But 1,000 tokens per second is actually modest by Cerebras standards. The company has measured 2,100 tokens per second on Llama 3.1 70B and reported 3,000 tokens per second on OpenAI’s own open-weight gpt-oss-120B model, suggesting that Codex-Spark’s comparatively lower speed reflects the overhead of a larger or more complex model.
AI coding agents have had a breakout year, with tools like OpenAI’s Codex and Anthropic’s Claude Code reaching a new level of usefulness for rapidly building prototypes, interfaces, and boilerplate code. OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic have all been racing to ship more capable coding agents, and latency has become what separates the winners; a model that codes faster lets a developer iterate faster.
With fierce competition from Anthropic, OpenAI has been iterating on its Codex line at a rapid rate, releasing GPT-5.2 in December after CEO Sam Altman issued an internal “code red” memo about competitive pressure from Google, then shipping GPT-5.3-Codex just days ago.
Diversifying away from Nvidia
Spark’s deeper hardware story may be more consequential than its benchmark scores. The model runs on Cerebras’ Wafer Scale Engine 3, a chip the size of a dinner plate that Cerebras has built its business around since at least 2022. OpenAI and Cerebras announced their partnership in January, and Codex-Spark is the first product to come out of it.
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OpenAI has spent the past year systematically reducing its dependence on Nvidia. The company signed a massive multi-year deal with AMD in October 2025, struck a $38 billion cloud computing agreement with Amazon in November, and has been designing its own custom AI chip for eventual fabrication by TSMC.
Meanwhile, a planned $100 billion infrastructure deal with Nvidia has fizzled so far, though Nvidia has since committed to a $20 billion investment. Reuters reported that OpenAI grew unsatisfied with the speed of some Nvidia chips for inference tasks, which is exactly the kind of workload that OpenAI designed Codex-Spark for.
Regardless of which chip is under the hood, speed matters, though it may come at the cost of accuracy. For developers who spend their days inside a code editor waiting for AI suggestions, 1,000 tokens per second may feel less like carefully piloting a jigsaw and more like running a rip saw. Just watch what you’re cutting.
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It’s the middle of February, and the air is dry. There are fine lines emerging on my forehead, maybe because I don’t moisturize enough, but maybe as a harbinger of something greater: Each day I grow closer to my own death. Soon, I will be 30. I will never be younger than I am right now.
Fintech-founder-turned-longevity-guru Bryan Johnson has an offer that has caught my attention. For the low, low price of $1 million per year, I can pay him to show me the ropes of the “exact protocol” he’s followed for the last five years. He calls the program “Immortals.”
Yes, a guy who has received botox injections in his genitals will teach me how to supposedly reverse the process of aging. Why shouldn’t I believe that Bryan Johnson has uncovered the secrets to living longer than any other human? No, he has not yet proven his capacity to outlive all other humans. He was born in 1977, a year in which many current humans were born.
But why would I doubt the judgment of a guy who fortified his constitution with blood from his teenage son? When have the tech elite ever misled us? Should I also question when Elon Musk says that saving for retirement is irrelevant because AGI will create an economic abundance so great that no one will ever know poverty again?
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Today, we are launching Immortals.
+ $1,000,000 per year + Three spots available
Immortals is the world’s best health program. It is the exact protocol I have followed for the last 5 years. It is your Autonomous Health.
According to Johnson’s post on X, this exclusive service — only three spots are available! — will include “a dedicated concierge team, BryanAI 24/7, extensive testing, millions of biological data points, continuous tracking, best skin and hair protocols, and access to the best therapies on market.”
Except I can’t. Because I do not have $1 million. Those like me will have to settle for buying Johnson’s overpriced olive oil in our pursuit of immortality (it’s peppery and smooth!).
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My emergent forehead wrinkle intensifies with the knowledge that Johnson will likely have an easy time filling up those three $1 million spots. Among the ultrawealthy, longevity has become an increasingly hot pursuit.
