Apple AirPods Pro 3 or Google Pixel Buds Pro 2: Which one’s better?

Beyond basic applications such as generative photo or video creation and text editing, artificial intelligence is beginning to help in real-world situations. Live translation features, which remove language barriers in real time, are particularly popular.

There have been features in smartphones, earbuds, and even smart glasses. To be honest, the concept of live translation is not new, but it will gain traction in 2025 as support and performance improve. Apple recently highlighted Live Translate as a feature of its new AirPods Pro 3, and a similar feature that used Google Translate was already available on the Google Pixel Buds Pro 2.

So, which version of live translate is better: Google’s or Apple’s? While neither is perfect, here are the key differences between them—and which one we prefer.

Live Translate is marketed as a unique earbud feature for 2025, but the work is still done on your smartphone. To use Apple’s live translation with a supported pair of AirPods, you must have an iPhone 15 Pro or newer running iOS 26 or later. While this may appear to be an arbitrary cutoff, an iPhone 15 Pro is required because live translation relies on Apple Intelligence, which is not available on the base iPhone 15 or older models.

This also means that Android users with AirPods for wireless audio (yes, they exist) will be unable to use Apple’s live translation features.  In comparison, Google’s equivalent is far more forgiving. You only need an Android phone running Android 6 or later to use live translation with a pair of Google Pixel Buds.

This includes all Google Pixel phones, as well as a large number of Android phones from other manufacturers that meet the version requirement. You can use Google Pixel Buds with a Samsung or OnePlus phone while still using Google’s live translation feature, for example. You simply need to ensure that your phone has the most recent versions of the Google and Google Translate apps installed, as both are required for live translation.

Both the Apple and Google live translate implementations use off-device processing by default, so an internet connection is required. Languages can be downloaded for offline translation using the Settings app on iOS and the Google Translate app on Android.

Apple also has a “on-device mode” that always uses offline, on-device processing for translations. However, it should be noted that this mode only applies to the Apple Translate app, which is used to translate AirPods. IPhone users who use Siri or Safari to translate will always have their translations processed in the cloud.