AirPods Can Now Measure Your Heart Rate — But Should You Trust Them?
Apple has steadily pushed the boundaries of what wireless earbuds can do, and the latest capability turning heads is heart rate monitoring built directly into AirPods. What was once the exclusive domain of smartwatches and dedicated fitness trackers has now migrated to the devices millions of people already wear every day. But a flashy new feature is only as good as its reliability — so the real question isn't whether AirPods can measure your heart rate, it's whether they measure it accurately enough to matter during a real workout.
To find out, we put AirPods through a rigorous real-world comparison against two established heart rate monitoring benchmarks: the Apple Watch and the Polar chest strap. Here's everything we learned.
How AirPods Measure Heart Rate
Before diving into the numbers, it's worth understanding the technology at play. AirPods use optical sensors — the same photoplethysmography (PPG) technology found in most modern smartwatches — to detect blood flow. Instead of reading from your wrist, however, they read from the ear canal, a location that is actually considered by researchers to be closer to the heart and potentially rich in blood flow data.
The ear canal offers some theoretical advantages over the wrist. It's less susceptible to motion artifacts caused by arm swinging, and the skin is thinner, which may allow optical sensors to pick up pulse signals more cleanly. On paper, this sounds promising. In practice, fit matters enormously — a loose or improperly seated earbud can compromise the entire reading.
The Testing Method: Three Devices, One Workout
To make the comparison as fair and useful as possible, we ran simultaneous heart rate readings across three devices during several different workout types, including steady-state cardio, interval training, and light activity like walking. The three devices tested were:
- AirPods (with heart rate monitoring enabled) — Apple's flagship wireless earbuds, synced to the Health app on iPhone.
- Apple Watch — worn on the wrist as usual, using continuous workout heart rate tracking.
- Polar chest strap — widely regarded as the gold standard for consumer heart rate monitoring, using electrical signals (ECG-based) rather than optical sensors.
The Polar chest strap served as our reference point, since ECG-based heart rate monitors are consistently more accurate than optical alternatives, particularly during high-intensity movement.
Results: How Did AirPods Stack Up?
Steady-State Cardio
During moderate, sustained effort — think a 20-minute jog at a consistent pace — the AirPods performed surprisingly well. Readings were generally within 3 to 5 beats per minute (BPM) of the Polar chest strap, which is a margin considered acceptable for general fitness tracking. The Apple Watch performed similarly in this range, making all three devices largely interchangeable for casual cardio monitoring.
High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
This is where things got more interesting — and more telling. During intense intervals involving quick direction changes, jumping, or rapid acceleration, the AirPods began to show a noticeable lag. Heart rate readings could trail the Polar chest strap by 10 to 15 BPM during sudden spikes in effort, and they were slower to recover during rest periods as well. The Apple Watch showed similar optical lag, though it appeared slightly more consistent than the AirPods across repeated intervals.
For anyone training with strict heart rate zones — particularly athletes doing VO2 max work or following a structured training plan — this lag is significant. Missing a peak reading by 15 BPM during a 30-second all-out sprint could mean the difference between training in zone 4 and zone 5, which directly affects training outcomes.
Light Activity and Resting Heart Rate
At lower intensities, such as walking or post-workout cooldowns, the AirPods were accurate and reliable. Resting heart rate readings were consistently close to both the Apple Watch and the Polar chest strap, suggesting the technology performs best when the body — and the earbud — stays relatively still.
Fit Is Everything
One consistent finding throughout testing was how dramatically earbud fit affected accuracy. When the AirPods were firmly seated with a good seal, readings improved considerably. When they shifted — as earbuds naturally tend to do during vigorous exercise — readings became erratic. This is a fundamental limitation of in-ear optical monitoring that Apple will need to address with future hardware refinements. If you plan to use AirPods for heart rate tracking, experimenting with different ear tip sizes to find the most secure fit is not optional — it's essential.
Should You Use AirPods for Heart Rate Monitoring?
The answer depends entirely on what you need the data for. If you're a casual exerciser who wants a general sense of how hard your heart is working during a run or gym session, AirPods deliver good-enough accuracy without requiring you to strap on an additional device. The convenience factor is genuinely hard to argue with — you're already wearing them.
However, if you're a serious athlete, someone managing a cardiovascular condition, or a person whose training depends on precise heart rate zone data, the AirPods are not a replacement for a dedicated heart rate monitor or a smartwatch with a well-calibrated optical sensor. The lag during high-intensity efforts and the sensitivity to fit make them unreliable for precision use cases.
The Bottom Line
AirPods heart rate monitoring is a genuinely impressive addition to a pair of earbuds, and for most people, it will be accurate enough for everyday fitness tracking. But "accurate enough" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. In controlled, moderate-intensity conditions, they hold their own against the Apple Watch. Against the Polar chest strap — the true benchmark — they fall short when it matters most: during the hardest moments of your hardest workouts.
For the average user who wants to close their Activity rings and keep a general eye on cardiovascular effort, AirPods heart rate tracking is a welcome and usable feature. For those who train with precision and purpose, it remains a supplementary tool rather than a primary one. Apple has laid the groundwork for something genuinely useful — the next step is making it consistently trustworthy.