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John Hering, who has given Musk billions of dollars in backing, co-founded Biograph, which describes itself as a preventative health and diagnostics clinic. Its most premium membership costs $15,000 a year (next to Johnson’s offering, it almost seems like a good deal … almost). A similar startup, Fountain Life, has raised $108 million to fund its “ultimate longevity program,” which charges a $21,500 annual fee. Sure, Johnson’s program is a lot more expensive, but remember, there’s only three spots! And if you’re still not ready to shell out seven figures, well, you can access a vague “supported tier” for $60,000.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to live a longer, healthier life, but longevity influencers like Johnson take this to an extreme that’s unattainable and (common sense would say) totally unnecessary for the average person.
In his defense, Johnson isn’t trying to proselytize us all into taking 100 pills a day and subsisting largely on boiled vegetables. But he’s also not depriving us of the chance to make him richer in exchange for his “secrets.”
It still feels like a technological marvel: Waymo’s autonomous cars are now transporting passengers across six cities. Alas, this driverless future comes with its own set of problems. These vehicles can be rendered inert if a passenger accidentally leaves the door open.
According to a Reddit post, one DoorDash driver discovered this issue when an odd request appeared in their queue. Instead of making a delivery, the driver was offered $6.25 to drive less than one mile to a Waymo vehicle and close its door. After “verified completion,” they would get an extra $5.
It seems too ironic to be real. Waymo vehicles represent technological breakthroughs that once seemed unfathomable. The Alphabet-owned company just raised $16 billion to take its driverless cars international!
But Waymo and DoorDash confirmed to TechCrunch that this Reddit post is legitimate. This is, in fact, a real problem.
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“Waymo is currently running a pilot program in Atlanta to enhance its AV fleet efficiency. In the rare event a vehicle door is left ajar, preventing the car from departing, nearby Dashers are notified, allowing Waymo to get its vehicles back on the road quickly,” Waymo and DoorDash said in a joint response. (The door-closing partnership, which began earlier this year, is just one facet of Waymo and DoorDash’s broader relationship. In October, the companies launched an autonomous delivery service in Phoenix, where Waymo vehicles deliver food and groceries to DoorDash customers.)
If a Waymo door is left open, it’s worth it to the company to pay someone to close it — the car cannot complete any more rides if it’s left immobile. Not to mention, an unmoving car could block the flow of traffic.
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This isn’t the first time Waymo has enlisted help with its door troubles. In Los Angeles, Waymo works with Honk, an app that’s like Uber for towing services. According to reports, Honk users in L.A. have been offered up to $24 to close a Waymo door — more than double what Atlanta DoorDash drivers receive.
The company noted that Waymo’s future vehicles will have automated door closures. But for now, gig workers are Waymo’s best bet.
Chinese AI startup MiniMax, headquartered in Shanghai, has sent shockwaves through the AI industry today with the release of its new M2.5 language model in two variants, which promise to make high-end artificial intelligence so cheap you might stop worrying about the bill entirely.
It’s also said to be “open source,” though the weights (settings) and code haven’t been posted yet, nor has the exact license type or terms. But that’s almost beside the point given how cheap MiniMax is serving it through its API and those of partners.
For the last few years, using the world’s most powerful AI was like hiring an expensive consultant—it was brilliant, but you watched the clock (and the token count) constantly. M2.5 changes that math, dropping the cost of the frontier by as much as 95%.
By delivering performance that rivals the top-tier models from Google and Anthropic at a fraction of the cost, particularly in agentic tool use for enterprise tasks, including creating Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, MiniMax is betting that the future isn’t just about how smart a model is, but how often you can afford to use it.
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Indeed, to this end, MiniMax says it worked “with senior professionals in fields such as finance, law, and social sciences” to ensure the model could perform real work up to their specifications and standards.
This release matters because it signals a shift from AI as a “chatbot” to AI as a “worker”. When intelligence becomes “too cheap to meter,” developers stop building simple Q&A tools and start building “agents”—software that can spend hours autonomously coding, researching, and organizing complex projects without breaking the bank.
In fact, MiniMax has already deployed this model into its own operations. Currently, 30% of all tasks at MiniMax HQ are completed by M2.5, and a staggering 80% of their newly committed code is generated by M2.5!
As the MiniMax team writes in their release blog post, “we believe that M2.5 provides virtually limitless possibilities for the development and operation of agents in the economy.”
