Is 2026 the Year of ‘AirPods Ultra?’
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Apple had traditionally spaced out its AirPods updates quite a bit, often going two or three years between releases. That’s made several reports we’ve heard over the past few months of an upcoming “AirPods Pro 4” refresh somewhat confusing, as it feels too soon for another refresh. However, Apple may have something entirely different in mind.
Two years ago, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported Apple was working on camera-equipped AirPods, ostensibly to be paired with the Vision Pro for better gesture controls and other related features. While Kuo’s ideas were somewhat specific to Apple’s headset, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has also been predicting the addition of cameras since early 2024, suggesting they’d be added as more of alternative to smart glasses and other head-worn devices, rather than augmenting them.
From speaking with his usual sources, Gurman believes the cameras would power Apple Intelligence features like object recognition, joining a similar feature on a future Apple Watch and smart glasses. The idea would be to bring visual intelligence to more devices, allowing users to scan their surrounding environment and describe objects.
Beyond Sound: AirPods as a Visual AI Wearable
This could add a whole new dimension to the AirPods, expanding the recently-debuted Live Translation feature to handle written text as well as the spoken word, and opening up a whole new set of accessibility features that would complement the role of the AirPods Pro as hearing aids. Visual intelligence could even potentially identify the person speaking in a crowded room and use beamforming to isolate that person’s voice.
To be clear, Gurman’s perspective differs slightly from that of Kuo, who believes the AirPods are more likely to add infrared cameras to recognize gestures. That’s also where the link to the Vision Pro comes in, although it’s unlikely Apple would release a set of AirPods with features exclusively for its $3,500 headset, and some believe that these could be used standalone with in-air gestures that would replace the touch and squeeze stem controls — and possibly even the stems themselves.
It’s possible Apple is working on both types of cameras, but as Hartley Charlton at MacRumors points out, the collection of recent reports are leaning more toward seeing the IR-equipped ones first, with several analysts and leakers believe they could arrive this year.
The AirPods Pro 3 Left Room for More
These reports were consistent enough early last year that many believed at least one of these cameras would arrive in the AirPods Pro 3. However, while those introduced a long rumored heart rate monitoring feature and delivered improved ANC and a better fit, they didn’t move the needle in any other significant ways, and even packed in the same H2 chip as their 2022 predecessors. That leaves room for a successor — or a higher-end model — with the H3 chip, which Gurman reports is already in the works.
This didn’t quash the reports that a camera-equipped version was still on the way. Instead, Kuo and other leakers like Weibo’s “Instant Digital” pivoted to say that the new ones were still coming, but they’d arrive in 2026. However, this also created a quandary: would Apple really release a set of “AirPods Pro 4” only a year after the third-generation earbuds?
That’s not impossible, but it’s also not likely. The AirPods Pro lineup has been on a three-year release cycle — the AirPods Pro in 2019, the AirPods Pro 2 in 2022, and the AirPods Pro 3 in 2025 (the 2023 refresh of the AirPods Pro 2 doesn’t count, as that merely added a USB-C case). That’s long compared to most other Apple products, but it also feels appropriate for earbuds, where changes are typically more iterative.
Filling the $300 Gap: The Case for ‘AirPods Ultra’
However, what this doesn’t rule out is the possibility of Apple raising the bar with an even more premium set of “AirPods Ultra.” In September, Instant Digital suggested the 2026 “AirPods Pro” would be a higher-end variant of the AirPods Pro 3, selling alongside those 2025 earbuds. While there’s some precedent for this as Apple sells two versions of the AirPods 4, with and without active noise cancellation, it’s a bit trickier to imagine “AirPods Pro 3 with Cameras” being a product name the same way “AirPods 4 with ANC” is.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for something above the AirPods Pro 3. It’s just a semantic matter of what Apple will call them. Unless you count Beats headphones, which are made by Apple but marketed entirely apart from AirPods, there’s quite a pricing gap between the $249 AirPods Pro 3 and the $549 AirPods Max. A $349–$399 price point for an Ultra model would mirror Apple’s other three-tier product families like the Apple Watch, iPad, and, more recently, the iPhone.
I strongly believe that Apple will position these as something entirely new and different from the AirPods Pro, but what it will call them is anyone’s guess. Air, Plus, Pro, and Max are all typical suffixes in the Apple-verse, but obviously “AirPods Air” would just be… weird. Since “Max” is already taken, and “Plus” doesn’t feel like something superior to “Pro,” that leaves “AirPods Ultra” as the most likely name. However, plenty of other more whimsical possibilities exist, like “AirPods VR” or “AirPods View.”
We’ll have to wait and see what the future holds. There’s still no guarantee that the leaks are accurate on timing; these could simply be conflating preliminary work on new “AirPods Pro 4” for 2027 with a set of AirPods 5 that are planned for this year. Either way, it’s clear Apple is working on bringing “eyes” to our ears, with the higher-end AirPods set to evolve into a standalone AI wearable.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
