It’s been a long time coming, but it looks like Apple is finally ready to release the next pair of AirPods Pro. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the AirPods Pro 3 will likely be among the major product releases at next month’s annual iPhone 17 event. That’s big news for anyone who turns to Apple for wireless audio, but the new active noise cancellation (ANC) buds could be an even bigger deal for anyone who’s interested in Apple as a player in health-focused wearables.
On top of improved ANC and the (unlikely) inclusion of cameras, Gurman reports that AirPods Pro 3 will have heart rate monitoring built into the wireless earbuds. For context, that’s not a huge technical breakthrough, since Apple is already deep into the health tracking game with the Apple Watch and its ability to collect sleep, stress, respiratory rate, and blood oxygen data. It would be, however, a big deal for how Apple positions its AirPods and also how we view wireless earbuds in general.
As great as wireless earbuds have become over the years, there’s only so much room for growth. Companion apps have helped to personalize EQ, while AI has helped to pave the way for features like adaptive ANC that adjusts noise cancellation based on the volume of your surroundings, but neither of those things has necessarily changed the game—not to mention, they’ve now been around for several years. A pair of wireless earbuds that harnesses the power of the Apple Watch? That’s a different story. And clearly Apple sees the vision of wireless earbuds that can do a lot more—and I do too.
It may seem far-fetched to think that your wireless earbuds can fill in as a health wearable, but in lots of ways, it makes perfect sense. For one, wireless earbuds are something you have on your person all the time, which makes them almost as ubiquitous as your phone and a perfect conduit for hoovering up all your useful health data. Not only that, but people (thanks to features like Transparency, which allow you to hear your surroundings with earbuds in) keep their wireless earbuds in for long periods of time, even during health-centric activities like exercising. As long as they’re on us and essentially right up against our bodies, they might as well be doing something other than playing podcasts, right? And if they can monitor our heartbeat, why not do other stuff like temperature or stress levels? I doubt the capabilities would stop just at heart monitoring.
Apple obviously hasn’t said anything about adding health sensors to the Apple Watch explicitly, but Tim Cook has alluded to the importance of health tracking as a category in recent years. In 2019, Cook spoke to Mad Money’s Jim Cramer, saying, “I believe if you zoom out into the future, and you look back, and you ask the question, ‘What was Apple’s greatest contribution to mankind?’ it will be about health.” That’s a lofty claim from Cook, but it illustrates just how serious Apple is about wearables and about their potential to move Apple forward beyond Macs, iPhones, and iPads. That emphasis on health tracking, by the way, has worked for Apple in the past.
Before the Apple Watch became the health-tracking powerhouse it is now, it was a relatively aimless device—not quite a phone fill-in, not quite a watch, and definitely not a hit among initial Apple fans. Then came Apple’s emphasis on health and the ability to monitor steps, cardiovascular health, accident detection, and more. All of a sudden, the Apple Watch went from idling to solidifying its status as a critical tool for potentially saving your life. AirPods aren’t exactly in need of saving like the Apple Watch, but they are in search of a new audience, and what better way to push the envelope than by taking a set of features we clearly love and porting them over to a device we use every day?
As good an idea as that is on paper, Apple still needs to execute. The Powerbeats Pro 2 already have heart rate monitoring, but the execution of that feature is less than ideal, to say the least. For one, you can’t play audio and monitor your health at the same time, which feels like a dealbreaker for most people who plan to wear AirPods while exercising. That being said, if Apple works out the kinks, it could give people one huge reason to go out and upgrade their wireless earbuds and an even bigger reason to buy into Apple’s dream of becoming one of the most important health tech companies out there.