AirPods Pro 3's big bet is health-tracking, but would that make you upgrade?
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Could health tracking be the killer app for AirPods Pro 3?. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. If you thought Apple's AirPods business was pretty sweet – last year it made more money than all of Nintendo from its headphones and earbuds alone – then you ain't seen nothing yet: Apple is reportedly pushing the best AirPods further into the healthcare business, a business that Morgan Stanley claims could be worth over $313 billion to Apple by 2027.
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The latest report, from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, says that Apple has multiple teams working on bringing multiple forms of Apple Watch-style health tracking to its earbuds, and the next big one could arrive with the AirPods Pro 3. Apple has already taken its AirPods into the healthcare market with the addition of hearing aid features in the AirPods Pro 2. But their potential isn't limited to audio. Those little buds in your ears, it turns out, are also well placed to monitor your heart rate, your body temperature and other vitals.
According to Bloomberg, the tech isn't quite there yet – the most progress so far has been on heart-rate tracking, but the accuracy isn't quite up there with the Apple Watch – but Apple is very keen to make your buds into health devices as well as music and speech ones.
Apple isn't the first firm to think of this, of course. We covered a lot of the contenders for health-tracking earbuds several years ago; for example, the Amazfit Powerbuds Pro were sold on the basis of health tracking features back in 2021, but as we found in our tests, the heart-rate results were consistently wrong. That said, Amazfit doesn't exactly have Apple's R&D budget or teams of experts; if any firm can get the tech right, it's likely to be Apple.
