AirPods Pro 3 review: hearing aid mode and live translation tested in Australia

The first thing that broke me was a tram conversation. I was on the 96 heading down Nicholson Street into Brunswick on a Saturday morning, AirPods Pro 3 still settling in, when an older woman across the aisle started telling her grand-daughter about a chemist appointment. I was not eavesdropping, exactly. I had thumbed on the Hearing Aid feature five minutes earlier at the tram stop, on a whim, and now her voice arrived clear over the squeal of the rails. The carriage was just turned up. I felt rude. I felt a bit fascinated. Ten years of earbuds and I have never had a moment quite like that. That moment, more than any spec sheet, is the reason this review has been the one I was most nervous to write.

Apple put the AirPods Pro 3 on shelves in Australia on 19 September 2025 at $A429. They cost $30 more than the AirPods Pro 2 with USB-C did at launch, when they sat at $A399. The new pair brings an upgraded H2 chip, what Apple calls twice the active noise cancellation of the previous generation, an IP57 dust and water rating, a heart rate sensor, live translation in ten language pairs, and a clinical-grade hearing aid feature that the Therapeutic Goods Administration has confirmed sits under Apple Pty Ltd's existing ARTG entry, 473488. I have been wearing them daily for about a month, mostly around Melbourne. The short answer is yes, they are the best wireless earbuds going if your phone is an iPhone. The longer answer involves my mother, a Vietnamese place on Victoria Street, and one slightly humbling night at the Astor.

What are the AirPods Pro 3 and what's new?

The AirPods Pro 3 are Apple's top in-ear noise-cancelling earbuds. The case looks roughly like the Pro 2 case. The buds are a little smaller. The acoustic chamber has been redesigned and there is a new range of foam-infused silicone tips in five sizes, including a new XXS for smaller ears. Headline upgrades over the Pro 2: IP57 dust and water rating, the heart rate sensor, the H2 chip's tighter ANC tuning, and 67 per cent more battery in Transparency mode. Single-charge listening climbs from six hours to eight with ANC on, or ten hours in Transparency with Hearing Aid running. The case battery, oddly, has shrunk, so total time with the case dropped from 30 hours to 24. Live translation is supported in ten languages including Australian English, although it needs an iPhone 16 or later running iOS 26 with Apple Intelligence on.

How much do the AirPods Pro 3 cost in Australia?

In Australia, the AirPods Pro 3 sit at $A429 outright. Same price at apple.com/au, in Apple Stores, at JB Hi-Fi, at Officeworks, and on Amazon Australia. That is a $30 lift over the Pro 2 launch price of $A399 and a touch steeper than the UK conversion (£219 works out to roughly $A410 right now). Telstra and Optus both offer them on accessory plans bundled with iPhone purchases, but per month it ends up about the same as buying outright. There is no Apple AU education discount on AirPods Pro 3, only on the Mac and iPad lines. Worth flagging if you were hoping the back-to-school price would carry across. Refurbished stock has not yet appeared on Apple's Australia refurbished page, so if you want a pair now you are paying retail. JB Hi-Fi staff at the Bourke Street Mall told me they sold through their first allocation in roughly five days. Restocked since.

What's it like to use them day to day?

This is the section I was most curious to write, because the AirPods Pro 2 had basically gone invisible to me. I wore them on the 96 tram, on Frankston-line trips out to my parents in Doncaster, at my desk, at the gym, on flights to Sydney. They worked. The Pro 3, by contrast, kept making me notice them, in good ways and one or two slightly annoying ones. Fit first. The new tips have a foam core under a silicone skin, and they grip differently. After a session at the bouldering gym in Brunswick I ended up reaching back to push the right bud in twice. Harley Maranan at SoundGuys flagged the same thing in his write-up, pointing at the glossy housing and noting the buds tend to walk out during exercise. Not a deal-breaker, but if you sweat through workouts, size up by one tip.

The ANC is the other thing you clock straight away. SoundGuys lab-tested it at an average 90 per cent reduction in outside noise. On a flight back from Sydney I had a row to myself, the engines flattened to a distant hum, the kid kicking the back of my seat reduced to a soft thud rather than a percussive event. What Hi-Fi gave the Pro 3 a five-out-of-five for sound, comfort, and features, and called the bass "taut and tuneful," which feels right. Vocals on Spotify's Tones and I tracks come through clean. Spatial audio on Apple Music classical recordings has more depth than the Pro 2 ever offered.

I keep coming back to small moments. Walking down Lygon Street late on a Tuesday, Adaptive Audio mode let in just enough noise that I clocked the cyclist before I needed to dodge. At a screening of an old print at the Astor in St Kilda, I forgot the buds were in until the credits rolled, then jumped a little when the lobby chatter rushed back. Battery life is better, genuinely. SoundGuys clocked eight hours and 42 minutes with ANC on. I usually got through two days of light listening on a single charge.

The fast-charge claim, an hour of playback from five minutes in the case, held up the one time I actually needed it, sprinting for the Skybus to the airport with a flat right bud. The case feels a millimetre thinner in the pocket than the Pro 2 did, which I noticed on day one. Precision Finding range is genuinely longer, too. I lost the case under my couch in Fitzroy and the iPhone walked me to within 30 centimetres of it.

How does the hearing aid mode work in Australia?

