Apple AirPods (Generation 3)

[December 2025 Pricing: $139 with updated Magsafe Case at Costco. May be cheaper elsewhere; I'm a little skeptical of some posted prices actually being the 3rd Gen and not the second.]

[December 2025 update: I won a pair of these as a door prize at a conference, and I’ve been using them pretty regularly while walking Denali a couple of times a day since September. I was perhaps … uncharitable in my original review. 

I stand by most of the specifics in my review, but they do sort of hit the sweet spot for listening to podcasts or NPR in an environment where you want to hear the world around you. For me, I find that walking Denali with ANC on can result in me not nearing or seeing people or dogs walking around, and that can give some folks a bit of a fright (weirdly enough, not everyone wants to be accosted by a 65-lb golden lovebug when they’re not expecting it. I mean, they’re wrong, but they are allowed to be). 

As I noted in the original review, the mid-range is where these headphones shine. Anything that’s mostly vocals is going to be fine, and unless you’re in a super loud environment, you’ll be able to hear people talking on a podcast. I still grab a better pair of headphones when I know someone is working on a roof or running a mower or blower in the neighborhood, but because I mostly don’t use these for music they can just live near the backdoor. Plus, they stick out enough that people mostly can see that I’m wearing them, and they fit reasonably well under a beanie, and they’re surprisingly good for phone calls.

The price has also come down a bit on these with the release of the 4th Gen (with the upgraded H2 chip): Costco has these on sale for $139 with the updated Magsafe case. For most use cases, I’d prefer the much cheaper Soundcore A40 (less than $60 on Amazon right now, review forthcoming), but if you like the Apple aesthetic (no judgment; I certainly do), these are a perfectly serviceable option. For another $61 you can get the AirPods Pro2, though, which continue to be the best ANC I’ve ever used and remain my (begrudging) favorite.

At some point I’ll probably snag and review the 4th Gen; they did upgrade the chip like I hoped they would, and the move from H1 ->H2 in the Airpods Pro2 was a seachange in their quality.

Scores:

Cost-agnostic: 6 out of 10 Denalis

Cost-sensitive: 5 out of 10 Denalis]

[Original purchase info: MSRP $169 for a Lightning charging case, $179 for a Magsafe one, purchased on sale for $169.99 at Costco, currently $149.99 at Target).]

[Original Tl;dr: They’re … fine. They feel like a product in search of a purpose, and for the price range they’re lacking a lot of pretty basic things. If you’re already in the Apple ecosystem, really want the pretty white earbuds, and can’t pay the extra $30-40 to get the AirPods Pro Gen 2… you do you. The sound isn’t bad, but it’s hard to really appreciate it in anything other than a pretty quiet room and I just don’t experience those very often. I’d suggest either spending a little more or a lot less to get a much better sound experience.]

Scores:

Cost-agnostic: 5 out of 10 Denalis

Cost-sensitive: 1 out of 10 Denalis

Intro. I’m going to try to keep this pretty short (and will fail in that effort), as I try not to yuck other people’s yums. I left my AirPods Pro Gen 2 at home this week when I headed to Seattle for a week of meetings, and I wanted something to listen to music in the office around meetings for the week and I’ve long been curious about the Gen 3 of AirPods (particularly after being really stunned by how good both the Pro 2 and AirPod Max were).

Basically, these are what I would have expected them to be before my expectations were (unfairly?) raised by the Pro 2 and Max. The total lack of any sound filtering/isolation or ANC makes them hard to hear in any environment that’s not close to silent, and that’s hard no for me. Maybe these will get an updated version in 2023 with the H2 chip and better sound characteristics the way the Pro 2 did in 2022? I'd like these to be better headphones given how many people I know have and love them.

Sound. Fine, I think? It’s hard to tell because these lack even basic passive noise filtering which means that you hear everything around you even in pretty quiet environments. As I’m listening to them and typing this alone in my sweltering house, I can hear the clack of my (not particularly loud) Apple keyboard as well as the fan on low two rooms away, and the sound of Denali’s claws as she wanders around, looking for grandma. When you can hear them, they’re mostly pretty clear and crisp, but the soundstage feels a little claustrophobic.

Treble: clear and precise, if occasionally a bit sibilant. Definitely magnifies the problems with poor mixing, like on Vampire Weekend’s "2021", where the guitar gets a bit splattery in the chorus. Ditto the synths on Sylvan Esso’s “Coffee.”

