If you’re looking for a good opportunity to upgrade from an older pair of AirPods, then some of the early Black Friday sales going on right now are where you want to be. Walmart, for example, has chopped down the price of a pair of Apple AirPods (third-gen) with a Lightning charging case to $94, which is a massive $75 off and easily the lowest price we’ve seen to date.
The fourth-gen AirPods are out now — with slight audio quality and comfort improvements, plus the option to get them with active noise cancellation and a wireless charging case bearing its own speaker — but the third-gen AirPods are still rock solid for routine music, podcasts, calls, and other listening needs. The charging case adds 24 hours of playtime to the earbuds’ six-hour battery life, but without the option for wireless charging, the Lightning connector is a bit of a downer now that Apple has moved on from it in nearly all of its latest devices. Still, the price is low enough that it may be worth keeping an extra cable handy.
And the third-gen AirPods are still great on other merits. They were the first base AirPods to snub the tailpipe in an overdue design refresh, but they’re also notable for adding spatial audio head tracking, IPX4 sweat and water resistance, precision Find My, automatic and quick device pairing and switching, and other tight integrations with iPhones, iPads, Macs, and other Apple devices. We considered them well-balanced at their original price, so they’re even easier to recommend with today’s discount.
