Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
Feed Link: https://www.engadget.com/
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Title: Apple is slowly morphing AirPods into an always-on wearable

Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2025 20:35:11 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/app...

The AirPods Pro 3 Apple introduced at the iPhone 17 event yesterday have
better active noise cancellation and foam-filled ear tips, but their most
important new feature is a subtle one: Apple came up with even more reasons
for you to never take them out.

Wearing headphones while you're talking to someone or interacting in public
was at one point a social faux pas, but the ubiquity of AirPods and new
features Apple has added have started to change that. The AirPods Pro's
Conversation Awareness feature, which can automatically duck audio while
you're talking to someone, is the simplest expression of this idea, but the
vast majority of the improvements the company has made to its wireless
earbuds have also created reasons to keep them in.

Take the hearing health features Apple debuted in 2024. Not only do they let
your AirPods Pro act as a tool for checking your ear health, they can also
act as a hearing aid and even hearing protection in a loud environment. With
the AirPods Pro 3, you can add heart rate monitoring and live translation to
the growing list of reasons to constantly wear AirPods. The Pro 3's new heart
rate sensor means you can use them to track some workouts and display your
health metrics on your TV during an Apple Fitness+ class, a feature usually
exclusive to the Apple Watch. The Live Translation feature, meanwhile, lets
your AirPods translate the world around you, and can even beam your
translated voice into another pair of AirPods Pro 3. The fact the feature
will also be available on AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro 2 should make keeping
your headphones in even more common, too.

It's hard to say how useful these new AirPods Pro 3 features will be without
trying them, but they do highlight how much Apple seems to view its
headphones as more than just an add-on purchase to every iPhone. Not many
people are going to buy the $249 AirPods Pro 3 as a replacement for the $249
Apple Watch SE 3, but the fact the headphones can fill in for the smartwatch
could be attractive to some. More importantly for Apple, it could make it
easier to convince someone to subscribe to Fitness+ or buy an Apple Watch if
they like the company's approach to tracking workouts.

Apple has reportedly investigated going further down the path of making the
AirPods Pro even more of a standalone device. Bloomberg reported last year
that the company has explored adding cameras to AirPods so they can be used
for Apple Intelligence features and visually understand the world around you.
Whether or not that ever happens, the more immediate explanation for all this
feature-creep is that making AirPods an always-on wearable is good for the
company's bottom line. The relationship between the AirPods and the Apple
Watch could become similar to the iPad and the Mac in time. New features get
added, and functionality continues to overlap, but the devices are always
distinct and useful enough that many people are compelled to buy both.

Maybe there's a future where your AirPods feel as essential to daily life as
a smartphone does, and we're wearing them all the time. For now though, Apple
seems to have decided that tiptoeing towards that wearable future is a pretty
good way to sell new wireless earbuds in the present, and maybe several of
its other products in the process.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/app...
into-an-always-on-wearable-203511552.html?src=rss

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