Midrange: This might be the strength of these headphones. Voices are clear and precise, and you really hear the power in Eyrkah Badu’s voice on “Afro Blue” and Dave Matthew’s quaver on “Out of My Hands.” Some male voices sound a little washed out, though, like Leonard Cohen on “Hallelujah.”

Bass: Like the corded white iPod headphones of yore that came with the original iPod (and every other iDevice up until they decided to remove the headphone jack from things), these have a slightly elevated bass. It’s perfectly serviceable, if occasionally a little distracting on tracks like Brasstracks’ “Intro” or JARV IS’ “Save the Whale (Deltoid Remix)”.

Spatial Audio. Sure, it’s there. Theoretically. I never found a room quiet enough to really be able to hear it, and the onboard H1 chip isn’t nearly as sophisticated as the Pro2’s H2. Spatial audio is noticeable and a big quality of life improvement for the Pro 2 (and to a lesser extent the Max), but not really a thing here.

Noise canceling. Non-existent, even in terms of sound blocking or isolation. One of the biggest omissions of these headphones is any kind of custom fitting. Unlike the Pro 2 (or even the much cheaper Beats Studio Buds) these don’t use silicon tips or anything else that would help you get a good seal. As a result, you hear EVERYTHING around you. It’s pretty distracting for me, at least.

Controls. Pause/play, skip, answer/hang up call, and Siri on the right earbud. No volume control, no audio modes, etc. which for me was a difficult transition from the Pro 2.

Connectivity. Bluetooth only. You can read my brief rant about Bluetooth here, but I will say that Apple’s implementation of Bluetooth is pretty great, at least within the Apple ecosystem. It seamlessly swaps between iOS devices and Macs, though I had some difficulty getting them to work with a Windows 10 machine for video conferencing (not unlike the other AirPod products).

Comfort. They’re surprisingly comfortable, even after a couple of hours. I barely feel them in my ears, and I actually left them in for part of a meeting this week without realizing it. However, the comfort also means that they’re not super stable, and I dropped them out of my ears a couple of times when I wasn’t even moving around a lot. The lack of silicon tips is, frankly, a little baffling in 2023.

Construction. Lightweight, cheap-feeling plastic, which is what you expect from an Apple headphone that isn't the super-heavy Max. Up to thirty hours of listening with a few charges in the case, pretty normal for Bluetooth headphones. I don’t think I’m getting anywhere near that, but I’ve also been listening in relatively short spurts so your mileage may vary.

Appearance. I knew what they looked like. You know what they look like. Everyone knows what they look like. You either like them or you don't, and you know which camp you fall in already. Honestly, I think they look kind of dumb and I think the old wired ones were a slightly better aesthetic (I was a sucker for those ads after all), but Apple is Apple is Apple.

Value. They suck on value. Apple products are rarely a super great deal (except, randomly, the new MacBook Air and Mac Mini, which absolutely slap on value). Because of how bad the noise isolation on these is, I am hard pressed to think of any situation I regularly encounter where I’d prefer these over say the Beats Studio Buds (which I thought I’d reviewed, but apparently, I still need to do). You can find the Buds for less than $90. Are these *slightly* better headphones in terms of sound quality? Sure. Will you ever be able to hear that difference in the real world? I really, really don’t think so. Even at pretty high volumes, a whole lot of the sounds gets swallowed by the environment and you lose a lot of the nuance.

Comparisons. As a practical matter, these don’t compete with anything else I have, in or out of their price point. The Pro 2 are $31 more right now at Costco than the lightning case, and $21 more than the Magsafe case version (and they always come with the mag safe case, which I should probably have highlighted in their review), and they are immensely better headphones. The Beats Studio Buds are almost half the price and I think are still a much better, more practical headphone. I think the AirPods Gen 3 are probably around on par with the old Jabra Active 65t (which you can get for like $60), but the Jabras at least have silicon tips and a much better fit and are more likely to stay in your ears while you're running around. It would suck to have a $80 headphone fall, say, into a street grate.

Overall.  Honestly, skip these unless you only want to use them in very quiet environments. And even then … spent the extra $30 to get the Pro2 (which are truly excellent), or save yourself $90 and go with the Beats Sound Buds (which are good and cheap now). I guess the Siri integration is pretty great? And it’s easy to connect to Apple products. Mostly. The case is great (though magsafe frankly ought to be included). That's about it.

Pretty sure I’m returning these this week and either picking up a second pair of Pro
2s to live in my bag, or snagging the new Campfire Audio Orbits. 

Sorry, y'all. Even this Apple fanboi is out.

#reviews #headphones #apple #anc #bluetooth #spatialaudio #earbuds