AirPods Pro 3 Named One of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2025
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TIME Magazine has just published its Best Inventions of 2025, featuring Apple’s AirPods Pro 3 among this year’s 300 best inventions for innovations like heart rate tracking and live translation. A second Apple product was also featured in the “Special Mentions” list.
Since 2000, TIME‘s editors have devoted an entire issue each year to highlighting the best ideas, inventions, and products from companies around the globe. These annual roundups have become a barometer for how innovation is shaping the consumer tech landscape, and the 2025 list is the magazine’s most comprehensive yet, covering 300 inventions in the fields of AI, accessibility, health and wellness, consumer electronics, entertainment and gaming, design, and more.
Apple AirPods Pro 3
Among the eighteen inventions in the Consumer Electronics category are Apple’s recently released AirPods Pro 3 wireless earbuds.
TIME contributor Chris Stokel-Walker explained why Apple’s latest audio accessories made the cut:
At a certain price point, active noise cancellation earbuds perform pretty similarly. But Apple’s AirPods Pro 3, announced in September, are “a massive leap forward,” says John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Beyond removing twice as much background noise as the previous generation of AirPods Pro, tracking wearers’ heart rate using a photoplethysmography pulse sensor, and serving as a hearing aid if needed, the headphones’ new Live Translation feature can interpret a conversation between French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, or English-speaking friends instantly using Apple Intelligence. Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese are coming by year’s end.
Apple’s flagship earbuds have become a showcase for Apple’s health-tracking ambitions, blurring the line between fitness accessory and medical device, and now, with the addition of AI translation, they’re expanding what traditional earbuds can do even further. In addition to the above-mentioned features, the AirPods Pro 3 offer an improved fit, IP57 dust, sweat, and water resistance, and the ability to track over 50 workout types.
Apple’s AirPods Pro 3 appear alongside a mix of other creative and practical gadgets, from Belkin’s hybrid power grips to Fujifilm’s retro-styled Instax Wide Evo camera.
Special Mention: Apple Watch Series 11
Meanwhile, the Apple Watch Series 11 landed on TIME’s “Special Mentions” list — a secondary roundup highlighting designs that push everyday tech in more personal directions — including Apple’s latest wearable:
Apple’s new Series 11 watch comes with a new FDA-cleared hypertension detection feature, which alerts users to signs of chronic high blood pressure. It uses data from the optical heart sensor to analyze how a user’s blood vessels respond to each heartbeat.
TIME
In addition to hypertension detection and alerts, which are also available on several other recent Apple Watch models, the Apple Watch Series 11 offers up to 24 hours of battery life, a more durable Ion-X glass that Apple says is twice as scratch-resistant, and 5G cellular connectivity.
Other products appearing on the Special Mentions Wearable Technology list include: the Axil XCOR SE, the Huawei Watch GT 6 Pro, the Incora Earrings, the RayNeo X3 Pro, and the Therabody ThermBackLED.
You can explore the full list of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2025 to see what else made this year’s cut.
