AirPods Pro 3 vs Bose QC Ultra 2: Which Earbuds Win?

No other brand hypes its new tech products with the enthusiasm of Apple. And wow, have they gone to town with the AirPods Pro 3 earbuds, claiming “unbelievable sound quality” and “the world’s best in-ear Active Noise Cancellation” for starters, plus a more stable design, longer battery run time, enhanced health tracking features and Live Translation – in-ear conversion of a foreign language speaker.

But before you go running out to buy the new Pro 3s ($249) on their maker’s say-so – as I did on their first day of sale – you might want to peruse my findings. I put these buds up against their new arch-rivals - the Bose QC Ultra Earbuds 2nd Gen ($299), which I recently reviewed for Techlicious.

Want to take a bet on which came out on top?

Sound quality

The AirPods Pro 3s are definitely brighter-sounding than their predecessor Pro 2s, and likewise the more compact, quasi-open-ear AirPod 4s, which are still in the line. (My comparisons were all conducted with the EQ controls at the “flat” factory setting. Source material was drawn from the Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Qobuz streaming apps, Bluetooth-beamed to the buds from an iPhone 16 Pro.)

Guitar riffs from my new jam band faves, Goose (Chain Your Dragon), and on a terrific new (Plangent-Processed and Steve Wilson remixed) rendering of the Grateful Dead’s Blues for Allah sounded razor sharp on the Pro 3s. Likewise, keys tinkled brightly, and drums had plenty of snap, crackle, and pop. If you’re a high-frequency freak and regularly crank up the treble, you’re gonna like these Apple buds a lot.

But after quick hand-offs to the Bose QC Ultra Earbuds 2nd Gen, it soon became evident to me that the Pro 3s were the lesser performers overall. In comparison with the Bose buds, the Apples now seemed top-heavy and bottom-light, with less sonic depth of field. When fed the more telling, less processed varieties of recorded music (acoustic jazz, Americana, classical) that I mostly rely on for testing, the Bose buds delivered a sweeter, more naturally articulated sound, rounded out with significantly better bass response. Even an amateur concert video shot on a pal’s compact camera at the Philadelphia Folk Festival demonstrated the Bose’s more nuanced reproduction skills, better at sharing the true acoustic aura you’d experience with live pickers/singers (here, the Molly Tuttle Band) working out on the fest’s main Martin Guitar Stage. Been there, heard this.

The exception to my “Bose buds sound better” findings came with Spatial content encoded in Dolby Atmos, a variation on surround sound that Apple offers in licensed decoding form on its buds, but Bose does not. With Atmos-pheric material, the Pro 3s deliver a more expansive soundscape with more “air” between each instrument, a bigger sonic vision than Bose achieves with its homegrown Immersion spatial processing or its new Cinema processing mode, which excels at clarifying mumblin’ dialogue.

I ain’t no engineer, but the thought has crossed my mind that Apple may have rewritten the processing algorithms for the new Pro 3 buds for the sake of energy efficiency, but to the detriment of audio reproduction – inadvertently flattening the sound fields. Even with the new AirPods Pro3’s bigger bundle of health tracking features like heart rate monitoring (the Bose offer nothing like that), the new Pro 3 buds are rated to run for 8 hours on a charge, versus 6 hours of play time for the (virtually) same size Pro 2s and Bose’s QC Ultra 2s. I’m thinking something had to give…

Winner for sound quality: Bose

Active noise cancellation and comfort

Read the fine print footnote below Apple’s claim of “World’s Best In-Ear Active Noise Cancellation” and you’ll find that the Pro 3 buds were tested against the “best-selling wireless in-ear headphones commercially available at the time.” ChatGPT and Google both inform that those would have been a prior model of Apple AirPods.

Yes, for sure, the maker has improved on those with the Pro 3s, though the uptick in ANC performance from my first edition AirPod Pro 2s seems modest. And that “world’s best” boast is totally misleading.

Apple says the addition of an extra microphone on the backside of the new earbuds contributes to their enhanced noise detection and suppression. If I put my hand over that microphone grill, I do hear the ANC making adjustments. But equally relevant to the ANC upgrade is the change in the silicone ear tips on the Pro 3s.

