Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 vs AirPods Pro: Price and features compared

Apple launched the much awaited successor to the original AirPods Pro this year during its ‘Far Out’ launch event earlier this week. The AirPods Pro (2nd gen) earbuds come with new features and some design changes, but are offered at a comparable price to the launch price of the original AirPods Pro. In fact, in the US, the new AirPods Pro 2 are the same price as the that of the AirPods Pro, which is $249. But in India, the new AirPods Pro 2 start at Rs 26,900. Here’s all that’s new with the AirPods Pro 2 to help you decide if you want to get these over the original Pros.
AirPods Pro 2 vs AirPods Pro: Design
There isn’t much change here, while the new AirPods Pro 2 come with a few new touch-based controls, the overall shape and form of the earbuds is still the same, comprising a head with silicon tips and a stem with microphones that will hang out of your ears. In addition to the squeeze controls to control playback, you can now also swipe up and down on the AirPods Pro 2 to control volume, something the original AirPods Pro lacked.

AirPods Pro 2 vs AirPods Pro: Sound
The new AirPods Pro 2 come with the H2 chip over the predecessor’s H1 chip. This allows the earbuds to improve sound quality and more importantly, noise cancellation. Apple claims the new earbuds can cancel out twice as much noise. Adaptive Transparency mode on the AirPods Pro 2 also offers better awareness of surroundings compared to the AirPods Pro. Apple also claims the new AirPods Pro 2 offer deeper bass and crisper highs, although we’ll have to test that first in our review.
AirPods Pro 2 vs AirPods Pro: Battery life and charging case
The battery life of the newer AirPods Pro 2 is significantly more than the original AirPods Pro. The new earbuds offer 6 hours of playback on a single charge compared to the 4.5 hours of its predecessor. With the case, the AirPods Pro 2 can give you about 30 hours of juice, as per Apple claims.

Both cases come with a lightning port, but the Apple AirPods Pro 2 case also supports charging via an Apple Watch charger. In addition to MagSafe or Qi charging. The new case also comes with a built-in speaker (in the case, not the earbuds) to help find it with the Find My app. This is also something the case of the original AirPods Pro lacks.
AirPods Pro 2 vs AirPods Pro: Pricing
The original AirPods Pro are currently available for Rs 24,900 on Amazon India and Rs 19,900 on Flipkart. The earbuds seem to have been discontinued after the launch of the new AirPods Pro 2, so you won’t find them on the Apple store anymore.
Meanwhile, the new AirPods Pro 2, which go up for pre-order at 5:30pm on September 9 (availability from September 23) are priced at Rs 26,900.