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TL;DR: The AirPods Pro are down to $219.98 and $219.99 at Amazon and Verizon, respectively — just $0.05 off from their lowest price ever on Amazon.
After Apple reportedly scrapped a March 2020 conference (and the iPhone 9 announcement that was predicted to come with it) due to coronavirus, we finally have dates for the fall one: The virtual event will take place on Sept. 15 at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET.
Aside from the fact that there won’t be a live audience, it’s rumored that iPhone 9 or 12 reveals might be missing, too. (It’s looking like October for that.) Instead, it’s expected that Apple will focus on the sequel to the Apple Watch Series 5 and a new iPad Pro.
New AirPods are mentioned much less often. A new pair, apparently called the AirPods Studio, could be slated for a 2020 release, but no one knows if that means the Sept. event. Unless you’re looking to upgrade from the AirPods Pro and are down to drop a rumored $349 on a new pair of (also rumored) earbuds, the AirPods Pro are still great and still your best bet. Regularly retailing at $249, going with the AirPods Pro would already save you $100 compared to the Studio — but sales at Amazon and Verizon can add an extra $29-ish to your savings on top of that. (Verizon says the discount is $30, but that’s because their original listing price is $249.99 instead of $249 like at Amazon and Apple’s site.)
As of right now, the AirPods Pro are Apple’s only pair of headphones with active noise-canceling technology — and as one of the few pairs of noise-canceling truly wireless earbuds on the market at all, they’re hard to beat. It’s not the exact type of silence that you’d get with a Sony or Bose pair that completely cover your ear, but to block out distractions that come with working or learning from home, it’s euphoric. The “active” part of noise cancellation means that each AirPod is constantly adjusting — 200 times a second — based on your surroundings in order to tune out the ambient noise of that particularly environment.
The Pro charging case is bigger and more of a horizontal rectangle than the regular AirPods’ square one. It can charge wirelessly and is said to lend an additional 18 to 24 hours of battery life.
