Apple on Monday unveiled the AirPods Pro. The new wireless earphones have a sleeker design that includes removable tips that help deliver the noise cancellation that the first-gen AirPods couldn’t. Out in stores in a couple of days, the new AirPods are slightly more expensive than the previous models, priced at $249. That means you’ll have to pay extra if you need to replace lost, stolen, or broken earphones or cases. But, interestingly enough, AppleCare+ will cost the same for the new Pro model.
Considering how easy it is to misplace AirPods, AppleCare+ makes a lot of sense for this particular device, especially considering you only have to pay $29, regardless of what AirPods model you choose. With an AppleCare+ purchase, accidental damage repairs are priced at $29 per incident for either the AirPods Pro or the case. It’s $60 more for each AirPods Pro earphone or the wireless charging case if you don’t have AppleCare+.
Servicing the AirPods Pro without AppleCare+ is $20 or $30 more than what you’d pay for the previous versions, as you can see in the following table from Apple’s website:
Battery service, meanwhile, doesn’t cost anything, as long as you have AppleCare+ for the AirPods Pro, and as long as either the earbuds or the charging case hold less than 80% of original capacity. Otherwise, the battery service fee is $49 per AirPod and $49 per AirPods case — the cost is the same for every model.
Finally, losing an AirPod or the charging case will require purchasing a replacement, which means you’d have to pay $89 per lost earphone and $89 for the charging case. Again the replacement costs run higher for the AirPods Pro parts, which makes sense, considering that the Pro models are more advanced and therefore more expensive to produce than their predecessors. You can find all of the details over at Apple’s support portal.