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Technology: sparse power and the CISPO breakthrough
The secret to M2.5’s efficiency lies in its Mixture of Experts (MoE) architecture. Rather than running all of its 230 billion parameters for every single word it generates, the model only “activates” 10 billion. This allows it to maintain the reasoning depth of a massive model while moving with the agility of a much smaller one.
To train this complex system, MiniMax developed a proprietary Reinforcement Learning (RL) framework called Forge. MiniMax engineer Olive Song stated on the ThursdAI podcast on YouTube that this technique was instrumental to scaling the performance even while using the relatively small number of parameters, and that the model was trained over a period of two months.
Forge is designed to help the model learn from “real-world environments” — essentially letting the AI practice coding and using tools in thousands of simulated workspaces.
“What we realized is that there’s a lot of potential with a small model like this if we train reinforcement learning on it with a large amount of environments and agents,” Song said. “But it’s not a very easy thing to do,” adding that was what they spent “a lot of time” on.
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To keep the model stable during this intense training, they used a mathematical approach called CISPO (Clipping Importance Sampling Policy Optimization) and shared the formula on their blog.
This formula ensures the model doesn’t over-correct during training, allowing it to develop what MiniMax calls an “Architect Mindset”. Instead of jumping straight into writing code, M2.5 has learned to proactively plan the structure, features, and interface of a project first.
State-of-the-art (and near) benchmarks
The results of this architecture are reflected in the latest industry leaderboards. M2.5 hasn’t just improved; it has vaulted into the top tier of coding models, approaching Anthropic’s latest model, Claude Opus 4.6, released just a week ago, and showing that Chinese companies are now just days away from catching up to far better resourced (in terms of GPUs) U.S. labs.
MiniMax M2.5 line plot comparing different models performance over time on SWE benchmark. Credit: MiniMax
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Here are some of the new MiniMax M2.5 benchmark highlights:
SWE-Bench Verified: 80.2% — Matches Claude Opus 4.6 speeds
MiniMax M2.5 various benchmarks comparison bar charts. Credit: MiniMax
On the ThursdAI podcast, host Alex Volkov pointed out that MiniMax M2.5 operates extremely quickly and therefore uses less tokens to complete tasks, on the order $0.15 per task compared to $3.00 for Claude Opus 4.6.
Breaking the cost barrier
MiniMax is offering two versions of the model through its API, both focused on high-volume production use:
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M2.5-Lightning: Optimized for speed, delivering 100 tokens per second. It costs $0.30 per 1M input tokens and $2.40 per 1M output tokens.
Standard M2.5: Optimized for cost, running at 50 tokens per second. It costs half as much as the Lightning version ($0.15 per 1M input tokens / $1.20 per 1M output tokens).
In plain language: MiniMax claims you can run four “agents” (AI workers) continuously for an entire year for roughly $10,000.
For enterprise users, this pricing is roughly 1/10th to 1/20th the cost of competing proprietary models like GPT-5 or Claude 4.6 Opus.
Strategic implications for enterprises and leaders
For technical leaders, M2.5 represents more than just a cheaper API. It changes the operational playbook for enterprises right now.
The pressure to “optimize” prompts to save money is gone. You can now deploy high-context, high-reasoning models for routine tasks that were previously cost-prohibitive.
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The 37% speed improvement in end-to-end task completion means the “agentic” pipelines valued by AI orchestrators — where models talk to other models — finally move fast enough for real-time user applications.
In addition, M2.5’s high scores in financial modeling (74.4% on MEWC) suggest it can handle the “tacit knowledge” of specialized industries like law and finance with minimal oversight.
Because M2.5 is positioned as an open-source model, organizations can potentially run intensive, automated code audits at a scale that was previously impossible without massive human intervention, all while maintaining better control over data privacy, but until the licensing terms and weights are posted, this remains just a moniker.
MiniMax M2.5 is a signal that the frontier of AI is no longer just about who can build the biggest brain, but who can make that brain the most useful—and affordable—worker in the room.
There’s a native YouTube app for Apple Vision Pro that’s great for user-uploaded VR180 and 3D 360 content, but 2D video is better watched in Safari or third-party apps.
