Apple Watch vs AirPods: Which is Better for Tracking Heart Rate?

I wore the AirPods Pro 3 for months before I remembered they could even track my heart rate.

I remember attending Apple’s keynote in September, when the company announced in-ear heart rate tracking. Measuring the rate of your heartbeat using a pair of headphones seemed futuristic, and the announcement prompted one of the loudest rounds of applause of the keynote speech.

Then I came home and started recording every workout again with my Apple Watch.

There was no real reason to change. The Apple Watch Series 11 beat every smartwatch I tested in our CNET Labs heart rate comparisons against a Polar chest strap (designed explicitly to track heart rate), so I didn’t expect a pair of earbuds to come close.

Spoiler: They did it.

The Apple Watch Series 11 still takes the crown for heart rate accuracy, but if I had included the AirPods Pro 3 in my previous comparisons, they would have beaten every other smartwatch on my list.

Health tracking goes beyond the wrist

Consumer health tracking started on the wrist, but it’s not staying there. Fitness trackers and smartwatches have made 24/7 heart rate monitoring widespread to aid training and recovery. They have since evolved to an almost clinical level of accuracy to help report serious heart problems, sleep problems and even alert emergency services with features like loss of pulse detection (on the Pixel Watch).

We’re now seeing similar sensors in smart rings, headphones, smart earrings, and soon even smart glasses that can do the same thing from different parts of your body.

Where we will eventually wear our primary health tracker remains an open question. But to answer that question, each new location must prove that it can measure these same health signals as accurately as the wrist.

Why your ear might be a better place to measure heart rate

Although heart rate tracking from earbuds is new, I wasn’t starting from scratch for this comparison. A few months earlier, Whoop’s now-famous “thong” accessory (yes, the fitness company really makes performance underwear that lets you wear its sensor on your waist and other places) sent me down a rabbit hole. I surveyed doctors and wearable experts to find out if different parts of the body are better suited to measuring different health signals.

The answer depends on what you are measuring. Fingertips, for example, work well for oxygen in the blood because they are filled with small blood vessels and thinner skin allows more light to pass through.

The heart rate is different. In general, the closer a sensor is to the heart (and the less that part of the body moves during exercise), the easier it is for a sensor-equipped device to capture a clear signal.

This gives the ear some advantages over the wrist. It is slightly closer to the heart and remains relatively stable while you run. But location is only part of the equation.

Apple has spent more than a decade refining the Apple Watch’s heart rate algorithms. In my previous CNET Labs tests with a Polar H10 chest strap, the Apple Watch Series 11 averaged an error rate of less than 1%, making it the most accurate smartwatch I’ve tested to date.

AirPods have different material and spatial constraints. Apple says it built its smallest heart rate sensor ever to fit inside the tiny earbuds and trained it on more than 50 million hours of Apple Health Study data. But this is still new territory. The question is not whether the headphones can measure heart rate, but whether they can come close to the Apple Watch.

How I tested the AirPods Pro 3 compared to the Apple Watch

For each wearable I’ve tested, I use the same reference: the Polar H10 chest strap (CNET’s reference for consumer human resources monitoring). Unlike an Apple Watch or AirPods, which estimate heart rate by shining a light on your skin and measuring changes in blood flow, the Polar measures the heart’s electrical signals directly. Think of it as a measurement of the rock hitting the water instead of the ripples it creates. Optical sensors can match this signal, but combined with enough machine learning, they can shut down surprisingly well.

To keep the comparisons consistent, I ran each test on the same college track using the same protocol I developed for previous CNET Labs smartwatch tests. Each workout covered four laps, or 1 mile.

The first round is the power up to increase my resting heart rate. The next two laps consist of a constant cruising altitude at an average pace through the average heart rate zones. And the last lap is an all-out sprint to push my body as close to my maximum heart rate as possible. Maximum heart rate is generally estimated at 220 beats per minute minus your age.

Using the same route, pace, and effort each time eliminates variables, so the only thing that changes is the device.

