Both AirPods 5 models run the H2 chip, the same chip Apple lists in AirPods 4, AirPods 4 with ANC, AirPods Pro 3 and AirPods Max 2. So the useful question is not what the chip is called, it is which features the earbuds handle on their own and which ones stop working unless a specific iPhone is in your pocket.
The split is sharper than the marketing suggests. Noise control, sound tuning and the sensor features are listed as hardware capabilities with no device qualifier. Live Translation and hands-free Siri AI carry requirements Apple publishes separately, and one of them rules out a country. Our AirPods 5 announcement coverage listed the features; this is where each one actually lives.
| Feature | What Apple attaches to it |
|---|---|
| Active Noise Cancellation, Transparency, Adaptive Audio, Conversation Awareness | Listed in the Noise control row with no device requirement |
| Next-generation Adaptive EQ, Personalized Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking | Listed in the Audio row with no device requirement |
| Voice Isolation, studio-quality audio recording | Listed in the specification rows with no device requirement |
| Head gestures for Siri | Needs Head Gestures on, plus Announce Calls and Announce Notifications |
| Hands-free Siri AI | Needs iOS 27 and an iPhone that runs Apple Intelligence |
| Live Translation | Needs iPhone 15 Pro or later, iOS 26 or later, Apple Intelligence on, the Translate app, and is not available in China mainland |
| Custom EQ | Arrives with iOS 27 in AirPods settings |
| Find My separation alerts | On both models. Only the $149 case has a speaker to play a sound |
What the earbuds do without help
Apple describes the acoustic hardware in its own row: a custom high-excursion driver, a custom high dynamic range amplifier, a vent system for pressure equalisation, next-generation Adaptive EQ and Personalized Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking. The noise cancellation claim of up to 1.5 times the previous generation, or up to 50 percent more noise removed than AirPods 4 with ANC, sits with that hardware and carries no device requirement.
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The sensor row does the rest of the work: dual beamforming microphones, an inward-facing microphone, an optical in-ear sensor, a motion-detecting accelerometer, a speech-detecting accelerometer and a force sensor. None of those entries comes with a phone model attached.
What needs a particular iPhone
Two of the headline features are gated, and they are gated differently, which is easy to miss because Apple promotes them in the same breath.
| Gated feature | iPhone floor | Software floor | Regional note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Live Translation | iPhone 15 Pro or later | iOS 26 or later | Not available in China mainland |
| Hands-free Siri AI | An Apple Intelligence iPhone, which means iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max or iPhone 16 or later | iOS 27, shipping September 14 | Siri AI launches in beta in English, with five more languages in October |
Pair AirPods 5 with an iPhone below those floors and the earbuds still deliver every acoustic feature on the list. What you lose is the translation and the new assistant, which is a software line rather than an audio one. The iPhone 18 Pro clears both floors, as does every Apple Intelligence iPhone before it.
The chip is not the upgrade
H2 has been in AirPods since AirPods Pro 2, and Apple lists it in AirPods 4, AirPods 4 with ANC, AirPods Pro 3 and AirPods Max 2 as well. Bluetooth stays at 5.3 on AirPods 5, even though the new iPhones move to Bluetooth 6 and the phone silicon jumped a full process node, as our A20 Pro explainer covered.
What Apple changed instead is around the chip: a new multiport acoustic architecture it credits to AirPods Pro 3, improved computational audio, IP57 in place of IP54, and a force sensor with volume swipe on the Wireless Charging Case model. The silicon is the constant, not the variable.
The hearing and listening features Apple does list
Alongside the headline features, the software list for both models names Live Listen, Headphone levels, Headphone Accommodations, Find My with separation alerts and Listen Together audio sharing between two sets of AirPods. Apple’s note is that these need an iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV or Vision Pro on the latest operating system.
What is not there is any of the hearing hardware from the Pro line. Apple lists no hearing test, no hearing aid feature, no hearing protection and no heart rate sensor for AirPods 5, and its accessibility hub still foregrounds AirPods Pro 3 rather than anything announced this month.
What Apple has not said
Apple publishes no core count, clock speed, memory figure or generation number for H2, and it has never said whether the H2 in AirPods 5 differs from the H2 in AirPods 4. It has not said whether Live Translation is processed on the earbuds or on the iPhone, has published no latency figures for any feature, and has not explained why the AirPods 5 buds are rated for four hours of noise cancelling listening on the $129 model and five on the $149 one when the spec rows are otherwise identical.
There is still no AirPods 5 support document or firmware version published, a gap our event recap flagged across the whole launch. AirPods 5 reach stores on Friday, September 18, and iOS 27 arrives on Monday, September 14, which is the day the gated half of this feature list becomes testable.
