As part of Apple’s event next week, Apple is going to be giving the AirPods Pro a pretty major upgrade. That’s USB-C. Okay, that might not sound like a huge upgrade, but it really is.
Don’t expect this to be a full on generational upgrade for the AirPods Pro, as it isn’t quite time for that yet. The main upgrade here is changing Lightning to USB-C. Apple is also planning to upgrade the AirPods and AirPods Max to USB-C as early as next year. While it is time for the AirPods Max to get updated, the regular AirPods were just updated about a year ago. So those will likely be just a change to USB-C too.
Gurman says that there won’t be any other changes to the AirPods Pro at the event. But the AirPods Pro are a big seller for Apple, so updating them to USB-C first is smart.
Apple is working on new health features for AirPods
Although this update will really only be USB-C, Apple is still working on some new health features for the AirPods. This includes body-temperature sensing and a new hearing-test system. Those enhancements are likely coming later on down the road though. As it does seem to be pretty early on for these features.
Adding health features to the AirPods are going to help make them more “sticky” for users. Which, for iPhone users, they are already pretty sticky, because of how well they work with the iPhone, iPad and Macs already.
AirPods are typically updated about every two years or so. It’s one of the few products that Apple does not update yearly, which they really don’t need to. There have been a couple of one-offs, like updating the original AirPods to a wireless charging case, and now updating the AirPods Pro to USB-C. But as far as new hardware, that’s about every two to three years.