Kuo: AirPods Pro 2 will gain lossless audio support, new charging case

Midnight Green iPhone 11 Pro, AirPods Pro, and Apple Watch Series 5 Edition Space Black Titanium with JUUK Rainbow Ligero Band
Midnight Green iPhone 11 Pro, AirPods Pro, and Apple Watch Series 5 Edition Space Black Titanium with JUUK Rainbow Ligero Band (Image credit: Christine Romero-Chan / iMore)

What you need to know

  • Apple is rumored to have AirPods Pro 2 in the works for a Q4 2022 launch.
  • Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes the new AirPods Pro will support wireless audio.
  • A new charging case is expected to come with a speaker for improved Find My location finding.

Apple's rumored AirPods Pro refresh will bring with it support for lossless audio as well as a new charging case that will support improved Find My functionality by making a sound when being located according to a new analyst research note.

In a note seen by iMore, Ming-Chi Kuo says that the updated AirPods Pro will feature support for Apple's lossless streaming format, dubbed ALAC. That would mark the first time that the format has gone wireless and will marry well with Apple Music's own lossless capabilities. Currently, the Bluetooth connection used by AirPods Pro isn't of sufficient bandwidth for lossless audio, suggesting that Apple will use a new type of connection type.

Alongside talk of the potential for new health features, Kuo also points to a redesigned charging case that will bring improved /Find My functionality. Specifically, it's thought that the charging case will gain a speaker for audible alerts when being located.

The same report puts all of this into a time window of the fourth quarter of 2022, meaning we'll be waiting a number of months before we can see whether this report is accurate.

If Apple does indeed manage to make lossless audio work with AirPods Pro, it's a safe bet that some sort of AirPods Max refresh will also be in the cards before the end of 2022, cementing their place as the best iPhone headphones you can buy.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.