iPhone 14 lineup and AirPods Pro 2 support Bluetooth 5.3, which is the latest standard of the popular wireless standard. Bluetooth 5.3 brings security enhancements, improved efficiency, reduced interference due to better connectivity, and much more.
AirPods Pro 2, Bluetooth 5.3 and LE Audio
One of the new audio technologies in Bluetooth 5.3 is LE Audio, short for Low Energy Audio, which improves audio quality at lower bitrates and energy usage, as well as enables multi-device connectivity without the need of switching between devices. However, Apple has not mentioned support for LE Audio in the tech specs pages for iPhone 14 and AirPods Pro 2.
One of the possible reasons that Apple may not support LE Audio is that the implementation requires the LC3 codec, which is different from Apple’s AAC codec which is better for music. Despite the improvements in LE Audio and LC3 codec, the audio quality is still not as good as what AAC codec offers.
Bluetooth LE Audio also enables other features that AirPods Pro 2 already offers through its H2 chip, such as audio sharing, longer battery life, etc. However, something neither Bluetooth 5.3 does not feature is support for lossless audio. It was expected that Apple would offer lossless audio support in AirPods Pro 2, but the company did not mention it during the event or on its website, even though audio improvements have been marketed. These improvements are primarily due to the H2 chip, as well as a new low-distortion audio driver and custom amplifier in the headphones.
It is interesting to note that Apple does not even mention Bluetooth anywhere in its newsroom article or on the AirPods Pro 2 webpage. You have to go to the AirPods compare tool to see the Bluetooth version number.
It may be possible that Apple could add LE Audio support in the future if it is already not there at launch. Even if support is there at launch, it would enable improved experiences between AirPods Pro 2 and non-Apple devices, which is probably not something that the company would want to announce since it wants consumers to stay in its ecosystem.
