AirPods 5 to Launch as Early as Next Month

All they need and that I missed from Gen 4 which left me with my Pros is the volume slider on the stems. If they get this, I will happily say goodbye to my AirPods Pro.

What about the new AirPros?

My AirPods 4 with ANC are pure perfection so...
I'm not interested, but they have my curiosity.

All they need and that I missed from Gen 4 which left me with my Pros is the volume slider on the stems. If they get this, I will happily say goodbye to my AirPods Pro.

Same. The reason I think this will happen is because of the trickle down pattern: AirPods Pro gets the newest features first, the base AirPods get it when the APP has something new to offer.

My working theory is this the headline new capability for this year's AirPods Pro is support for "spatial awareness" (ahem, NOT Visual Intelligence or anything that could be misconstrued as a 'camera') -- so possibly air gestures, 3D awareness of the space around you to enhance Spatial Audio (ripped from Vision Pro), and maybe some kind of enhancement to the conversational awareness feature with beam forming to 'figure out' who's talking to you and only let their voice break the noise cancellation bubble.

The "Visual Intelligence" AirPods Pro will come later or never at all. That's what I think the deal is with the supposed two separate models of the "Camera AirPods" being tested. One is what everyone's freaking out about, AirPods with an actual camera capable of taking RGB photos for Visual Intelligence. The other just uses the same LiDAR/IR stuff Vision Pro uses for room mapping and gestures -- not something the public could interpret as a wearable with cameras the same way they (rightfully) freak out about Meta's glasses.

Don't think there will be a price increase. Waiting to see the improvements it will offer.

would be good to a have a volume slider on the body of airpods. On 4th version - it annoys me that I have to ask Siri to increase a volume