YouTube has a native app on Apple Vision Pro
When Apple Vision Pro launched in February 2024, there was a host of popular apps missing from it, including YouTube. While many apps still aren’t on the platform or native, including Apple’s, Google has finally brought its app to the platform. The app itself is straightforward and functions identically to the YouTube app on iPad. There are some spatial components to it, like the floating sidebar and the video controls at the bottom. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
NASA is just hours away from its first crewed launch of 2026, and its first since Crew-11 flew to orbit in August last year.
Just ahead of Crew-12’s liftoff, the space agency has released a short trailer (above) for the mission, which will send four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). The crew will travel aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule carried to orbit by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, are expected to blast off from from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral in Florida at 5:15 a.m. ET on Friday, February 13. If you’re interested in watching a livestream of the event, Digital Trends has all the information you need.
The mission team had been hoping to launch early on Wednesday, but poor weather conditions in the ascent corridor prompted it to push the launch to Thursday. But then another forecast pushed it to Friday. Thankfully, everything is looking good for the launch in just a few hours from now.
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“Weather forecasters issued an improved outlook for the launch site conditions, with a 90% chance of acceptable weather at launch time,” NASA said in a post on its website. The team will assess a final forecast at around 10 p.m. ET, a few hours before the crew suits up. Be sure to check NASA’s X account for any last-minute changes to the schedule.
The crew will spend eight months aboard the orbital outpost performing research, technology demonstrations, and maintenance activities, some 250 miles above Earth.
“We do research on the International Space Station because it provides a very unique and novel environment that we cannot replicate here on Earth,” Jessica Meir, on her second mission to the ISS, says in NASA’s trailer. “We’ll be doing a wealth of scientific experiments, ranging from physiology and medical experiments to radiation material science experiments, deploying small satellites, you name it. Really, every aspect of science is represented in the work that we do on the International Space Station.”
Jack Hathaway adds that it’s “important to push the boundaries of what’s possible — if we’re just satisfied with what we have, we’re never going to create the technology to make our lives better.”
The future is bright — we mean that quite literally — and it’s on your roof, or at least, it could be. As of 2024, five million Americans had installed solar panels on their homes, and that number is expected to hit ten million by 2030, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). Most people install solar panels hoping to lower their electricity bills, but the upfront costs can be significant, and the average cost of installation is over $30,000. To avoid those initial costs, some people choose to lease the equipment, including the solar panels, and sign a contract to use the system. Whichever path you choose, however, you should always read the contract before you sign your name, and that’s one lesson that a Texas resident learned after receiving a six-figure bill for her solar panel installation.
Local Houston news station KPRC 2 News reported that Frances Holt answered the door to a solar panel salesperson in 2024. She reviewed and electronically signed a 43-page contract on the spot but admits that she didn’t thoroughly read the contract and never received a physical copy. Ultimately, a company called Sunrun installed the solar panels, a process which Holt claims damaged her roof. She then decided not to activate the system, only to receive a bill for $134,097.18, a balance she believes was supposed to have been spread out over 25 years had she activated her account. In the end, Sunrun agreed to remove the equipment at no cost and Holt is off the hook for that massive bill.
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States lay groundwork to protect against fraud
Happy Kikky/Getty Images
The solar company involved in this particular incident, Sunrun, stated to KPRC 2 News that “[w]e regret the difficulties Ms. Holt has experienced and acknowledge that we did not meet our high customer service standards in this case.” It’s not clear if the company intentionally misled Holt or if she simply misunderstood the terms of the agreement, but one thing is obvious — it’s vital that you read the entire contract and understand all the terms and conditions before you enter into any agreement.
KPRC 2 News reports that AARP Texas has detailed a deluge of complaints related to solar panels in recent years, with a more than 500% increase from 2018 to 2023. One challenge for consumers is when contracts are presented only on electronic tablets, which can make them harder to read. Texas recently passed the Residential Solar Retailer Regulatory Act, which gives the state the ability to more closely regulate residential solar sales. It will take effect later in 2026. Other states have passed similar legislation, including Nevada and California.
