Tests Show That AirPods Pro Bluetooth Latency Improved Remarkably

Apple launched AirPods Pro a few months ago. Some people may consider that the distinction between AirPods Pro and AirPods is just an in-ear style, plus a noise cancellation feature, though, in reality, new analyses have found that AirPods Pro has a significant improvement with Bluetooth latency.


Musician and software developer Stephen Coyle examines AirPods Pro advances in Bluetooth latency in his blog post. He conducted a series of tests and the results showed that AirPods Pro's latency was a "near-seamless connection" experience.

Stephen Coyle used the first and second-generation AirPods, Beats Studio 3, Sony WH-CH700N and device speakers to compare with AirPods Pro, with the test session is split into two parts, one of that is measuring keyboard clicks latency, and the other is the "Tapt" game developed by the testers itself.

For all device and software combinations, Stephen Coyle uses the metronome of the game's 90bpm to trigger 10 varieties of sounds, and by hitting the system keyboard, 19 random test results are averaged and the following results are obtained.
  • AirPods (first generation): 274 ms
  • AirPods (second generation): 178 ms
  • AirPods Pro: 144 ms
  • Beats Studio 3: 258 ms
  • Sony WH-CH700N: 230 ms
  • Device speaker: 69 ms
Test results show that the new AirPods and AirPods Pro with the Apple H1 chip substantially improved the delay time by 30% compared to the first generation AirPods of the previous W1 chip AirPods Pro is superior to AirPods of the second generation, which also uses H1. The delay duration was shortened to 144 milliseconds, which is equivalent to 50% of the original AirPods. It has reached a level where the human ear can barely distinguish the delay.

Thus,  Coyle thinks that Apple seems to have found a way to condense the lag without modifying the hardware.

Also, Beats Studio 3 with W1 chip and first-generation AirPods turned out to be close to 258 milliseconds; Sony WH-CH700N was 230 milliseconds. Moreover, Stephen Coyle tested Amazon Echo and JBL third generation Bluetooth headsets, and the findings were similar to Beats and Sony's ones.

Overall, Coyle says that it really has plenty of reasons to be his preferred wireless earbuds.

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