This is where the Pro 3 stops being a gadget and becomes something stranger. The feature was first announced for the AirPods Pro 2 in late 2024. It did not arrive in Australia at the same time as it did in New Zealand and the United States, which created some justifiable noise in the local hearing community. The TGA approved the Hearing Aid Feature for AirPods Pro 2 on 17 December 2024 under ARTG entry 473488, in the name of Apple Pty Ltd. A TGA spokesperson told Hearing Practitioner Australia in late 2025 that the same approval covers the Pro 3, on the basis that the feature itself is a software medical application and the AirPods are not a medical device.

In practice that means once you put on a pair of Pro 3 and update to iOS 26.1 in Australia, you can run the on-device Hearing Test, set up a personalised hearing profile, and turn on Hearing Aid mode. I tried it. I asked my mother if I could borrow her for an hour. She is 71, has mild high-frequency loss, has resisted hearing aids for years on cost and stigma grounds, and was sceptical when I produced a small white case from my jacket pocket. The Hearing Test runs in around five minutes per ear, a sequence of tones in a quiet room. It generated her audiogram, we loaded it into the Health app, the buds adjusted automatically. We sat at her kitchen table in Doncaster and had a normal conversation. She started crying about three minutes in. I did not know where to look.

Dr Steve Taddei, Lab Director at HearAdvisor, gave the Pro 3 a hearing aid score of 4.1 out of 5, up from 3.8 for the Pro 2. He noted the out-of-the-box programming is conservative and that lowering ambient noise reduction sharpens speech clarity considerably. I followed his advice and got noticeably better results. At a Vietnamese place on Victoria Street last Friday I could follow the waiter's order-back over the kitchen clatter, which I cannot reliably do without amplification.

The caveats are real. Not a replacement for clinical hearing aids if you have severe loss. The eight-hour battery is laughably short next to a real hearing aid, which can run all day and recharge overnight. The settings are buried inside the iPhone Bluetooth menu and the Health app, frustrating UX for the older audience that would benefit most. Conversation Boost and beamforming microphones do most of the heavy lifting in noisy rooms, but they are imperfect. Still, my mother wore them for the full afternoon and asked me on the tram on the way home what they cost. She has never said that sentence about hearing aids before.

What are the downsides?

Three things bug me. First, no manual EQ. Adaptive EQ adjusts to your ear shape and the H2 chip handles tuning, but if you want a more recessed treble or a flatter low end, you cannot get it. What Hi-Fi flagged the same gap. Second, the codec story is unchanged. AAC and SBC, no LDAC, no aptX. Fine on an iPhone, less fine connected to an Android device. I tested briefly with a colleague's borrowed Pixel and the experience is noticeably lesser. Andy Boxall at Android Police was blunter, calling the Pro 3 "a lesson in lock-in" and pointing out that Adaptive EQ does not function without an Apple device in the chain.

Third, live translation is fine but it is not yet the magic the keynote suggested. It works in real time, more or less, between two people who both have the same iOS version and Apple Intelligence enabled. Supported languages at launch are English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin in two scripts, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish. I tested it with a friend who speaks Mandarin at a noodle place on Russell Street. There was a delay of about two seconds per phrase, enough to make the conversation feel formal and a touch awkward. Background chatter trips it up. SoundGuys called it "still in beta," and that matches my read. Useful for someone ordering in Tokyo. Not yet useful in a noisy Footscray pho place at 7pm on a Friday.

The case battery dropping from 30 hours to 24 is a regression worth noting, even if the eight-hour single-charge gain offsets it for most people. And the gloss on the housing scratches. I have a faint mark on the right bud already from dropping it onto the kitchen bench, which the matte Pro 2 housing would not have shown.

Should you buy the AirPods Pro 3?

If you have an iPhone 16 or later and you do not own AirPods Pro 2, yes. Easily. The ANC is materially better. The IP57 rating means you can run in a Melbourne winter shower without anxiety. The heart rate sensor is genuinely useful at the gym. And the Hearing Aid feature is quietly important. Even if you do not need it now, you might know somebody who does. Or you might in five years.

If you already own the Pro 2 and you are happy with them, the upgrade is harder to justify. The ANC delta is real but incremental. Hearing Aid works on your existing buds. Live translation works on your existing buds. The biggest standalone reason to upgrade is the heart rate sensor and the IP57 rating, nice but not transformative. Wait for the Pro 4 if you are on Pro 2 and content.

If you are on Android, look elsewhere. The Sony WF-1000XM6 and the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds are better picks if your phone is not made by Apple. Andy Boxall at Android Police made the case crisply: the Pro 3 are the best earbuds for an Apple owner, and a worse value for everybody else.

For someone considering them as a first hearing aid, the picture is more nuanced. They are a low-stigma, low-cost entry point, and that matters more than I had expected it to. But talk to an audiologist first, especially if your loss is moderate-to-severe.

Where to buy in Australia

Apple Australia at apple.com/au, Apple Stores nationally, JB Hi-Fi online and in store, Officeworks online and in store, and Amazon Australia all stock the AirPods Pro 3 at $A429. Telstra and Optus offer them on accessory plans alongside iPhone bundles. AppleCare+ for Headphones is $A39 for two years. Probably worth it given the Hearing Aid use case, and the fact that you will be wearing these in the gym, on trams, and in winter rain.