The tips are now lined with foam, so when you push the buds into your ears, they make a better passive noise seal and also secure the buds a bit better (an upgrade demanded by active wearers!) Inserting the buds to achieve an (app measurable) good seal requires some pushing and twisting and maybe tip switching – 5 different sizes are included in the packaging. While scratchy at first, the tips do soften up after a few uses. But generally speaking, any buds that require a serious push into your ear canal are going to cause ear fatigue with extended use.

The rival Bose QC Ultra 2 buds deal with securing the fit better – their soft tips are more pliant and less intrusive, and the buds are held in place more securely with their weight-sharing, ear-gripping shape and silicone stability bands.

So when all’s said and done, how did the Pro 3s fare against the Bose QC Ultra 2s in Active Noise Cancellation?

Cranking ambient recordings of airplane cabin noise and coffee shop clatter at 85 decibel volume levels (roaring through a Sonos Move 2 speaker), the AirPods Pro 3 reduced the loud ruckus to a minor grumbling. And the noxious noise floor virtually disappeared in my ears if I was simultaneously playing music through the buds. Ah, but the Bose QC Ultra 2s fared even better. These little marvels created a hush in my head so fine I could totally forget I had roaring jet engines, chatterboxes, and clanging cutlery blasting away in the room. And this proved true even without any noise-masking music playing on these buds. For quiet, comfortable snoozing on a plane, they’re unbeatable.

Winner for ANC and comfort: Bose

Enhanced hearing features

Like their Pro 2 predecessors, the Apple AirPod Pro 3s do offer other noise suppression features you won’t find on Bose buds. My Techlicious colleague Stewart Wolpin has had good success using Apple’s certified hearing aid option. And when used thusly, as a hearing aid, the new Pro 3s can run for 10 hours, up from six on their predecessor.

Another very nice Pro holdover is the Conversation feature, which (when activated) automatically reduces the volume of music playing in your ears when you start talking, then lifts the music level higher after you’re done schmoozing.

I was also very happy to have these Apple earbuds seated in my ears and set to the Adaptive listening mode at the recent XPoNential Music Festival in Camden, NJ. When configured, the Pro 3s reduced the incoming volume level of music by maybe 8-10 decibels (dB) – saving me from the ear-ringing and potential permanent damage of exposure to 90 dB + sound - without doing too much harm to the tonal qualities or clarity of the music. The Bose buds offer nothing like that.

Winner for enhanced hearing features: Apple

Voice Calls

We can make this fast and easy. Both makers’ predecessor earbud models took knocks for their mediocre phone call voicings. Both have upped their game, Bose more effectively. Calls coming in and going out through the QC Ultra Earbuds 2nd Gen sounded clearer, closer, and louder.

Winner for voice calls: Bose

Real-time translation

If you do a lot of traveling, you might be swayed by the AI-enabled Live Translation feature, newly available on the AirPods Pro 3 (and also on AirPods Pro 2 through a software update). Both require an updated iPhone 15 Pro or later running iOS 26 or later, with Apple Intelligence enabled. English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German languages are supported in the initial “Beta” launch of Live Translation in the U.S., with more to come. But take (ironic) note, you might not be able to actually deploy Live Translation when visiting E.U. countries for a while, until the software passes the E.U.’s rigorous tests ensuring user privacy and protection.

In my preliminary testing, the Beta version of Live Translation has proven very flaky. Should the foreign language speaker in a one-on-one conversation know to talk very slowly and clearly, the software can deliver common words and phrases to your ears in a mostly fathomable English translation while also pushing a dialogue transcript to your iPhone screen. The AI software can also translate your English responses back to their language for display on the phone screen. As there’s about a second in lag time between incoming and outgoing speech conversion, a speaker needs to stop talking after every sentence. Live Translation is not nearly ready for prime time. I clicked on the processing to translate the dialogue of a Spanish-language TV drama “Velvet” – airing with English subtitles on my local PBS station (and Passport app). The language converter skipped over every other sentence, dropped names, and mangled many words.

The Bose buds do not offer Live Translation.

Winner for real-time translation: Neither

The bottom line

If you’re looking for the “Best Featured” ANC earbuds, the Apple AirPod Pro 3s ($249) are the ticket to ride.

If you’re a “meat and potatoes” earbud wearer, looking for great music reproduction, terrific active noise cancellation, and a comfortable fit, the Bose QC Ultra Earbuds 2nd Gen ($299) are the best in the land.

Read next: Bose QC Ultra Earbuds 2 Review – Subtle Changes, Major Payoff

[Image credit: Jonathan Takiff/Techlicious]