Watch this: I ran 30 miles and it’s the most accurate smartwatch

07:42

Before testing the AirPods, I re-ran the Apple Watch Series 11. I already had data from previous CNET Labs tests, but I wanted both devices to compete under the same conditions. Temperature, humidity, and even constriction of blood vessels can influence optical heart rate sensors. So I tested both on the same track during the same summer period.

I strapped it on, ran four laps and finished the workout. Plug and play, no drama.

AirPods were a different story. As of September 2025, Apple lets you start a workout from your fitness app on your phone and use AirPods to track heart rate if paired. But having an Apple Watch disrupts the signal, so I took the Apple Watch off and left it on a nearby bench, assuming that would force Apple’s Fitness app to use the AirPods for heart rate tracking. I started a workout from the Fitness app, confirmed the AirPods were connected, and took off.

However, once I finished, half of the heart rate data was gone from the graph. I’m still not sure if I accidentally interrupted the recording by switching apps mid-run to check the data from the Polar bracelet or if the Fitness app tried to reconnect to the Apple Watch, but the fact that I still don’t know doesn’t speak well for the convenience of the AirPods. I asked Apple what might have happened and will update this story if I learn more.

Attempt #2 to get heart rate data from AirPods ended even more spectacularly. Halfway through my third lap, the track sprinklers turned on. I ran with my phone in hand to make sure the Fitness app stayed open. Somehow a drop of water fell right on the stop button, and in an instant my run was over and my work was in vain.

Back to square one. At this point, the Apple Watch had already won on convenience alone.

On my third attempt, I turned off the Apple Watch completely, left the Fitness app open for the entire workout, and managed to avoid the sprinklers.

I recorded two full AirPod runs, then dug through the data. At first glance, the workout summaries looked almost identical. The average heart rate differed by only a few beats per minute, and the maximum heart rate was about 5 bpm lower on the AirPods. This is pretty normal as optical sensors tend to lag slightly during rapid heart rate spikes.

Training summaries and averages are only snapshots and do not provide the full picture.

To test accuracy, I had to compare each heart rate reading throughout the race.

Polar makes this easy by exporting your data as a CSV (spreadsheet) file. Apple first requires exporting your entire health history (11 years in my case). Fortunately, there is a workaround. Third-party apps like Health Fit analyze the data for you so you can simply isolate it by workout and export it cleanly into a spreadsheet.

Once I had matching data sets, I sent them to CNET data analyst Gianmarco Chiumbe. It aligned each heart rate sample from the AirPods with the corresponding reading from the Polar chest strap, then calculated the error rate for each point before averaging the results across the two runs.

The AirPods didn’t beat the Apple Watch, but they exceeded my expectations

I expected the AirPods to be good enough for casual workouts. I didn’t expect them to outperform most smartwatches I’ve tested. Over two outdoor runs, the AirPods Pro 3 averaged a 1.67% heart rate error compared to the Polar H10 chest strap, landing at less than 2.4 bpm on average.

For context, CNET Labs compared the best smartwatches – including Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 8, the a Google Pixel Watch 4, Garmin’s Venu 4 and the Amazfit Bip 4 – with the same Polar chest strap using this protocol. Most optical heart rate sensors have an error rate of 7%.

According to my results, the AirPods would have finished second behind the Apple Watch in this range.

In my previous CNET Labs tests (in February 2026), the Apple Watch averaged less than 0.98%. When I ran it again under the same conditions as the AirPods (much warmer weather), it performed even better at 0.38%.

But as impressive as that is, the gap isn’t big enough to matter to most runners or gym-goers.

If you buy the $250 AirPods Pro 3 for music, noise cancellation, and calls, heart rate tracking isn’t just a bonus feature. Based on my testing, it’s one of the most accurate optical heart rate sensors I’ve used, second only to the $400 Apple Watch Series 11.

If you care about convenience and the most accurate second-by-second data (especially during peak efforts), then the 11 Series is worth it and still sets the standard.

The more interesting takeaway is what this says about where wearable health tracking is headed. For years, heart rate monitoring belonged almost exclusively to the wrist, and the AirPods Pro 3 prove that’s no longer the case. And as data improves and algorithms continue to evolve, it’s not hard to imagine a future in which headphones outperform even the best watches.