There are simple steps that consumers can take to protect themselves from any kind of fraudulent contract. First, be prepared to say no to door-to-door salespeople and shut your door if you must! Never sign a contract without thoroughly reading it in its entirety, and research any company before you sign. Look for consumer reviews and complaints and be sure to completely understand both upfront and any continuing costs that may be associated with the product or service. Finally, in the case of solar panels, be sure your roof is suitable for such an installation.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Just weeks after a dramatic purge of China’s top general, the CIA is moving to capitalize on any resulting discord with a new public video targeting potential informants in the Chinese military. The U.S. spy agency on Thursday rolled out the video depicting a disillusioned mid-level Chinese military officer, in the latest U.S. step in a campaign to ramp up human intelligence gathering on Washington’s strategic rival.
It follows a similar effort last May that focused on fictional figures within China’s ruling Communist Party that provided detailed Chinese-language instructions on how to securely contact U.S. intelligence. CIA Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement that the agency’s videos had reached many Chinese citizens and that it would continue offering Chinese government officials an “opportunity to work toward a brighter future together.”
‘AI companies shouldn’t leave American ratepayers to pick up the tab’: Anthropic says it will cover electricity price increases caused by its data centers
President Trump has urged Big Tech to absorb rising energy bills, not consumers
Anthropic says it will pay upgrade costs and procure net-new power generation where possible
CEO Dario Amodei promises to be a “responsible neighbor” and work with communities and governments
Anthropic has boldly offered to cover electricity price increased caused by its own data centers, with CEO Dario Amodei stating the power of powering its AI models should fall on the company, not consumers.
This, of course, follows a recent request by President Trump for Big Tech companies to “pay their own way”, and not let US citizens face higher electricity bills as a result of their operations.
Back in January 2026, when Trump posted this request to Truth Social, he confirmed Microsoft had already shown willingness to comply with this, promising “major changes.”
Anthropic to help US citizens lower their energy bills
Though it may be near-impossible to quantify the exact effects that Anthropic has on local and national grids, Amodei did offer some suggestions: it would pay 100% of grid upgrade costs needed to connect its data centers and it would procure net-new power generation where possible to match its consumption.
Where that’s not possible, Anthropic is offering to cover the estimated demand-driven price increases.
Besides covering those extra bills, the company also covered its commitment to improving energy efficiency in the first place, including deploying liquid cooling.
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Anthropic also stressed that it’s been a “responsible neighbor,” and that it’s set to create “hundreds of permanent jobs and thousands of construction jobs” per its existing project pipelines.
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“These commitments are the beginning of our efforts to address data centers’ impact on energy costs,” the post reads.
“We look forward to working with communities, local governments, and the Administration to get this right,” Amodei added (via The Register).
With the launch of the WF-1000XM6 TWS earbuds, Sony has once again thrown the flagship earbuds competition wide open. The earbuds push audio performance, promise better noise cancellation, and deliver better battery life than ever, but the $330 question is: how do they compare with other flagship offerings?
Sony faces white-hot competition from two well-received heavy-hitters from Bose and Apple. Sony is climbing higher up the price ladder when pitted against the second-gen Bose QuietComfort Ultra and the third-gen AirPods Pro. But do Sony’s legacy and the generation-over-generation upgrades on the WF-100XM6 justify the high asking price? Well, that depends on the additional conveniences you expect from your high-end earbuds, instead of just sheer audio excellence.
Price and availability
Sony’s WF-1000XM6 is available for $329.99 at the company’s official website, Amazon, Best Buy, and other authorized retailers. This is a $30 increase over the WF-1000XM5’s launch price.
Released in September 2025, the Bose QuietComfort Ultra (2nd Gen) maintained the same launch price as its predecessor: $299.00. However, you can currently grab a pair of these earbuds at $249.00 via the company’s website.
Sony WF-1000XM6s feature a stem-free, bulbous oval pill-shaped design with an all-matte plastic finish and foam eartips that should provide a superior grip and seal. The outer surface of the earbuds registers touch inputs.
The Bose QuietComfort Ultra earbuds are based on the familiar stem-based design (with a relatively flatter and wider stem). They also have a soft silicone loop (wrapped around the earbuds) for a firmer grip on the inner ear walls. The stem also registers touch-sensitive pads for swipes and taps.
