I’m an AirPods devotee. I’m always testing wireless earbuds and headphones, but I keep on coming back to Apple’s AirPods. They last ages, sound great and work impeccably well with all my Apple devices.
And yes, I do love the AirPods Pro, with their huge range of features, great active noise cancellation and superb sound quality, but they’re not exactly cheap, which is why the AirPods 5 are so delectably tempting.
Now very similar in terms of feature set, Apple’s latest common-or-garden AirPods come in two flavours and start from £119, but it’s the slightly pricier £139 AirPods 5, with wireless charging, volume controls and longer battery life, that I think are worth considering.
Costing £80 less, the AirPods 5 offer an awful lot of what makes the AirPods Pro 3 so good, without the premium price tag. I’ve been putting both pairs head to head to see where the differences really lie and whether there’s enough left to justify spending more on the Pros.
Read more: AirPods 5, reviewed
AirPods 5
The AirPods 5 are the best-value AirPods that Apple has made. They’re light and comfortable, sound great and now come with on-stem volume controls. You get stronger active noise cancellation, a wireless charging case and good sound quality. The open-ear fit isn’t as secure as the AirPods Pro 3 and the ANC isn’t as powerful, but you get pretty much all the same features for £80 less, including live translate, head gesture support and more.
Buy now £139, Argos.co.uk
AirPods Pro 3
The AirPods Pro 3 are Apple’s best wireless earbuds. They have great sound, boast better noise cancellation and have a snugger, more secure fit. You also get longer battery life, heart-rate tracking and Apple’s advanced hearing health features. If you want the silicone ear tips, fitness tracking features and better ANC, then it’s worth paying the extra £80.
Buy now £186.15, Argos.co.uk
Read more: AirPods Pro 3, reviewed
AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3: Design and comfort
The AirPods Pro 3 and all-new AirPods 5 look almost identical from the outside. The AirPods 5 case is a little smaller than the AirPods Pro 3 one, measuring 50.1mm wide compared with 62.2mm, but it’s not a huge difference. Your pockets aren’t going to be bulging any less by opting for one over the other.
The AirPods 5 case is lighter too, but I’d argue the weight of the earbuds themselves matter a lot more than the weight of the case. The AirPods 5 weigh just 4.3g each and the AirPods Pro 3 weigh 5.55g each. If you don’t like earbuds clogging up your ears or feeling full, the AirPods 5 might be a better fit.
And that’s not just because they’re lighter. The AirPods Pro 3 come with foam-infused silicone ear tips (in five different sizes) to create a tighter seal in your ear, as well as a more secure fit. The AirPods 5, however, have an open-ear design, meaning they just sit inside your ear instead of plugging up your ears. There are vents on the AirPods Pro 3 to relieve that clogging feeling, but you won’t feel that at all on the AirPods 5.
There’s a trade-off there. I do find that the AirPods 5 are looser than the AirPods Pro 3. Sometimes when I’m walking, I feel like they’re on the verge of falling out of my ears – I don’t get that feeling with the AirPods Pro 3’s tighter fit. That also makes a difference if you’re wearing these for workouts. The AirPods 5 have fallen out of my ears whilst at the gym, but the AirPods Pro 3 never have.
Both are rated IP57 for dust, sweat and water resistance. Ultimately, the biggest design difference is really how you like your AirPods to fit. The AirPods 5 are lighter and you don’t feel them clogging up your lugholes, but the AirPods Pro 3 are snugger and more secure.
AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3: Features and controls
While there may be a stark difference when it comes to the fit, the feature set is almost identical on the two earbuds.
The biggest upgrade over the AirPods 4 is volume control. The £139 AirPods 5 are the first open-ear AirPods to let you increase or decrease the volume by swiping up and down on the stem. It sounds frivolous, but it’s genuinely something I’ve always missed when switching from the AirPods Pro 3 to the AirPods 4.
Both also use the H2 chip and come with features such as adaptive audio, which adjusts the amount of active noise cancellation and transparency depending on what you’re doing, and conversation awareness, which lowers your music when you start talking.
You also have head gesture support, so you can nod or shake your head to accept or decline a call, and voice isolation can make you sound clearer on calls in noisy environments. Both also support Live Translation, which can translate conversations in real time through your AirPods. I’m a big fan of the personalised spatial audio feature too, which makes it sound like your music is all around you – it’s really good for films.
The charging cases are a little different – both have a speaker in them so you can find them easily with Find My, but the AirPods Pro 3 case has ultra-wideband, so you can find it using precision finding. It also has MagSafe charging, while the AirPods 5 support standard Qi wireless charging, so you’ll have to manually align your AirPods to the charger yourself.
