Which Generation AirPods Have Noise Cancellation?

Shortly after Apple killed off the legacy 3.5mm headphone jack on the iPhone, the company introduced AirPods as the solution to that very problem. At the time, Bluetooth headphones were clunky and ugly, looking like a shoelace with an earbud tied to either end. Apple's true wireless earbuds were contrastingly chic — the futuristic headgear we'd all been waiting for — and they instantly exploded in popularity, creating an entire product category in the process. Today, Apple offers a whole range of AirPod branded audio gear. You can spring for those iconic white stems, or drop a lot more cash for the big, aluminum AirPods Max headphones.

One of the features Apple has pushed the hardest as it expands the AirPods lineup is active noise cancellation (ANC), a technology that reduces the noise you can hear from the world around you when you've got your earbuds in or headphones on. As we navigate noisy cities, try to ignore family members or roommates while perfecting our work from home setups, or keep ourselves occupied on the train, ANC has become a must-have feature for quite a few people.

However, not all AirPods support ANC, leaving many to wonder which generations of AirPods can give them that magical feeling of turning the volume down on the world. Although Apple has expanded its range of AirPods branded products over the years, only two models of AirPods come equipped with ANC, making it easy to determine which pair is best for you.

Although Apple offers multiple AirPods, only its most premium offerings come with active noise cancellation (ANC), which is probably what most people are thinking of when they use the term "noise cancellation." Nearly every pair of headphones or earphones on the market offer passive noise cancellation, which simply refers to the physical blockage of your ear canals by the ear cups or ear tips. Active noise cancellation, on the other hand, refers to a technology that uses microphones on the outside of the headphones or earphones to listen to the world around you. Active noise cancelling then uses a tiny computer inside the headphone or earphone to generate what's called "anti-noise" that has the opposite tones of the noises in your environment. Just as two plus negative two equals zero, noise from your environment plus anti-noise from the headphones combine to create silence.

The only AirPods to feature ANC are the AirPods Pro and AirPods Max, but all generations of those products have the feature. Although the original AirPods first launched in 2016, Apple didn't add its more premium models to the lineup until 2019 when the company refreshed the original buds and added the AirPods Pro. At time of writing, the models of AirPods Apple sells that have active noise cancellation are the refined AirPods Pro 2nd Generation and AirPods Max 1st Generation (a second generation Max has yet to be released).