EDITOR'S PICKS...

This month's smartest tech

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This is perhaps one of the most profound set of updates I've seen a device get. Apple's AirPods Pro 3 now provide in-ear, real-time translation for English, French, Spanish, German and Portuguese.

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The AirPods will translate, on the fly, what someone is saying to you in another language. Siri, Apple's virtual assistant, acts as an interpreter, converting what the AirPods hear into the language of your choice. The results also appear as text on the screen of your phone at the same time.

Live translation itself isn't new. Translation apps can listen to someone speak and convert it into your language of choice, in text form. But Apple's execution here, throwing together several AI tools to provide an instant audio interpretation to your ears, completely dissolves language barriers – awkward pauses and all. If only Douglas Adams were alive to see it – a real, live Babel fish. Of course, to take part in a full conversation, the two of you will both need AirPods, but they're already fairly ubiquitous: how many people do you see with one AirPod hanging out their ear? Plus, this update will work with previous models too: the AirPod Pro 2nd generation and AirPods 4. You'll just need an iPhone 15 (or newer) with the latest operating system installed to get the translations working.

That's not the only meaningful addition to the AirPods' feature set. Back in April, Apple turned existing AirPod Pro 2s into "clinical-grade" hearing aids – and it's a key feature in the AirPod Pro 3, which invites you to take a hearing test when you first connect them to your phone. It's hard to understate how vital this could be: the numbers are staggering. In the UK, government-provided figures estimate there's around 7m people who would benefit from a hearing aid, but don't currently use one. In the US, that number is thought to be around 30m.