Headphones with heart rate monitors are nothing new — I first tried some out 10 years ago and have tested earbuds from Jabra, Sennheiser, and most recently Beats that all offer the feature. However, headphones with accurate heart rate monitors are something I haven’t come across. All the ones I’ve tried in the past have been unreliable when compared to a chest strap — the most accurate type of heart rate monitor readily available for consumers.
So it’s fair to say I didn’t have high hopes for the heart rate tracking on the Apple AirPods Pro 3, especially as the tracking on the Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 was both hard to use and often inaccurate in my testing. Fortunately, the sensor used in the AirPods Pro 3 is a new one, and it delivers the goods in terms of accuracy. I’ve done several runs with the buds and compared them to a chest strap’s readings, and the AirPods Pro 3 have barely missed a beat.
How does the Apple AirPods Pro 3’s heart rate tracking work?
The heart rate sensor on the AirPods Pro 3 is on the side of the earbuds near the tip. The sensor pulses infrared light 256 times a second to look at the blood flow in your ears.
Other sensors like the accelerometer and gyroscope on the buds are also used, along with algorithms to separate your heart rate from other confounding factors, like the thump of your feet when running or walking.
This setup is different from the sensor on the Powerbeats Pro 2, which uses green LEDs and pulses 100 times a second. The change in sensor and the algorithms used on the AirPods Pro 3 seem to make a big difference when it comes to the accuracy of the heart rate tracking.
To use the heart rate tracking on the buds, you need to start a workout in the Fitness app on your iPhone, where you’ll see the headphones connected and your live heart rate during workouts.
If you also have an Apple Watch connected, Apple says readings from the heart rate sensor on the watch and the headphones will both be looked at, and the most accurate one will be used for the workout recording.
Apple AirPods Pro 3 heart rate accuracy
To test the heart rate accuracy of the AirPods Pro 3, I compared it to readings from a Garmin HRM600 chest strap. Chest straps measure electrical signals directly from the heart to get their readings, which is why they’re more reliable than optical sensors that measure blood flow in other parts of the body, like the wrist or ears, in this case.
The HRM600 was linked to my Garmin Fenix 8 Pro, while the AirPods Pro 3 were sending the readings to my phone. I turned the Bluetooth off on the Apple Watch 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3 during these workouts to make sure the heart rate readings were coming from the headphones, not the watch. Then I could also compare the heart rate from the watches to the AirPods Pro 3.
I checked the readings during my runs and then used the DC Rainmaker Analyzer to get a graph afterwards. The AirPods Pro 3 have not only been more accurate than any other headphones with heart rate tracking I’ve tried, but have also outperformed the Apple Watches in how closely they’ve matched the chest strap.
The hardest test I put them through was an interval workout where I ran 24 60-second reps hard, with a 30-second ‘float’ recovery where I kept running fairly quickly rather than stopping entirely.
Even with the sharp rises and falls in heart rate, the AirPods Pro 3 kept up with the chest strap.
I’ll keep testing the buds, but they’re already surpassed the performance of others I’ve tried, including the Beats Powerbeats Pro 2.
The only drawbacks I have with them are that you can’t pair the headphones easily to all apps and other watches as yet, and also that the fit will not suit everyone on the run and during other workouts. Even with the improved fit on the AirPods Pro 3, I still have to adjust them more than other buds to keep them in place.
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