite as you know claustrophobic or you know in my eyeballs as a lot of other in-ear headphones do. So while it's maybe not the most quote-unquote detailed sounding in your headphone, I thought there was a lot to like about that presentation. Now, the AirPods Pro 3 does have more, I think, of the kind of bouncy, quote-unquote, punchy bass that... maybe some audiophiles will like more, and it does have more of the treble detail and texture and all of that, but I don't think it's a trade-off worth making.
For me... The AirPods Pro 3's treble is actually less detailed sounding despite having more of it. And that's because of where that resonance is, for me at least, where it makes it sibilant. That also has the effect of making certain tones sound a bit fuzzy. So it's more in the kind of like the sh range rather than the S's, F's and D's range. And this causes sounds that are normally supposed to be really precise and really distinct and be on kind of like a knife's edge sound fuzzier and just a little bit. Indistinct and not really, I wouldn't say blunted, but again, a little bit on the compressed side. Subjectively, I think this is actually less detailed because it is more harsh. It is more uneven sounding and it lacks that sort of natural resolution that I look for in these products. And it's really what I was hoping for with this. Over the AirPods Pro 2, because I felt that was also the one real drawback there with the AirPods Pro 2. So yeah, I'm just disappointed all around in terms of the sound quality here and probably more so than you.
Yeah, and I'm pretty disappointed. So it's like, so you're really, really negative on this, which I mean, I totally get. I feel like if I had your ear canals, I would probably be even more upset with this, with the sound choices here.
But the sound is just one part of this product. They also have all kinds of other stuff going on with it, like the noise canceling, like all the spatial audio stuff. How did you get on with the rest of its features and integration?
I mean, that's arguably the worst part about all of this, which is that the active noise cancelling and transparency mode on the AirPods Pro 3 are... F***ing insane. With the AirPods Pro 2, I was already under the impression that, like, okay, this transparency mode is incredible. Probably as close to as good as we'll ever get. Nope. Whatever they did with the AirPods Pro 3's transparency mode makes the AirPods Pro 2's transparency mode sound like a generation or two behind, clearly, and it's not close. What I found that it did, and I don't have any measurements to back this up. I'm just kind of going off what I heard when I had AirPods Pro 2 in one ear, AirPods Pro 3 in the other, both in transparency mode. It sounds like what they've achieved is canceling more of the occlusion effect. The actual like low end sounds like it's being canceled a lot more efficiently. In both the active noise canceling and the transparency modes. But it's the low end that's coming from my body, like from my throat and head when I speak. It feels like it's being canceled a lot more efficiently so that in the transparency mode... There's really like no extra feeling of something being in my ear, at least sonically, like that kind of pressurization and the uncomfortable low frequency amplification of bodily sounds. Just like, it's not present in in either of those modes— the ANC or transparency— so it's really eerie and like is almost indistinguishable from magic. It's so good, but there is, in the transparency mode, a little bit of a ringiness in the treble that isn't there with the AirPods Pro 2. But the difference is night and day, both for the transparency mode and the ANC. The features are cracked, but it just makes it all that more of a shame that the sound quality and comfort, which are the two things I really care about most, since most of the time I use this, I'm at home, just aren't as good for me. But yeah, what about you?
Yeah, pretty similar as far as the ANC and transparency are concerned. My sort of test process for this, I have a really noisy street that's not too far from me. So I just, you know, for anecdotal sense of how ANC products do. I just go there and wait for a bus to go by. Yeah, I would just test with the AirPods Pro 2 what it would sound like and then wait for another one and test with the AirPods Pro 3. And it was considerably better for the AirPods Pro 3. But I will say, I still heard it. It still isn't to me as good as what I heard with, say, the Sony Overear headphones. The, what are they called? WH-1000XM6s. Yeah. I don't know if this is because those sounds happen to be like very intermittent sort of punctuating sounds rather than more consistent sounds. And that might be one of the reasons why I still heard this, you know, come through. Whereas maybe if something like hearing a helicopter or a car playing loud music or something like that, that might be cancelled a little bit more easily. But I would say overall, still, going from one to the other, It was a clear advantage for the AirPods Pro 3.
That's why I do still, despite me not liking this and very much being not into the sound, even I have a very specific use case for this product. And it's... Listening to podcasts at the gym. Like again, all of this just to me speaks to this being a more active product, like for active use. And maybe that's also some of the reasoning behind their tuning choices here as well to make it more distinctly, you know, towards the edges of the spectrum for use in these more active scenarios. And for that, yeah, I would recommend it for that. I think it's one of the best for that still, even though the AirPods Pro 2 is still a better sounding product overall.
