AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3: if you carry an iPhone and your ears can live with a silicone tip, buy the Pro 3, above all when a sale drags them down to around €200 (about 131,000 FCFA). They shut out far more noise and run for almost twice as long on a charge. The AirPods 5 score elsewhere: nothing plugs your ear, and Amazon France was already listing the better of the two versions at €139 (about 91,000 FCFA) in early October. The whole decision hangs on two questions that no spec sheet ever asks.
Introduction: AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 is a question for your ears first
Try this with any pair of in-ear buds lying forgotten in a drawer. Twenty minutes, no more. If you are itching to pull them out before a podcast episode ends, this AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 comparison is already half settled.
Apple now sells two noise-cancelling pairs that look a lot alike from a distance. The AirPods 5, unveiled at the September 9 keynote and on shelves since the 18th, rest at the entrance of the ear canal without sealing it: €149 (about 98,000 FCFA) for the basic version, €169 (about 111,000 FCFA) for the one that charges wirelessly. The AirPods Pro 3 came out a year earlier, push into the ear on a foam-filled tip and are still listed at €249 (about 163,000 FCFA) by Apple in France. Retailers ask a good deal less.
Same H2 chip, same IP57 rating, same live translation. The full inventory sits in our AirPods 5 spec sheet and in the one for the AirPods Pro 3. What interests us here is daily life with one pair or the other: a morning at the office, a noisy commute, a night flight.
Nobody on our team has worn either pair. The impressions described below are drawn from reviews published by the press, plus a year of buyer feedback in the case of the Pro model.
Verdict in brief: the Pro 3 come out ahead, the AirPods 5 are never far behind
Five rounds out of eight go to the Pro 3, two to the AirPods 5, and sound ends in a draw: add it all up and this AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 tilts toward the model with ear tips. The final gap stays thin, 8.4 against 8 out of 10, because the two rounds it loses are comfort and price. Hardly minor ones.
Verdict in 30 seconds
The AirPods Pro 3 block out far more noise, last eight hours per charge and read your pulse. Found at around €200, they justify the premium over the AirPods 5, as long as you get on with ear tips.
For whom iPhone owners who travel, work in noisy places or exercise without a watch
Avoid if Ear tips soon bother you, your budget stops at €150 or your phone runs Android
We like
- Top-tier noise cancelling
- Eight hours claimed per charge
- Heart rate sensor you can trust on a bike and in the gym
- IP57 case with precise location tracking
We like less
- €249 outside sales
- Ear tips some ears won't tolerate
- Whistling reported by buyers
- No USB-C cable in the box
| Criterion | Apple AirPods 5 | Apple AirPods Pro 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Design | Open-fit, 4.3 g, plain case | In-ear, 5 tip sizes, IP57 case |
| Sound | Airy, light bass | Big, very heavy bass |
| Noise cancelling | Good for an open design | Among the best |
| Comfort and fit | Nothing in the ear canal | Very secure, tips to put up with |
| Battery life | 4 to 5 h, 20 to 22 h with case | 8 h, 24 h with case |
| Health | No heart rate sensor | Pulse and hearing test |
| iOS features | Translation, head gestures | Same + precise tracking |
| Price | €149 to €169 | €249, often near €200 |
| Rounds won | 2 | 5 |
Design: twins on the table, strangers once they’re in your ear
Lay them side by side and good luck telling them apart from two metres away. Glossy white plastic, a short stem, a case the size of a tin of mints.
They part ways the moment you put them on. Each AirPods 5 bud is a rigid 4.3 g shell that settles in the hollow of the ear; a Pro 3 bud weighs 5.55 g and ends in a silicone tip supplied in five sizes. You won’t feel a gram of difference. A sealed ear canal, you will.
The case is what decides this round of our AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3. The Pro 3 case does everything: wireless charging, an ultra-wideband chip that leads you to within a centimetre of it when it has slipped between two sofa cushions, and an IP57 rating that covers the box as well as the buds. With the AirPods 5, you have to add €20 (about 13,000 FCFA) to get wireless charging and a tiny speaker that chirps when you go looking for it. The €149 model charges by cable only and stays silent at the bottom of a bag.
About that cable. Apple doesn’t put one in the Pro 3 box, and the list of accessories for the AirPods 5 makes no mention of one either. Stingy.
