Will the AirPods Pro 3 Launch This Year?

After a substantial update in 2022, can users expect Apple to launch the next-generation AirPods Pro this year?

The second-generation AirPods Pro launched in September 2022, offering a major update with active noise cancellation enhancements, Adaptive Transparency mode, H2 chips, battery life improvements, touch volume controls, improved battery life, IPX4 sweat and water resistance, Apple Watch charger compatibility, the U1 chip for precision finding, and more. The scale of this update suggests that it could be some time before a sufficient number of further upgrades are ready for a third-generation model. Indeed, the third-generation AirPods and the AirPods Max may need to catch up with the existing AirPods Pro before a further update to Apple's high-end in-ear earbuds.

The second-generation AirPods Pro came 35 months after the launch of the previous generation, which similarly suggests that it could be a long while before a third-generation model arrives. Likewise, Apple appears to focus on refreshing just one AirPods model each year, in which case, the AirPods Max would be next up for a refresh, followed by the standard AirPods. This means that third-generation AirPods Pro may not arrive until 2025.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman expects the AirPods Pro to switch to USB-C by 2024, but this does not necessarily mean that there will be a new model to introduce this change. Apple could simply upgrade the charging case, just as it did in October 2021 when it added MagSafe to the first-generation AirPods Pro. Overall, at the current time, new AirPods Pro this year seem very unlikely. 2024 or 2025 appear to be more probable time frames for the introduction of a third-generation model.