AirPods Pro 4: Apple Leaked Its Own Ad. Should You Wait?

If you have been sitting on an AirPods Pro 3 purchase waiting to find out whether the camera ones are actually real, you got an answer on Monday. Apple shipped a promotional video for its own unannounced camera AirPods inside the release candidate of macOS Tahoe 26.7. Not a supply chain leak, not a Bloomberg source. Apple's advert, in Apple's software, for a product Apple has not announced.

That moves the AirPods Pro 4 question from "will this ever happen" to "how long do I wait". Those are very different questions, and the answer to the second one is messier than most of the coverage this week suggested.

What Apple actually left in macOS Tahoe 26.7

MacRumors found the video embedded in the 26.7 release candidate on 17 August (full write-up here). It shows someone holding a book up so the AirPods can identify the title, over a voiceover promising that "your world becomes savable". The hardware carries the internal codename B790, and references to it run right through the build.

One detail in that demo tells you more than the rest of it combined. The system apparently warns you when your hair is covering the camera lens. Nobody writes that notification for a concept. You write it after real people have worn the thing for weeks and complained about it.

The same build is stuffed with references to unreleased hardware more generally, including the iPhone Ultra, a new HomePod mini, an iMac refresh and a Vision Pro successor. Apple was clearly not expecting anyone to read this one closely.

AirPods Pro 4 or AirPods Ultra? The naming is still open

This is the bit that makes searching for information annoying. MacRumors files its guide under AirPods Ultra. The code references point to AirPodsPro1,4 and AirPod3,5, which reads much more like a fourth-generation Pro. Both names are in circulation and neither is confirmed.

The distinction that actually matters is not the name but the codename. Ming-Chi Kuo has described two separate devices: B790 for 2026 and B798 for 2027. On his reading, this autumn gets a modest AirPods Pro refresh and the full camera hardware lands a year later.

The problem with that reading is the video Apple shipped is attached to B790, the earlier one. Either Kuo's split is wrong, or the 2026 model has cameras after all. Both of those are rumour-level claims, so hold them loosely.

The timeline nobody can agree on

Run the reporting in order and it does not make a straight line. In May, Bloomberg had the camera AirPods in late-stage testing. In June, CNET reported a late 2027 target. In early July, a tipster claimed development had been suspended outright, and that spread quickly.

That suspension claim came from a single account on X rather than from any of the established supply chain analysts, which is worth remembering now. Six weeks later, Apple's finished marketing video turned up inside a shipping release candidate.

Suspended products do not usually have adverts cut for them. My reading is that the suspension report was either wrong or was describing a different variant. Something here is far enough along that Apple has already paid an agency, and Apple does not commission that work eighteen months early.

What the cameras do, and what they cannot do

The cameras are reported to be infrared rather than visible light, closer to the Face ID sensor than to the camera on the back of your iPhone. They are not built to take photos and they cannot shoot video. They feed what is in front of you to Siri so it can answer questions about it.

Apple is also said to be fitting an LED that lights up whenever the cameras are passing data out. That is a sensible answer to the obvious objection, and it is the same answer Meta landed on. Whether people find it reassuring in practice is a different question.

All of which depends entirely on a Siri that can read a live camera feed and say something useful about it. I wrote about how long that has taken to actually ship, and the record is not encouraging. Hardware arriving before its software is ready is a familiar Apple pattern and never a flattering one.

Should you buy AirPods Pro 3 now or wait?

AirPods Pro 3 are £219 on Apple's UK store today. They have the best in-ear noise cancellation Apple has built, heart rate sensing during workouts, live translation and proper hearing aid functionality. As a pair of earbuds, they are not the thing being replaced here.

So the decision comes down to which of these you are:

• Your current AirPods are dying or gone. Buy the Pro 3 now. Waiting three weeks to find out, and then possibly another year for the camera model, is a poor trade against earbuds you cannot use in the meantime.
• You are buying for sound, noise cancellation or hearing health. Buy now. Nothing in any of the reporting suggests the camera model is an audio upgrade, and Kuo's 2026 device may not even be one.
• You specifically want Siri to see what you see. Wait for the September event. You give up very little by holding for three weeks and you will know either way.

The one move I would avoid is paying full price for AirPods Pro 3 in the first week of September. If a new Pro tier lands, the Pro 3 either drops in price or slides down the line-up. That is a fortnight of patience for a genuine saving.

What it is likely to cost in the UK

Rumoured US pricing has settled around $299 to $349, against $249 for the AirPods Pro 3. Nobody at Apple has said that. It is a leaked figure repeated across several roundups, and it should be read as a rough shape rather than a price.

Applying the ratio Apple currently uses in the UK, £219 against $249, that works out at roughly £260 to £310. That conversion is my own arithmetic on a rumoured number, so it carries the uncertainty of both. Apple's UK pricing has also been moving the wrong way all year, so I would treat the top of that range as more likely than the bottom.

When we will actually know

Apple's autumn event is widely expected on 9 September, with the iPhone 18 Pro, Pro Max and the foldable Ultra on stage. AirPods have shared that slot plenty of times before, including the AirPods 4 launch in 2024.

If B790 is real for this year, that is where it appears. If the AirPods segment comes and goes without a camera in sight, then the 2027 timeline was right and the video was simply finished early. Either way, the wait is measured in weeks now rather than guesses.

Questions people are asking

When is the AirPods Pro 4 release date?

Apple has not announced one, and the two credible readings disagree. Mark Gurman has said September 2026 is possible, while Ming-Chi Kuo's timeline puts the camera model in late 2027 with only a minor refresh this year. Apple's event is expected on 9 September, so the answer arrives in about three weeks.

Do AirPods with cameras record video?

No. The cameras are reported to be infrared sensors, the same broad family as Face ID, and they are not capable of capturing photos or video in any useful sense. They exist to give Siri context about what is in front of you. Apple is also said to be adding an indicator light that shows when they are active.

Should I buy AirPods Pro 3 or wait for AirPods Pro 4?

Buy the Pro 3 unless the Siri vision feature is the specific reason you are buying. As earbuds they are excellent and there is no indication the next model improves the audio. The exception is timing: if you can hold until after 9 September, do, because you will either get the new model or a cheaper Pro 3.

My take

Apple accidentally publishing its own advert is the strongest evidence we have had on this product, and it is a lot stronger than any of the tipster claims that preceded it. The hardware looks close. The lens-obstruction warning in particular reads like something that came out of real testing rather than a rendering.

What I am not convinced by is the software. Cameras in your ears are only worth paying for if Siri can do something with the feed that your phone cannot already do faster, and that has not been demonstrated. Until it is, an extra £50 to £90 buys you a sensor waiting on a feature.

If I needed earbuds today I would buy the AirPods Pro 3 and not think about it again. If I could wait until 10 September, I would wait, because by then this stops being a rumour and becomes a price.

Source: Apple's Camera-Equipped AirPods Confirmed: See Them in Action, MacRumors