I’m a big fan of AirPods Pro, having used both generations daily over the last few years. However, as a daily runner I’ve never been able to use Apple’s headphones for fitness, as they fall out my ears so easily. For the last year, I’ve gone for the AirPods Pro 2 for sound quality, and the Jabra Elite Active 8 for the secure fit when running.
The design of Apple’s earbuds has never been good enough for running, but the AirPods Pro 3 come with a promise of vastly improved fit… does this mean, finally, I’m about to try a pair from the Cupertino brand that won’t fall out of my ears?
And now the new AirPods Pro pack heart rate tracking too, as well as double the noise cancellation (that I was already impressed with in the Pro 2) will they be the ultimate set of in-ear headphones for me?
Well, I’ve been using the set Apple sent me for review for 72 hours, and I’m already confident I’ll be selling my set of Jabra headphones pretty soon.
Design and first impressions
When I first pulled the AirPods Pro 3 out of the box, I was instantly confused. I’d heard the case was redesigned, but this seems like an identical case to that of the Pro 2?
Turns out there are subtle, yet useful differences: the case is taller and the light on the front is hidden behind the plastic, rather than a dot in the front. It’s a much nicer aesthetic and creates a cleaner look.
The button on the rear, which allowed you to start a Bluetooth sync, is gone too – it’s now a double tap on the front to start the process.
I was presented with the choice of many tips – I’m very impressed that there are so many, from XL down to XXS, even the default options were just fine for me.
The first thing I noticed when putting the AirPods Pro 3 in my ears is that they fit so much more snugly. The tips are silicon with a layer of memory foam inside, meaning the earbuds should have both sweat resistance and a strong, adaptive fit.
I was initially worried that the foam would compress over time, or worse (as I’ve had previously) suck in sweat and become expanded and unable to stay in the ears.
In my first three days of testing, those worries are unfounded. These are some of the best-fitting earbuds I’ve ever wedged into my head holes, and in three different runs (ranging from 20-90 minutes, at slow and fast paces) they’ve been rock solid.
When the sweat started to pour, especially on my fast-paced Parkrun on Saturday and the longer, 90-minute run yesterday, the right earbud felt like it was loosening, but never popped out. However, I did need to adjust it a couple of times to feel safe.
After hours of run and day-to-day use, the good news is there’s been no change in the shape of the tip or any sign of moisture getting in – which is a relief, as that would have made the rest of the elements on test basically irrelevant for me.
The only thing is that the earbuds do fill your ears a lot more than the AirPods Pro 2, which is borderline uncomfortable when wearing them for hours – but a little removal of the bud, rub and reset in the ear helped with that.
Is the noise cancellation a real upgrade?
Let’s talk about noise cancellation now – Apple is promising two times the active noise cancellation compared to last year’s models, but seemingly with little changes to the hardware to achieve this.
The improvements seem to be centered around the improved ‘acoustic seal’ (sound blocking) from the new tips, and the speaker being fired more directly into the ear canal.
There are new microphones in there to spot more ambient noise and block it out, but ultimately the changes seem to be to the shape and fit of the AirPods Pro 3 when achieving this noise cancellation improvement.
Either way, it’s very good. When on my runs, I began with the transparency mode (where the ambient sound is allowed through) turned on, as I’m a safe runner and never go into noise cancellation mode when there are cars around.
That would be unsafe, and I’d never do that, even though an immersive soundscape on a long run is a wonderful thing, allowing you to drift away.
But no, I am safe and would never do that.
After a mile, I turned off transparency mode in the name of testing and, as expected, the difference was stark.
While I could hear music just fine with transparency turned on, podcasts were harder to hear. However, when I switched midway through the run to try each of them, the music became my focus, and I could barely hear the hiss of the traffic.
Podcasts weren’t instantly crystal clear, but I did have the volume quite low to try and protect my ageing hearing – boosting that a tiny bit and I found it easy to hear what was going on, even though the volume was a little higher than I wanted.
The sound quality is harder to review here – to my ears, very little has changed.
Comparing the AirPods Pro 2 and 3 pre-run yielded very little in the way of obvious changes to the ability to hear wide soundstages or deeper bass… it was just the better fit that seemed to make the difference, and in everyday use I couldn’t spot much difference.
On my runs I wasn’t blown away with audio quality in the way I was when I first tried on the AirPods Pro 2.
Don’t get me wrong, it was already great in the AirPods Pro 2, but I didn’t notice a huge jump here..
Fitness and heart rate tracking
The AirPods Pro 3’s heart rate monitor uses the theory that the thin skin of the ear is easier for the infra-red sensors to read – and in this early testing, it seems to be the case.
However, I’m a bit miffed that these earbuds can’t function as a standalone heart rate monitor like a chest strap – instead, they’ll feed data back to fitness apps on your phone (the Apple Fitness app and any others that integrate the heart rate functionality… none of mine currently use it, so I had to test with Apple’s Workout app).
The results compared to a Garmin Fenix 7X Pro Solar strapped to my wrist seemed pretty consistent indeed – the shape of the graph over my 90 minute run was very similar.
Equally, when giving them a quick run through Fitness+ on Apple’s own app, the heart rate came up quickly and seemed nicely in sync with my pulse.
What was annoying was that on my long run, the monitor seemed to dip in and out – I’m not sure why, as the accuracy seemed good overall, but scanning through the run I found lots of moments where it was just devoid of a heart rate.
It’s a useful feature, but only if you’re an avid user of Apple’s fitness products. And even then, the data is quite minimal – I would have liked to see more data points to analyze post run.
So, what do I think after three days’ use?
While there were a few underwhelming moments with the AirPods Pro 3, such as no clear improvement in sound quality, the heart rate monitor being limited to iPhone use and the noise cancellation changes mostly being around new buds, I still really enjoyed my time with these earbuds.
I do wonder what stopped Apple bringing these changes to the design and earbud tips to the AirPods Pro 2, given this must have been technology available back then.
Those quibbles disappear into the background compared to the fit of the new AirPods Pro 3.
These are the first set of Apple’s earphones ever that I feel confident using over a long run, and that’s, by far, the feature I wanted above all else.
I would have liked them to be more of a useful fitness companion that slots into my daily routine with the heart rate monitor, and the acoustic changes have hardly felt revolutionary.
But I’m getting pretty certain I’m going to be buying these and pushing my AirPods Pro 2 and Jabra earbuds to other people.
Apple’s new AirPods Pro perform well sonically, physically and with great iPhone integration – I’m going to be putting them harder through their paces in this week’s review, but I’m impressed with what I’ve seen so far.