Apple announced AirPods 5 on Wednesday with noise cancellation it says is 50 percent better than the AirPods 4. Apple credits a new acoustic architecture and calls the result the best ANC in an open-ear design for wireless earbuds. These are still the tipless AirPods that sit in the outer ear rather than sealing the canal, so that comparison is against other open designs and not against the AirPods Pro 3. There are two models again. The $129 version runs four hours with ANC on, and the $149 version gets five hours, a wireless charging case and swipe controls. Adaptive EQ, conversation awareness and adaptive audio carry over. Preorders opened today and both models ship on September 18.
The pair that did not appear is the one with cameras. Apple had planned to introduce high-end in-ear AirPods with built-in cameras for analyzing the surrounding environment at this event, and Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that the launch has moved to next year, arriving alongside the 20th-anniversary iPhone. In early August Gurman had them progressing well enough to potentially ship before the end of 2026. By mid-August they were off the road map.