ArticlePLOS digital health2026
Accuracy of heart rate measurement using AirPods Pro 3 during graded treadmill exercise: A laboratory-based validation study.
Article in PLOS digital health, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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7 authors.
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Abstract
AirPods Pro 3 incorporate an in-ear optical heart-rate sensor, but independent validation during exercise is limited. We evaluated agreement between AirPods Pro 3 heart rate and an ECG-derived chest-strap reference (Polar H10) during graded treadmill exercise in a controlled laboratory setting. Forty adults (mean age 23·8 years; 37·5% female) completed a protocol comprising rest and progressive exercise stages targeting ~40-85% of age-predicted maximal heart rate, including rapid workload transitions. Heart-rate time series from both devices were synchronised by timestamp and aggregated into non-overlapping 5-s epochs. Agreement was assessed using a repeated-measures Bland-Altman approach implemented via a linear mixed-effects model with participant-level random effects; absolute error metrics were calculated at the participant level and summarised overall and by intensity category. Across 16,735 paired epochs, mean bias was -0·03 beats·min ⁻ ¹ (AirPods Pro 3 minus Polar H10; 95% CI -0·22 to 0·17), indicating negligible systematic error. The total standard deviation of differences was 5·23 beats·min ⁻ ¹, yielding 95% limits of agreement from -10·27 to 10·22 beats·min ⁻ ¹, with greater dispersion at higher heart rates. Overall mean absolute error was 2·08 beats·min ⁻ ¹ and mean absolute percentage error was 2·02%, with mean absolute error ranging from 1·31 to 2·4 beats·min ⁻ ¹ across intensity categories. AirPods Pro 3 therefore provided heart-rate estimates closely aligned with a validated chest-worn reference during graded treadmill exercise in healthy adults, with minimal bias and low average error but wider epoch-to-epoch variability at higher intensities.
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