Apple has just announced Airpods Pro 3 (along with many other things: read everything Apple announced in its iPhone 17 event here), and as part of the announcement it showed a new live translation function.
This takes the speech of someone who speaks to him in another language and makes him his own language into his ears through his airpods. You can talk, and your iPhone will show what you are saying in your language. If two people use airpods, you can talk and translate the entire conversation.
Here is Apple’s demonstration of live translation:
Attend
Now, I could suppose (as I initially did) that it is an exclusive Airpods Pro 3, since Apple does not mention that it reaches any other headset, but it is not. Apple’s language is ambiguous during the section, and observing the comparison pages of different airpods models after the event reveals that more models will get this function.
Specifically, they are the Airpods Pro 2 and Airpods 4 with ANC that will obtain it. This makes sense: both use the same H2 chip as the Airpods Pro 3, and both have an active noise cancellation, so that the outbreaks can calm the person’s speech in their ears and complete the translation.
The cheaper airpods 4 have the H2 chip, but they do not have an active noise cancellation, so the function will be lost. And the Max Airpods have the previous H1 chip, so this is lost along with many other features, including other new Airpods characteristics announced for iOS 26.
Apple says that “the live translation with AirPods works on Airpods 4 with an active noise cancellation and Airpods Pro 2 and later with the last firmware when combined with an iPhone enabled for Apple with intelligence that runs iOS 26 and later.”
As for the languages backed by the live translation, Apple says: “The live translation in AirPods is available in English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish, and will reach four more languages for the end of the year: Italian, Japanese, Korean and Chinese (simplified).”
If you want to see a complete summary of how all the different airpods models are compared for the features, here is a great OL list.