One good point they share is the IP57 rating of the earbuds themselves. A downpour on the Wouri bridge in Douala, sweat from a run, dust thrown up by a passing moto-taxi: none of that is supposed to hurt them.
Round to the Pro 3, for the better-equipped case and the choice of tips.
No display to judge, so sound takes the round. It crowns nobody
There is no screen to compare in an AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 face-off, which hands this round to your ears. We expected the dearer model to walk it. That is not what happens.
Take a well-produced afrobeats track and play it somewhere quiet. Through the Pro 3, the bass lands hard: Fnac’s test lab in France describes a very pronounced low end and rates the frequency response 6.7 out of 10, while Mac4Ever finds the result a little heavy at low volume. TechRadar, for its part, enjoys that energy. Call it a matter of taste, and of tuning too, now that iOS 27 has finally brought an equaliser.
Play that same song through the AirPods 5 and it breathes more. It feels lighter as well. T3 writes of a full, spacious sound. The price to pay is plain physics: with nothing closing off the ear, part of the bass leaks away, and tbreak misses some punch.
Watching a series or sitting through a video call, you will hear no difference worth €80. In an AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 decision, sound is not the argument that should push you to spend more. A draw, and we stand by it.
Performance: AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 against a wall of noise
Seven in the morning at a bus station in Yaoundé, and the coach for Douala is warming up its engine. Paris edition: the RER B at rush hour. This is where AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 stops being a contest between lookalikes.
The AirPods 5 manage something no open Apple earbud had done properly before them. Engine drone and air conditioning drop back noticeably, and BGR says it has heard nothing better at this price. Your neighbours’ chatter and the car horns still get through. T3 would rather talk about reduction than isolation. That is the right word.
Switch to the Pro 3 and the coach all but vanishes. The foam in the tip blocks sound before the electronics even start working, and TechRadar speaks of a wall of silence. Apple claims they remove three times more noise than the AirPods 5.
That leakiness has an upside for the AirPods 5. On foot in Cotonou traffic, hearing the motorbike filtering up the line of cars is well worth a few decibels of peace.
For phone calls the ranking flips. Tom’s Guide and BGR describe very clean calls on the AirPods 5, whereas Mac4Ever advises picking the iPhone back up as soon as the street gets lively when you are wearing the Pro 3.
One shadow hangs over the Pro model. Since autumn 2025, buyers have been reporting an occasional high-pitched whistle while noise cancelling is running. A January update quietened it for some of them, according to Macworld, though not for everyone. The whole story is told in our Pro 3 sheet. Buy from a shop where returns are never up for discussion.
A win for the Pro 3, by a distance. No other round of this AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 ends with such a margin.
Comfort and fit: six hours at a desk, forty minutes on a run
Two moments of the day sum up this round of our AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 better than any table could.
The first unfolds behind a computer, from nine o’clock until the lunch break. The Tom’s Guide reviewer kept the AirPods 5 in for six hours straight without discomfort, and T3 writes that you end up forgetting they are there. Nothing presses on the ear canal, and your own voice doesn’t boom inside your skull when you speak.
The Pro 3 ask for more goodwill. Mac4Ever finds them comfortable, yet on forums buyers describe a discomfort that creeps in after an hour or two. The fix is in the box: try at least two tip sizes while you can still send the pair back.
The second moment is the run. Here the rigid shell of the AirPods 5 shows its limit, which Gizmodo sums up bluntly: if the previous generation fell out of your ears, this one will too, since the shape hasn’t changed. The Pro 3 don’t budge, even when you give your head a proper shake, TechRadar notes.
Advantage AirPods 5 for comfort over the long haul. Our scores nonetheless put the two pairs level on this line, because the grip of the Pro 3 makes up for what their tips cost. To find out whether the shell will suit you, the AirPods 5 spec sheet goes through what reviewers say about it.
Battery life: the Paris-Douala flight acts as referee
Allow a little under seven hours in the air between Paris and Douala. With the Pro 3 and their eight claimed hours, noise cancelling on, the flight goes by in a single stretch, in theory. With the AirPods 5 the music stops somewhere over the Sahara: four hours with the USB-C case, five with the €169 version, going by Apple’s figures.
Published measurements more or less agree. T3 clocked close to four and a half hours with the better version of the AirPods 5. As for the Pro 3, Mac4Ever reached the eight hours and TechRadar more like five and a half with everything switched on.
