Apple AirPods Pro 3 Review – More Than Just Earbuds

Unboxing

Apple’s AirPods are some of the most recognizable gadgets in the world today, so it’s no surprise that when the new AirPods Pro 3 hit the scene, we’re looking at an all-white box depicting an all-white earbuds, short for a few black spots for grilles and sensors out of necessity. While AirPods in generally look same-y, there’s something different this time around – the new earbuds gives you a total of five sizing options to choose from, with two extra small options added this time.

That aside, you don’t really get anything else aside from the AirPods Pro 3 itself, if you ignore all the regulatory papers, safety information, and one user guide that comes bundled by default.

Walkaround

It’s safe to assume that Apple sees AirPods case as a blank sheet of canvas for personalized accessories, hence the all-white build throughout. There’s a small channel for lanyard loop on the right, and some metallic bits on the back with magnets for wireless charging. On the surface, that suggests nothing has changed on the outside as far as AirPods Pro 3’s charging case is concerned, but that is not entirely true: the new case has a slightly different dimensions over its predecessor (here’s the comparison), so existing outer case accessories designed for AirPods Pro 2 will not fit on this new model.

Opening the case will activate the case speaker with a chime, which, along with the white LED, tells you it’s ready to pair (it can also be used for Find My functions). Inspecting the earbuds themselves up close reveals quite a few things: there are four “dark” spots on each earbuds, two of which features integrated grille indicating it is for microphones (or doubling as a bass port), while the other two has a glossy surface that points to a sensor underneath.

The first one is the proximity sensor which is common on most premium earbuds these days, while the other one – shown on the photo on the lower-right – is where the new photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor is located for heartbeat sensing. This is one of the headlining features Apple has announced on its keynote earlier this year, which pulses infrared light 256 times per second to monitor a user’s heartbeat. This can be viewed via Health app on your iPhone, which we’ll demonstrate in a bit.

Specifications

Apple AirPods Pro 3

Full specifications available on product page.

Form Factor	In-ear with stem, silicone eartips
Drivers	Custom high-excursion driver
Frequency Response	Unspecified
Microphones	Dual beamforming microphones + inward-facing microphone
Connectivity	Bluetooth 5.3
Active Noise Cancellation (ANC)	ANC mode Adaptive mode Transparency mode Lound Sound Reduction
Companion App	None, natively integrated with Apple devices *No integration for Android devices
Battery	Earbuds Up to 8 hours (ANC on) Up to 7.5 hours (ANC on + Spatial Audio and head tracking) Up to 6.5 hours (Heart rate sensing) Charging Case Up to 24 hours (ANC on) Wireless charging support via MagSafe, Qi-certified & Apple Watch chargers
Dimensions & Weight	Earbuds 30.9 x 19.2 x 27.0mm / 5.55g (per unit) Charging Case 62.2 x 47.2 x 21.8mm / 43.99g
Colors	White [As tested]
Ingress Protection	IP57

Read This If You Are An Android User

Let’s start by saying this: if you own an Android device, the AirPods is not for you. (If you cared for features beyond basic audio listening, that is.) Apple, at least for now, does not intend to make AirPods compatible beyond basic Bluetooth audio function – you can’t even see the battery level with it for some reason – which means you get zero functionality beyond what’s offered onboard when connected to these devices.

All of the feature testing below are tested via iPhone 17 Pro with iOS 26 installed, unless otherwise specified.

User Experience (With iOS)

Pairing the AirPods Pro 3 with an iPhone is just about as straightforward as it gets. Pop the case open, and the iPhone immediately picks up the signal and asks to pair with it. In my case, since I first tried to pair it to my personal Samsung Galaxy A52s out of curiosity, it actually labeled the AirPods Pro 3 as “Not Your AirPods Pro” at first. That suggests to me that Apple has hardware that automatically picks up signals from these cases which enables the seamless setup process.

Users can also adjust ANC modes directly through Control Center, although I do think this interface can be improved to, say, add a quick access to the Settings page (I certainly don’t think the volume slider needs to be this large). On that subject, the Settings page presents a long, continuous list of options that honestly is quite overwhelming even for me, and I think they should be grouped into sub-pages for easy navigation.