Fitness tracking is the biggest differentiator. The AirPods Pro 3 feature a heart-rate sensor in each earbud, so your buds can actually measure your heart rate during a workout. This pulls your heart rate information into Apple’s Fitness and Health apps.
The AirPods Pro 3 can track up to 50 different workout types from the Fitness app, gathering both heart rate data and calories burned. Annoyingly, you do need to start a session from the Fitness app before the heart rate sensor starts tracking – it doesn’t do this automatically, and it’s something I forget to do all the time. The AirPods 5 don’t have a heart-rate sensor.
There are also more advanced hearing health features on the AirPods Pro 3 compared to the AirPods 5. There’s a clinically validated hearing test, hearing aid functionality, as well as active hearing protection, which is built to reduce exposure to loud environmental noise.
Don’t care for fitness tracking or hearing health features? Maybe you don’t need the AirPods Pro. You still get volume controls, ANC and transparency modes (more on that below), adaptive audio, conversation awareness modes, head gesture support, spatial audio, a speaker for Find My and wireless charging.
AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3: Sound and noise cancellation
The AirPods 5 have received some pretty chunky upgrades when it comes to audio and active noise cancellation. Apple has redesigned the acoustic architecture, giving the AirPods 5 a new multiport system that it says is inspired by the AirPods Pro 3. The next-generation adaptive EQ adjusts the sound across a wider range of frequencies based on the fit.
It’s a really important feature because of the open ear design. Because the regular AirPods don’t have that secure fit, the sound profile can change a lot when you’re moving, so bass frequency can change. I think they sound a lot better than on the AirPods 4.
That said, I think sound quality is just that much better on the AirPods Pro 3. Bass is beefier, and music sounds more immersive. There’s also more separation between instruments. The AirPods 5 sound pretty good considering they’re open-ear buds, however, with a nice, rich sound, though they don’t have as much depth or width in the soundstage.
You can also adjust the audio to your liking thanks to the new custom equaliser. While Apple’s default tuning and adaptive EQ is good, some of us just want to adjust the low, mid and high frequencies ourselves, finally giving AirPods users control over how they sound.
And every single pair of AirPods now gets active noise cancellation. Apple claims the AirPods 5 can cancel up to 50 per cent more external noise than the AirPods 4 with ANC, and I found that broadly accurate. In fact, I was surprised at how good the ANC was. While it doesn’t dull the sound out of existence like the AirPods Pro 3, it makes external noise so quiet that you can actually ignore it. It’s really impressive considering there’s no silicone ear tip to provide that passive noise isolation.
Transparency mode is fantastic on both, but it feels especially natural on the AirPods 5 considering you can already hear so much through their open-ear design. The AirPods Pro 3, meanwhile, use external microphones to recreate external sound with transparency mode. I use transparency mode a lot, and it almost feels like I’m not wearing any buds at all with the AirPods 5.
AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3: Battery life
The £139 AirPods 5 last up to five hours on a single charge with active noise cancellation turned on, or seven hours if you have ANC and transparency modes turned off. That’s one hour longer with ANC compared to the AirPods 4 with ANC.
The AirPods Pro 3, however, last for up to eight hours with ANC turned on, three hours more than the AirPods 5.
You still get loads of battery life with the charging case, however. In total, you can eke out 22 hours with the AirPods 5. With the charging case, you get 24 hours with the AirPods Pro 3. They might last longer if you compare the buds themselves, but in terms of total listening time, they’re fairly similar. If you charge either for about five minutes, you’ll also get an hour of listening time.
Should you buy the AirPods 5 or the AirPods Pro 3?
While the AirPods Pro 3 are Apple’s best AirPods, I don’t think everyone needs to spend £80 more. They come with most of the same core features, good sound quality and really decent active noise cancellation.
So, when should you pay more for the AirPods Pro 3? If you care about sound quality, the AirPods Pro 3 have better audio reproduction, and noise cancellation is significantly stronger. They also last three hours longer with ANC switched on. I’d also choose them if you want a secure, snug fit, or intend to wear them at the gym – the heart rate sensor is a nice addition.
But if none of those things matter to you, honestly, save your £80. The £139 AirPods 5 finally have on-stem volume controls, they feature active noise cancellation and transparency modes, adaptive audio, conversation awareness, spatial audio and wireless charging. More importantly, they’re lighter and don’t fill up your ears, which some people will find much more comfortable. The silicone tips might make the fit snugger, but you might not like your lugholes plugged up. The AirPods 5 are the best value AirPods around.
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