AirPods 5 bring open-ear ANC to $129. Siri AI's arrival comes with conditions.

Apple announced AirPods 5 on September 9, pricing the open-ear earbuds at $129 and $149 and claiming the best active noise cancellation available in that shape. The headline figure is 50 percent. Apple says the new model strips up to half again as much external noise as AirPods 4 with ANC, using a reworked multiport acoustic architecture and new computational audio algorithms.

The hardware is only half the announcement. Siri AI, the conversational assistant Apple says arrives with iOS 27, now runs through the company's cheapest audio hardware. What Apple attaches to that pitch in its own footnotes is the part worth reading before a pre-order.

What $129 buys, and what the noise claim measures

Apple's figures are specific. So are their limits. The 50 percent reduction is a comparison with AirPods 4 with ANC, not with the wider market. The separate "best-in-class" label comes from testing Apple ran in July 2026 with prerelease AirPods firmware, an iPhone 17, and iOS 27, measured under IEC 60268-24 and benchmarked against "the bestselling wireless open-ear headphones commercially available at the time of testing."

Pre-orders opened on announcement day in the U.S. and more than 65 other countries and regions. Both models reach stores on Friday, September 18.

Claim or feature	Apple's own qualification
Up to 50% more noise cancelled	Measured against AirPods 4 with ANC
"Best-in-class" open-ear ANC	Compared only with bestselling open-ear headphones on sale at test time
Hands-free Siri AI	Rolling out in beta with iOS 27; English first; not initially available in the EU
$129 entry price	Server-side AI features carry daily usage limits, with expanded access sold for a fee later

Siri AI on AirPods, and the conditions attached

Apple treats the assistant as the reason to upgrade. Siri AI is "a profoundly more capable and conversational assistant," the company says, drawing on personal context across messages, emails, and photos, with app actions and broad world knowledge. On AirPods 5, users can answer it by nodding or shaking their head, and Dictation is billed as more precise than before. Siri is not the only place Apple is opening its AI stack: Xcode 27 now lets developers call Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI models directly, per the Xcode 27 changes.

Then come the qualifiers, which Apple lists itself. Siri AI ships in beta with iOS 27 on Monday, September 14, starting in English, with French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish following in October. It will not be initially available in the EU on iOS, iPadOS, or watchOS, and it is not offered to users under 13. The bloc's AI rules are already changing what ships there: Anthropic is adding an invisible watermark to future Claude models to meet EU AI Act requirements, a watermark a full rewrite erases.

Several features that depend on server-side models face daily usage limits, among them Siri AI, intelligent photo editing, Image Playground, and AFM 3 Cloud models in Shortcuts. Apple says expanded access to those features "will be available for a fee in the future." Metered AI is spreading well beyond Apple: Alibaba's Wan3.0 bills generated video by the second, at about $6 for a 30-second clip, with API pricing set per second.

The most capable pieces also require recent hardware. Apple's most powerful on-device model, with its expressive voices and advanced Dictation, runs on iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, iPhone Duo, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPhone Air, iPads with M4 or later and at least 12GB of unified memory, Macs with M3 or later and 12GB of unified memory, and Apple Vision Pro (M5). A pair of $129 earbuds does not supply that on its own. Vision Pro is the outlier on that list, and Apple keeps pointing it at content, including the first live Apple Immersive baseball broadcast in 8K 3D.

Sound, battery, and the rest of the hardware

Live Translation, powered by Apple Intelligence, now works across the entire AirPods lineup rather than a single model. Users start it by pressing both stems at once, by saying "Siri, start Live Translation," or with the Action button on iPhone, provided they have set it up in the Translate app and downloaded the languages they need.

The $149 model with the Wireless Charging Case adds on-stem volume control through a force sensor with volume swipe, which Apple calls a first for the open-ear form factor. Apple describes the sound package as inspired by AirPods Pro 3 and re-engineered for the open-ear shape, with next-generation Adaptive EQ and a more natural Transparency mode. Adaptive Audio still blends noise cancellation and transparency according to the surroundings, and Conversation Awareness lowers media volume when the wearer starts talking.

For the wireless-charging model, Apple lists five hours of playback with ANC per charge, an hour more than AirPods 4 with ANC, and 22 hours with the case. Power comes from Apple Watch chargers, Qi-compatible pads, or USB-C. Apple also claims better dust, sweat, and water resistance across the line.

"We're thrilled that with AirPods 5, we're able to bring Active Noise Cancellation ... to our most affordable AirPods," said Dave Pakula, Apple's vice president of Hardware Engineering.

Recycled material and the 2030 target

Apple says the earbuds use 40 percent recycled material overall, with 70 percent recycled plastic in the wireless charging case and 100 percent recycled cobalt in the battery. Manufacturing runs on 35 percent renewable energy across the supply chain, and the paper packaging is 100 percent fiber-based. The company frames the launch as progress toward its pledge of carbon neutrality across its entire footprint by 2030.

None of that settles the question a buyer at $129 actually faces. The earbuds arrive September 18. The assistant Apple wants them remembered for arrives in beta, in one language, outside the EU, under a daily cap, and eventually behind a paywall.