Apple announced the new AirPods Pro 2 wireless earbuds at its Far Out September event, priced at $249/£249/AU$399. Pre-orders begin on September 9, with a shipping date of September 23.
The new AirPods Pro feature the same “protruding stick” design as the previous version, and white remains the only color option. A key upgrade is the capacitive touch controls on the outer surface of the earbuds, which allow you to adjust volume by swiping your finger up or down — something the original feature didn’t have.
According to Apple, the new H2 chip allows for advanced computational audio in the new AirPods Pro, with the benefit of canceling twice the amount of noise even when you turn on transparency mode, such as heavy machinery.
Like the AirPods 3 and AirPods Max, the new AirPods Pro also support spatial audio. A new Personalized Spatial Audio option is also supported in iOS 16, which uses the TrueDepth camera feature on iPhone to create a unique listener profile based on the shape of your head and ears, so sound movement is more persuasive.
Lightning wired charging, Qi, and Apple MagSafe wireless charging are options for the new AirPods Pro, but you can use the charger that came with your Apple Watch for the first time. For the new model, battery life has been upgraded to 6 hours on a single charge and 30 hours of total listening time with the charging case, up from 4.5 hours and 24 hours, respectively, of the original.
There are few new features among the new models listed in the 5 upgrades released for the AirPods Pro 2, but one of them is an improved case with built-in speakers for pairing feedback and bass power and charge status. It’s also used for precise finding, the case’s speaker beeps when using the iOS Find My feature, and there’s support for UWB directional positioning with your iPhone so you can point directly at your lost AirPods.
Lastly, Apple has also added new low-distortion speakers and custom amplifiers, so we think the overall audio quality will be improved over the original.
There’s no mention of lossless audio, but Apple does say the H2 chip supports high-bandwidth connections, so we don’t know what that means yet. We’ve written before about how Apple is adding lossless sound to the AirPods via Bluetooth, so there may be more to come with these buds in the future.
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