Apple’s AirPods Pro 3 retain the classic white stem-based design, but the earbuds are angled inward for a better, more secure fit. The device comes with foam-infused eartips, which, by the way, are available in five sizes (from XXS to L). It features a force- and capacitive-touch sensor for gesture-based controls.
While the Sony and Bose earbuds carry an IPX4 rating for basic sweat resistance, the AirPods flaunt an IP57 rating, offering protection against both dust and water immersion. All the earbuds come with USB-C charging cases and support wireless charging.
The AirPods Pro 3’s earbuds are the lightest at 5.55 grams, followed by Sony’s at 6.2 grams and Bose’s at 7.3 grams. Bose’s charging case is the largest and heaviest at 59.8 grams, compared to Sony’s 47 grams and Apple’s 44 grams.
Sony WF-1000XM6: Black, Platinum Silver
Bose QuietComfort Ultra: Black, White Smoke, Midnight Violet, Desert Gold, and Deep Plum
AirPods Pro 3: White
Audio
The WF-1000XM6 sport 8.4mm dynamic drivers with a redesigned soft edge and a lightweight dome to improve both treble and bass. Sony has equipped them with the QN3e processor (along with the V2 co-processor for 32-bit audio processing). Supported codecs include SBC, AAC, LDAC, and LC3 (LE Audio).
Sony
The WF-1000XM6 are the only earbuds in this comparison that provide a 10-band equalizer via the Sound Connect app for a truly customizable output, making them most suitable for audiophiles. Furthermore, the earbuds are certified for Hi-Res Audio Wireless (24-bit / 96 kHz) via the LDAC codec.
The Bose QuietComfort Ultra, on the other hand, come with slightly bigger 9.3 mm dynamic drivers with the company’s CustomTune technology (calibrated audio performance based on your ear’s shape). With a Qualcomm chipset that supports Snapdragon Sound, the earbuds support SBC, AAC, and the aptX Adaptive family of codecs (including aptX Lossless).
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Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
When used with compatible devices, the earbuds provide CD-quality or near-CD-quality bitrates via the aptX codecs. Compared to the XM6’s 10-band equalizer, the three-band equalizer on the QuietComfort Ultra is quite a bummer. You get four basic presets: Bass Boost, Bass Reducer, Treble Boost, and Treble Booster.
With custom 10.7mm high-excursion Apple drivers and a new multi-port acoustic architecture, the AirPods Pro 3 deliver noticeably thumpier bass and generate a much wider soundstage compared to the AirPods Pro 2. They feature Apple’s H2 chip and support limited codecs (AAC, SBC, and AAC-ELD for lossless audio with Vision Pro).
The AirPods are popular for their Spatial Audio and head tracking functionality, and the Pro 3 don’t disappoint in that regard. They offer Adaptive EQ, which tunes music to the unique geometry of your ear canal. You still get Headphone Accommodations for fine-tuning the output, but nothing beats a customizable equalizer (good job there, Sony).
Noise cancellation & transparency
Before I get into the nitty-gritty, all three models represent the pinnacle of noise cancellation, allowing you to create a bubble of isolation around you to focus on work, read a book, or be at peace. Most people won’t be able to differentiate between the noise cancellation on the earbuds.
Sony
With the QN3e HD noise-cancelling processor, the V2 chip, and four microphones on each earbud, the WF-1000XM6 claim to offer “the world’s best noise cancelling performance.” While that’s hard to comment on right now, Sony says the earbuds are 25% better than their predecessors at blocking environmental noise.
They also offer the Adaptive NC Optimiser, which automatically tunes the noise cancellation to your fit and environment. Early reviews suggest that the earbuds are noticeably better than their predecessors, but they’re a tad behind Bose’s flagship earbuds, which still seem to have an edge in cutting out low-frequency sounds.
Next up on the list are the QuietComfort Ultra, which do an excellent job of neutralising deep, constant low-frequency sounds (like an airplane’s engine), sudden high-frequency sounds like emergency sirens, and create an intense, vacuum-like effect, as if you’re floating in the middle of the space. The earbuds offer three ANC levels: Quiet (the strongest one), Aware, and Immersion.
