AirPods 5 on 9 September: Don't Buy AirPods 4 This Week

If you have AirPods 4 sitting in a basket right now, close the tab. Apple is reportedly about to announce AirPods 5 on 9 September, and paying £119 or £169 this week for the model being replaced is the one Apple purchase I would not make today.

The reporting is not confirmed and I will be clear throughout about which parts come from Bloomberg and which parts are guesswork. But the window is close enough that two weeks of patience costs you nothing, and could save you real money either way it lands.

The AirPods 5 release date: what Gurman actually said

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported on 24 August that Apple plans to announce two new AirPods 5 models as early as Wednesday 9 September, most likely at this year's iPhone event. That is the entire claim. No spec sheet, no price, and no confirmed event date, because Apple had not sent invitations when I wrote this.

The groundwork was laid a week earlier. Model identifiers B868M and B868E turned up in the macOS Tahoe 26.7 release candidate, which is exactly how unannounced AirPods tend to surface. Code references are not a launch date, but they do tell you the hardware exists and is being tested against software that ships.

If Apple repeats what it did with AirPods 4, pre-orders open on the day of the announcement and the boxes land the following Friday. Apply that pattern to 9 September and you get pre-orders that Wednesday with shipping around 18 September. That is a pattern, not a promise.

Two AirPods 5 models, and why the split matters more than the chip

The detail worth holding onto is not a feature, it is a shape. Like AirPods 4, the AirPods 5 will come in two versions: one with active noise cancellation and one without. Apple is keeping the two-tier open-ear line rather than folding it back into a single model.

That is what makes this worth waiting out. The UK line-up today runs AirPods 4 at £119, AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation at £169, and AirPods Pro 3 at £219. I checked Apple's UK store and Currys and both agree on those figures. If AirPods 5 replaces the first two, everything under £219 in Apple's earbud range changes on one day.

The H3 chip is a guess, not a specification

You will see "H3 chip" in a lot of AirPods 5 coverage this week. Treat it as speculation. It has been floated as a possibility alongside better sound quality and lower latency, and I have not seen it tied to a named source anywhere.

Gurman himself said there is no word on how AirPods 5 will differ from AirPods 4. That is an unusual place to be a fortnight out from a launch. Normally by late August the headline feature has leaked. Here we have a probable date and almost nothing else, which is worth remembering when someone tells you confidently what these will do.

What AirPods 5 will cost in the UK

Nobody has leaked a price. The reasonable expectation is that AirPods 5 arrives close to where AirPods 4 sits, because AirPods were left alone when Apple raised prices across other products in June.

Here is my own arithmetic on what that does to the range. If AirPods 5 lands at £119 and £169, the gap up to AirPods Pro 3 stays at £50, and that £50 still buys noticeably better noise cancellation, ear tips that actually seal, and longer battery life. If Apple nudges the noise-cancelling model to £179, the gap narrows to £40 and the Pro 3 becomes an easier recommendation rather than a harder one.

Either way, the useful number is not the AirPods 5 price. It is what AirPods 4 costs on 10 September, once retailers who are holding stock have a newer model sitting next to it.

What happens to AirPods 4 after the launch

Whatever Apple does on its own shelf, UK retailers will be sitting on AirPods 4 inventory the moment a successor is announced. That is where the discounting shows up, and it usually shows up within days rather than weeks.

This is the part people miss when they rush a purchase in late August. You are not only choosing between an old model and a new one. You are choosing between today's full price and the price the same product carries once it is no longer current.

Should you buy AirPods 4 now or wait for AirPods 5?

Wait, if you would be paying full price

Two weeks. That is the whole ask. On 9 September you either get a newer product for similar money, or you get AirPods 4 at a discount because it is no longer the current model. Both of those beat paying £169 in late August.

Buy now, if you have already found a genuine discount

If AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation has dropped meaningfully below £169 somewhere reputable, the maths changes. A new generation with no confirmed improvements is not worth a large premium over a known quantity, and open-ear AirPods are a mature product rather than one that gets reinvented annually.

Ignore all of this if you want the Pro 3

Nothing in this reporting touches the Pro line. AirPods Pro 3 at £219 is unaffected by an AirPods 5 launch. I wrote last week that the Pro 3 is where I would put my money while the camera AirPods slip to 2027, and this changes nothing about that. If anything it strengthens it, because a refreshed entry model makes the Pro 3's advantages easier to see side by side.

Half of page one still says 2027

Search for the AirPods 5 release date today and you will find plenty of results stating 2027 with real confidence. SoundGuys said it in April. 9to5Mac said it in February. PhoneArena repeated it barely a week ago.

They were not being careless. Apple has historically shipped new standard AirPods roughly every three years, and AirPods 4 arrived in September 2024. On cadence alone, 2027 is the sensible call.

So the September story is Gurman against the release cadence. Gurman's record on Apple timing is strong, and identifiers sitting in a shipping release candidate are hard to argue away. But if you want a reason this might not happen on 9 September, that is the reason, and I would rather say so than pretend the picture is settled. The same caveat applies to the event date itself, which is still unconfirmed even as iPhone Ultra supply rumours firm up.

How this fits the rest of Apple's audio year

AirPods 5 is not arriving on its own. The AirPods Pro line has already had its moment of Apple leaking its own hand through macOS code, and the same release-candidate trick is how AirPods 5 turned up. Apple's audio roadmap is leaking through its own software with some regularity now.

For a buyer that is useful. It means the gap between "something exists in code" and "something is on sale" has been short lately, so a code reference in late August is a stronger signal than it would have been a few years ago.

AirPods 5 FAQ

When is the AirPods 5 release date?

Nothing is confirmed. Bloomberg reports Apple could announce AirPods 5 as early as Wednesday 9 September, probably at the iPhone event. If Apple follows the AirPods 4 pattern, pre-orders would open the same day with shipping about nine days later. Apple has not confirmed the event date.

Will AirPods 5 cost more than AirPods 4?

No price has leaked. AirPods were left out of Apple's June price rises, so the expectation is that AirPods 5 lands near the current £119 and £169 UK prices. Treat any specific figure you see this week as a guess.

Should I buy AirPods 4 or wait for AirPods 5?

Wait if you would be paying the full £119 or £169, because you are two weeks from either a newer model or a discounted old one. Buy now only if you have found a genuine discount, since no improvement has been confirmed yet.

My take

I am not telling you AirPods 5 will be better. Nobody knows that yet, and the absence of any leaked feature this close to a launch makes me suspect the changes are modest. This is probably a chip bump and a battery figure rather than a rethink.

What I am telling you is that 26 August is a bad day to spend £169 on AirPods 4. The downside of waiting until 9 September is that you listen to your old earbuds for a fortnight. The downside of not waiting is paying current-model money for a product that stops being the current model in two weeks. That is not a close call.

Source: AirPods 5 to Launch as Early as Next Month, MacRumors