Day to day, it all depends on how you listen. In one-hour chunks, you will never see the bottom of the AirPods 5 battery. String together a morning of video meetings, though, and you will finish with a single earbud in while the other gets its strength back in the case.
That case offers a small revenge: four to five full recharges from the AirPods 5 case, only two from the Pro 3 one. During a long power cut or a weekend back in the village, the two pairs come out roughly even.
Think about the long run too, because these batteries can’t be swapped by the repair stall down the road. Three years from now, eight hours that have shrunk to six are still usable. Four hours that have shrunk to three, much less so.
A win for the Pro 3. Stamina is the complaint nearly every review levels at the AirPods 5, and the weightiest criterion in our AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3.
Health and sport: a sensor in the ear, for people without a watch
A gym, an exercise bike, nothing on your wrist. The Pro 3 take your pulse from inside the ear and send it to the Fitness app on the iPhone. The AirPods 5 have nothing of the kind.
What remains to be seen is how good that reading is. The YouTuber The Quantified Scientist checked it against a Polar chest strap. On a bike, the two curves almost overlap. Out running, his data was unusable. Worth pondering before you sell your watch.
The Pro 3 also offer a hearing test and protection against loud sounds, both open to users in France since the end of 2024. The Hearing Aid feature is another matter: its availability in France remains unclear from one article to the next. In any case, a pair of earbuds replaces neither a cardiologist nor a hearing specialist.
The Pro 3 win by walkover. This is the only round of this AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 where one of the two doesn’t even turn up.
iOS features and Android: the same magic tricks, give or take a case
Open the case next to the iPhone, a card pops up, pairing done. Move from the phone to the Mac and the sound follows. On this ground the AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 contest barely exists, the chip being identical.
Live translation is shared too. It needs an iPhone able to run Apple Intelligence, meaning a 15 Pro at the very least or a recent model such as the iPhone 18 Pro. Reviews urge us to keep a cool head: BGR finds it too slow for a genuine back-and-forth, while Cult of Mac watches it lose the thread when the other person speaks quickly. For asking the way in Lisbon, yes. For haggling, no.
What separates the two in this AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 comes down to details. Adjusting the volume with a swipe on the stem works on every Pro 3, but only on the €169 AirPods 5; with the basic model, out comes the phone. The Pro 3 case can be located precisely. The AirPods 5 case merely beeps, and only in its most expensive version at that.
A word for readers on Android, the vast majority across Africa. Both pairs connect over Bluetooth, music and calls come through, and the list ends there: no app, no equaliser, no firmware updates, no translation. This AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 comparison is written for iPhone owners. With a Tecno or a Samsung in your hand, look elsewhere.
A narrow win for the Pro 3, thanks to stem volume control across the range and to location tracking.
Price: AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 and the real gap in October 2026
On Apple’s French site, €80 to €100 separate the two ranges. Nobody ought to pay those prices.
The Pro 3 have been marked down for months. French tech sites spotted them at €209 (about 137,000 FCFA) in the spring and then, in June, at €198 (about 130,000 FCFA). Clubic was still flagging that price on Amazon at the end of August. The AirPods 5 didn’t wait nearly as long. On October 1, iPhoneSoft noticed a €30 discount at the same retailer, applied when you confirm the basket: €119 (about 78,000 FCFA) for the basic version, €139 (about 91,000 FCFA) for the other.
Let’s rerun our AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 with the best price tags on record. On one side €139, on the other €198: a gap of some sixty euros, about 39,000 FCFA. For that extra, the Pro 3 add three hours of listening per charge, isolation of another order and a heart rate sensor. That is a good deal. Above €220 (about 144,000 FCFA), sit tight, Black Friday is coming.
As for choosing between the two AirPods 5, don’t go hunting for savings. Twenty euros more buys an extra hour of listening, volume at your fingertip and wireless charging.
Good to know — Apple has no store in Douala, Abidjan or Dakar. At local resellers, expect to pay more than a straight currency conversion, what with shipping and customs. If a relative buys for you in France, hold on to the receipt: the one-year warranty is easier to claim where the pair was paid for. And steer clear of the “new” pairs sold for 25,000 or 60,000 FCFA at markets. They are copies; the serial number can be checked on Apple’s website before you hand over any cash.
