The new Apple AirPods Pro 3 have double the ANC performance, a built-in heart rate monitor and a live translation mode. The buds themselves also offer longer battery life, though that comes with an asterisk.
Indeed, the Pro 3 buds are rated for up to 8 hours of continuous playback time – that’s up from 6 hours with the Pro 2 buds. However, the total listening time (buds + case) for the new model is 24 hours – that’s 6 hours short of the 30 hours that the Pro 2 buds can achieve.
In other words, the battery inside the charging case is a lot smaller. Keep in mind that the AirPods Pro 3 buds last 8 hours on their own, meaning that the case adds 16 hours. For the previous model, the buds last 6 hours, meaning that the case adds 24 hours.
Dimensions: AirPods Pro 3 (top) and AirPods Pro 2 (bottom)
Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t reveal the battery size in milliamp-hours. We will find that out as soon as someone does a teardown, though. Interestingly, the new buds are a bit smaller, however, their case is a bit larger as you can see in the schematic above.
The Pro 3 buds weigh 5.55g (0.20 ounces) and together with the case the total weight is 43.99g (1.55 ounces). For comparison, the Pro 2 buds are 5.3g (0.19 ounces) and the total case is 50.8g (1.79 ounces). That means the new case is noticeably lower – which can be explained by a smaller battery.
Note that the Pro 3 buds use the same Apple H2 chip as their predecessor. However, the case switched to the U2 (the old case used the U1) for the Find My feature.
Apple AirPods Pro 3
By the way, we were curious how much of an impact the built-in heart rate sensor will have – Apple says that the AirPods Pro 3 buds can last up to 6.5 hours on a single charge with heart rate detection during workouts. This is with Transparency mode enabled. There is no single reading for the buds in Transparency mode without workout mode, but they can do up to 10 hours with the Hearing Aid feature and Transparency mode on.