AirPods Pro3: An Audio Files Review

Intro

I have had the AirPods Pro 3 for about a month and wanted to give my overall impressions with the AirPods Pro 3 in regards to the audio quality, noise management, and hearing assistive features.

Audio quality

I will be comparing the Pro3s to the AirPods Pro2 and max's when it comes to audio quality.

Sound performance

The AirPods Pro3 have slightly more bass than the Pro 2s, but less than the airpods max. The highs seem to be slightly brighter, but not in a way that is painful. For a time when I first got the AirPods Pro 2, there was lots of high end which made the audio sound unnaturally bright. This got toned down significantly with firmware updates. The sound stage on the Pro 3s does feel a bit wider, more like the airpods max. The Pro3s don't beat the airpods max in quality; however, they sound really good.

Noise management

ANC (Active Noise Canceling)

Apple claims:

AirPods Pro 3 also deliver the world’s best ANC of any in-ear wireless headphones. This is made possible with ultra-low noise microphones and advanced computational audio combined with new foam-infused ear tips for greater passive noise isolation. AirPods Pro 3 deliver a dramatically more immersive listening experience whether users are in transit, at the office, or winding down at home, offering ANC that’s up to 2x more effective than AirPods Pro 2, with 4x more noise removed compared to the original AirPods Pro.

The Pro3s do remove quite a bit more noise than the Pro2s, most noticeable with high frequencies above 4kHZ. It should be stated that as of October 2025 with version 8A358, I and other people have noticed a resonant peak around 1200Hz for me and around 1700Hz for a youtuber in the audio in noise canceling, and not so much in transparency or off modes. This makes things in your environment resonate at that frequency. This may not be an issue for most people, but I thought I would mention it.

Transparency

With the AirPods Pro 3, transparency has greatly been improved to where it almost is at the level that the airpods max are at. The Pro3s have slightly less high frequencies, but definitely a lot more than the Pro2s. If you have a bit of a hearing loss in the 3 to 4 kHz range, this means that even without hearing assistance features, you will be able to hear people better.

Loud sound reduction

In Transparency and adaptive modes, the AirPods Pro 2 and 3 can remove loud sounds from your environment. I feel like the Pro3s lower the sounds in a slightly better way than the Pro2s.

I recently got to test loud sound reduction when I got to see a commercial-grade HVAC system for a campus. According to noise readings after the fact, noise levels got as high as over a hundred decibels. This was probably because I was able to look at everything, and the Apple Watch was probably closer to things that were making more noise. For the sake of this review, let's say that the noise was 90dB.

I was still able to have a loud conversation and hear the other person just fine. The background would be compressed a little (lowered in level) whenever someone speaks, but I was able to understand the other person just fine.

In this situation, noise cancellation worked surprisingly well. What was a loud noise got turned into a quiet desk fan in level. Low frequencies like those at around 60Hz were able to come through more and were the loudest frequencies. Mid to high frequencies (300 to 4000Hz were quieter than the low frequencies, but the sound wasn't uncomfortable.

Passive noise isolation

The AirPods Pro isolate more noise in the off mode than the Pro2s. I feel like the airpods max are better at this. This probably has a part to deal with why the AirPods Pro3 have better noise cancellation.

Hearing assistive features

With the AirPods Pro2 and Pro3, you can take a hearing test and use the results of this test to help you with a hearing loss if you might have one.

I think of the hearing assistive features as two different categories: 1. Hearing aid - The AirPods Pro can amplify sounds in your environment to help you hear sounds better. 2. Media assist - Your AirPods Pro can amplify problematic frequencies in any audio from your device, including VoiceOver. Both media and phone/FaceTime calls can be controlled independently.

Although I haven't been able to take a hearing test due to a bug that I guess is only in the 26.1 beta, using these features with an existing result gave me some interesting results:

Media Assist

Media Assist seems about the same on the AirPods Pro3. I can't say for everyone how much of a difference it is.

Hearing aid

The hearing aid feature worked well on the AirPods Pro2, but the Pro3s are better. However, I don't feel like I need the hearing aid feature with the Pro3s because the transparency is better.

There has been a problem that the Pro2s and the Pro1s had when using custom transparency features that no one really talks about.

When using custom transparency or the hearing aid feature, the enhanced audio is being overlapped with the original audio. You can adjust the balance of the enhanced audio in Control Center. The problem is that the enhanced and normal audio are slightly out of sync, a little more than 6ms apart. This causes everything to have the effect that the sound is being routed through a tube; comb filtering. The Pro3s do a lot better with handling this. It's not perfect, but it is almost not a problem.

If you had issues with the hearing aid feature sounding weird on the Pro2s, I would consider upgrading.

Battery life

• With the airpods max, you have 20 hours of continuous listening time.
• With the AirPods Pro2, you have 6 hours of continuous listening time.

• With the Pro3s, you have 8 hours of listening time (10 when using transparency and hearing aid features only, and up to 6.5 hours when using heart rate monitoring).

• With the AirPods Pro2, you get up to 30 hours of total listening time thanks to the charging case.

• You would think that the AirPods Pro3 would improve on that, but actually not. You get up to 24 hours with the case.

Conclusion

The AirPods Pro3 are a great choice if you want good transparency, good audio quality, and like AirPods. I would highly recommend them. Expect them to improve with firmware updates. I would still get the airpods max if lossless audio over USB with less latency is what you want.