Yeah, I agree. I think really, the person that wins with the AirPods Pro 3 is the the person who's using it for fitness type stuff. The improved fit, security, the more distinct bass and treble, and you know, the better features in the ANC and transparency mode— obvious win for those people. And for the people who found AirPods Pro 2 uncomfortable. So, you know, clearly a lot of the changes that were made here were made with intention. It's just a shame that basically all of the changes for the things I care about, like comfort and sound quality, took it in a direction that is the opposite of what I wanted.
So yeah, your year is ruined. This is a disappointment of the year.
For me, I would say it's absolutely the disappointment of the year. Disappointment of the decade for you. I don't know about decade, but like... Yeah, man, this is easily the audio product of the year I was the most excited for. And that there are some parts of it that are better that I won't get to enjoy because the things that are worse are enough worse that there's no real reason for me to own it.
Such a bummer.
Did you get a chance to play around with the spatial audio, any of that kind of stuff? I mean, were there any changes to that as far as content consumption is concerned?
So yeah, the spatial audio on program material, that is meant for spatial audio, like things that are mixed for Atmos, sounded fine. I wouldn't say they sounded better than the AirPods Pro 2 because the treble was still an issue for me. On the spatialized stereo content, where it basically just takes a stereo mix and then...
renders that as object-based audio as like a stereo pair of speakers in front of you. That sounded terrible. That sounded like outright garbage. And, you know, it sounded pretty bad on the AirPods Pro 2, but it sounded a lot worse on the AirPods Pro 3. Sonically, there's not really much I could say great about the AirPods Pro 3, other than the mid-range is exceptional, but I'm not going to get to enjoy it. So, sucks for me.
And this is where I have to once again lament the product philosophy of not providing EQ adjustability. And people talk about how there's the accommodation settings and all that stuff. When you look into that.
Oh, oh, I have been looking into that. That is not what you guys think it is.
Yeah.
So stop recommending it as an EQ. Both the headphone accommodations and accessibility settings and the hearing aid tests, like the hearing tests where you can adjust frequencies by number. Not doing what you think it's doing, guys. So stop recommending it as EQ because it's not just EQ. It's not.
And what I want is parametric EQ.
Yes. Simple parametric EQ in the OS systemwide. Please just give it to us. Even if it's just like two bands, just give it to us.
If you're going to make the sound like this, right? Give us the option to adjust frequencies, to personalize them more, to personalize them how we want. It's not like everybody needs to understand how sound works or what good is when it comes to sound to be able to make use of personalizing things even just a little bit. Like, for example, a manual slider for the bass. Something like that. But obviously parametric would be best.
It's such a pain, though, because, you know, Apple is like one of the most talented, well-funded research divisions on the planet when it comes to audio. They absolutely have. listener preference research that shows the deviation in treble when it comes to people's preferences. Like some people are going to prefer more or less or the same for the bass. But the fact that they don't actually give people the ability to find their place within that field of variation that fits best for them. It's just silly to me. They absolutely have the capability to do it. There's no good reason why they don't let people do that.
It's the idea that I talked about before where it's like. you know this we know what good is and you're just just gonna like it right that's that's the idea and then you have products like this this is the space travel 2 and it's like 35 bucks or something like that and it gives you full parametric in the device so yes you can get this 35 dollar thing to sound meaningfully better than the airpods pro 3. Obviously, it's not nearly as good for any of the rest of it, but it just goes to show like you can do good sound quality in these devices and you can provide customizability. It's just that they choose not to.
Which is infuriating because it means people like me, who are among the people in the world most biased to enjoy the AirPods Pro 3 or the new Apple headphone, whatever it is, even as much as I'm predisposed to like it, because sound quality is high on my list of needs and I can't adjust the sound quality. It's a return for me.
Yeah, no, it's disappointing and our days are ruined. And so with the big disappointment of the year being the AirPods Pro 3, I think it's time to end this video. As usual, if you guys want to chat with us and other like-minded people, you can do so in our Discord or our forum at forum. headphones. com. Those will be linked in the description. Yeah, I don't think I have anything else to say. Do you?
You guys better not go out and buy a bunch of AirPods Pro 2s because I still need to buy one. I'm going to need a replacement for when the battery on mine dies.
This is just sadness. On that, it's time to end. Until next time, we'll see you guys later. Bye for now.
Bye, guys.