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Finally, we have the AirPods Pro 3, which claim to offer twice the noise cancellation of the AirPods Pro 2, thanks to the H2 chip and ultra-low noise microphones. They aren’t as isolating as Bose’s earbuds, but instead offer a slightly more natural, airy (compared to a vacuum) version of the vacuum we were talking about earlier.
There’s an Adaptive Audio mode as well, which adjusts the intensity of ANC based on the ambient sound levels. According to SoundGuys, the AirPods offer an average 90% reduction in loudness, followed by the WF-1000XM6s at 88% and the QuietComfort Ultra at 85% (despite being highly regarded as the best ANC earbuds).
You see, all three models are right there at the top, with gaps so minimal that a regular user would spend hours figuring them out. When it comes to audio passthrough, the XM6s feature an Ambient Sound Mode with a customizable ambient noise level, but early reviews remain skeptical about the voices sounding slightly more robotic than they should.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
Bose also offers an Aware Mode with ActiveSense technology, but it is the AirPods that are said to offer the most natural passthrough audio via Transparency Mode.
Features
Among the unique features of Sony’s flagship earbuds is 32-bit audio processing, which delivers higher-resolution audio with richer textures and finer details (especially in the background score). The earbuds also support DSEE Extreme, Sony’s proprietary technology that restores the sound quality that is often lost with streaming. You also get native Gemini AI support for talking to Google’s chatbot.
Then there’s a Find Your Equaliser feature in its companion app that plays different sonic signatures to help you figure out your preferred audio profile. The app also lets you switch between ANC and ambient modes based on your location. To ensure clear calls, the earbuds feature a bone conduction sensor, two beam-forming microphones, and AI noise reduction.
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Sony
The Bose QuietComfort Ultra (2nd Gen) earbuds use TrueSpatial technology to enhance the soundstage and offer a new Cinema Mode for replicating a theater-like sound experience. The ActiveSense feature monitors for sudden sounds and cancels them in real-time.
You also get useful features like SpeechClarity for isolating your voice during calls, Bluetooth Multipoint support for simultaneous connections to two devices, customizable controls, and Google Fast Pair for near-instant connection with compatible devices. The earbuds can also invoke Gemini AI if it is set as your smartphone’s default assistant.
The AirPods Pro 3 stand out in this regard, offering three features, or rather experiences, that no other earbuds do. First, they come with dedicated sensors to measure heart rate during workouts (via the Fitness or Health app). Speaking of workouts, the Workout Buddy provides personalized motivational messages.
The device also offers Live Translation, a feature currently available in limited languages that allows real-time translation directly through the earbuds. Finally, Apple offers clinical-grade hearing aid functionality and automatic Conversation Boost among other hearing health features. There’s a Conversation Awareness feature as well.
Both the WF-1000XM6 and AirPods Pro 3 feature advanced tracking technology. While the former relies on Google’s Find Hub, the latter uses Apple’s Find My network to crowdsource the location of the devices. Apple’s earbuds also include the U2 chip (ultra-wideband) for Precision Finding.
Battery life
With ANC on, the WF-1000XM6 and the AirPods Pro 3 last up to eight hours on a single charge; their charging cases add another 16 hours, bringing the total playback time to 24 hours. They also support fast charging, with a five-minute charge providing up to an hour of listening time.
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Sony
The QuietComfort Ultra, on the other hand, lasts up to six hours with ANC, and up to 24 hours with the charging case. A 20-minute charge can provide up to two hours of battery life.
Verdict
If sound quality is your top priority, consider the WF-1000XM6. They offer Hi-Res Audio Wireless (LDAC) support, a 10-band equalizer for the most customizable audio experience, 32-bit processing, DSEE Extreme, and an excellent battery life.
Sony / Bose / Apple
If you want deep, immersive ANC that blocks most rumble, you can go with the Bose QuietComfort Ultra (2nd Gen). They offer the most secure fit of all earbuds, support multi-point Bluetooth, provide strong call quality, and offer the company’s signature sound profile.
If you’re an Apple user, the AirPods Pro 3 are the most feature-packed earbuds you can buy. They offer the best Transparency in the group with excellent ANC and double as a health-oriented device with heart-rate tracking and hearing aid features. Of course, you also get the Apple ecosystem perks.