A win for the AirPods 5, cheaper whichever way you do the sums.
Pros and cons: our AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 in two lists
Apple AirPods 5
Pros
- No ear tips: a whole morning without giving them a thought
- Enough noise cancelling for the office and short commutes
- Very clean calls according to published reviews
- Up to €100 less than the Pro 3 at Apple’s prices
Cons
- Battery flat after four or five hours of noise cancelling
- A single shape that either stays put or falls out, depending on your ear
- Neither wireless charging nor stem volume control on the €149 model
- No pulse reading and no hearing test
Apple AirPods Pro 3
Pros
- High-level isolation on a plane, a coach or the metro
- Eight hours claimed, enough to cover a long-haul flight
- Five tip sizes and a firm hold during exercise
- Pulse measured in the ear, accurate on a bike and in the gym
Cons
- €249 from Apple: only worth buying on sale
- Ear tips that some ears can’t stand
- Overbearing bass until you visit the equaliser
- Whistling reported by a share of buyers
Detailed scores
The scores in this AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 follow those of our two product sheets and rest on published reviews, with no in-house testing behind them.
Where to buy the AirPods 5 and AirPods Pro 3 at the best price
Price tags in an AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 match-up shift from one week to the next. Look at the price, then at the return policy, which counts double for the Pro model.
Where to buy the AirPods 5 and AirPods Pro 3 at the best price
Apple AirPods 5True wireless earbuds that pair with an iPhone in one step. A good pick for iPhone users who want a recent, simple model.AmazonSee at Amazon
Apple AirPods Pro 3Écouteurs à réduction de bruit active, détection de la fréquence cardiaque, recharge USB-C.AmazonSee at Amazon
Some links on this page are affiliate links: Wanda-techs may earn a commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you. This does not influence our opinion.
Final verdict: AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3, which pair should you choose?
Our AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 fits inside the two questions from the start: what your ears make of a silicone tip, and how much of your day is spent surrounded by noise.
Choose the AirPods 5 if in-ear buds bother you, if you rarely listen for more than two hours at a time, if you make a lot of calls or if the budget stops at €150. Take the €169 model. What you get is a pair of earbuds you forget you are wearing. Their full portrait can be read in our detailed take on the AirPods 5.
Go for the AirPods Pro 3 if you board a plane or a coach several times a month, if you work in an open-plan office, if you train in a gym with no watch on. Check the day’s price, then listen to them in silence during the first week to catch any whistling. Every detail is laid out in the complete AirPods Pro 3 sheet.
Our pick
Apple AirPods Pro 3 — for the isolation, the eight hours of listening and the pulse tracking, provided you own an iPhone, tolerate ear tips and pay around €200 (about 131,000 FCFA) rather than the official €249.
Frequently asked questions
AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3: what is the main difference?
The format. The AirPods 5 are open: a rigid shell resting at the entrance of the ear, with no tip. The AirPods Pro 3 seal the canal with a foam-filled silicone tip. As a result the Pro 3 isolate much better and last eight hours against four to five, while the AirPods 5 make themselves forgotten and cost €80 to €100 less at Apple’s prices.
AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3: which should you pick for flying?
The Pro 3, no hesitation. Their noise cancelling does a far better job of erasing the roar of the engines, and their eight claimed hours cover a Paris-Douala flight without a stop in the case. The AirPods 5 give up after four or five hours. One caveat: some Pro 3 buyers reported whistling in flight during the first year. Try your pair before a long trip.
AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3: which are enough for public transport?
For a bus or metro ride of under an hour, the AirPods 5 do the job. Their noise cancelling clearly softens engines and ventilation, according to published reviews. It lets voices through, along with brief sounds such as horns, which is rather reassuring when you are walking in town. If you spend two hours a day in a noisy coach, the difference with the Pro 3 is audible straight away.
AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3: which should you buy with an Android phone?
Neither, honestly. They work over Bluetooth for music and calls, but Apple offers no Android app: no settings, no equaliser, no updates, no live translation. You would be paying €149 to €249 for half a product. On Android, the AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 question simply doesn’t arise. It will come back the day you move to an iPhone.
Apple finally sells two good pairs, and this AirPods 5 vs AirPods Pro 3 is decided by the ear more than by the wallet. Which one do you wear, and what have you noticed after a few weeks? Tell us in the comments.
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