Still, that’s the side effect of having a wide range of features, a good amount of which focuses on accessibility as AirPods Pro 3 is among the models certified as medical hearing aids. On that note, the earbuds offer plenty of control over how audio gets into your ears: besides the standard transparency and ANC mode, there’s the Adaptive mode which limits the volume but still allows you to hear what’s outside. Then there’s the Loud Sound protection that keeps your ear safe from sudden loud noises, along with many others that you can find, as shown on screenshots above.

Of course, the biggest upgrade of the new AirPods Pro 3 is the inclusion of a new sensor that checks your heartbeat by scanning blood flow on your ears. We tested it using both Health and Fitness apps, the former of which only registers new data when the smartphone is unlocked, whilst the latter will keep tracking as long as your workout session is active. The reason why Health app only tracks the data while the smartphone is active, we reckon, has to do with power savings, as having the sensor active does eat into the earbuds’ total battery runtime.

Coming back to the audio side of things, let’s talk about AirPods Pro 3’s sound signature. I personally swear by V-shape EQs, and this pair of earbuds doesn’t quite hit the mark for me for its treble-ish tendencies. Granted, it’s got the bass, but I do think the low-mids (think 500Hz range) are higher than what I’m tuned to. While things like these can usually be sorted through EQ after the fact, here’s one deal-breaker for some: you can’t tune EQ on this pair, so what you hear is effectively what you get.

In terms of microphone performance, the AirPods are usually one of the better examples in this regard; the AirPods Pro 3 excels in quiet environments, and it’s able to suppress most of the background noises even in noisier scenarios. In this condition, the voice quality is serviceable at least.

The Good

As Apple’s top-end offering in the earbuds segment, the AirPods Pro 3 continues to nail some of the best traits of its lineage. It tucks in very well into my ears with very little adjustments need, although keep in mind that Medium size (pre-installed by default) is what I use, so your mileage may vary. In which case, there are now five sizes to choose from, so you should be able to get the one that fits well into your ears.

ANC is another aspect where AirPods are well-known for. The AirPods Pro 3 has among the most powerful ANC I’ve tried thus far – I will say it’s powerful enough that it can even rival some of the ANCs you find in over-ear headphones on the market, capable of suppressing loud noises, like the LRT Kelana Jaya trains that I use for commute which gets uncomfortably loud at times. I do kind of wish for a fine tuning for how powerful the ANC can be set, although Adaptive Mode works more or less for the same purpose (which prioritizes transparency first).

For those who work out, the AirPods Pro 3 is plenty capable this time with built-in heartbeat sensor and upgraded IP57 ingress protection rating. If you don’t have the budget to splurge for an Apple Watch (or just couldn’t find the justification to buy one because you only needed a simple heartbeat reading), the new pair of earbuds gives you this two-for-one deal that certainly gives it a lot more value for the money you’ll be paying for. Besides that, IP57 means it can even survive submerged conditions, though you most likely can’t use it underwater because audio waves work in different ways down there.

Besides these features, these pair of AirPods come with plenty of accessibility and hearing assistance features, so anyone with a hearing condition or some form of hearing loss can still use it to hear what’s out there. Having improved battery life on a single charge certainly helps in that regard, as well.

The Bad

While the AirPods Pro 3 is great if you own iPhones, outside of Apple’s (in)famous walled garden is where things get a lot worse if you use this pair of earbuds. Android users will get virtually zero additional functionality out of these pair, so you can only use them for playback, calls, and a simple switch between ANC and Transparency mode. No companion app means everything else must be configured through an Apple device, and even on the right side of the walled garden you still don’t get EQ, which should be a universal feature for all earbuds these days, especially for something as expensive as these.

Another slightly baffling change over its predecessor is the charging case with new but minimally-changed dimensions, breaking compatibility with existing accessories and also, somehow losing battery capacity with it. Neither of these changes are necessarily deal-breakers, but it’s a bit annoying as these are pitfalls that are reasonably avoidable barring some edge-case technical limitations. On that note, I also found myself annoyed at times when the shape of the earbuds made it difficult to be picked up from the case, as my fingers often slips when doing so. I can foresee some people end up accidentally dropping these at the wrong place and boop – into the sewers they go.

Verdict

At RM999, the Apple AirPods Pro 3 offer quite a lot for the money despite its objective demanding price tag; in fact, it’s probably a huge steal for those on the fence about buying Apple Watch to get access to heartbeat tracking, especially given that its predecessor is not that much cheaper right now. In essence, this pair of earbuds offers something that, to our knowledge, very few earbuds have offered thus far, which is a big edge it has over some of the mainstream high-end offerings on the market today.