> This needs a big citation.
Here's one from 2022 (so AirPods Pro 2 and iOS 15 or 16), but: https://stephencoyle.net/airpods-pro-2
"As you can see, the second-generation AirPods Pro perform about 40ms better than their predecessors, with an average latency of 126ms vs the original’s 167ms.
"Perhaps a more interesting point to note is that the second-generation AirPods Pro perform only 43ms worse than the built-in speakers (at 83ms). That suggests that up to two-thirds of the time between touching the screen and hearing a noise occurs before Bluetooth data leaves the device. I think there’s still too much latency for audio feedback to feel snappy and responsive over AirPods Pro 2, but maybe at this point there are easier gains to be made by working to reduce the device-side latency."
On the last point, most of that latency is from the touchscreen response, the audio system is capable of single-digits latency.
Things may have gotten much worse recently as I distinctly remember the iPhone around the 4s-6s era having <30ms latency which was a huge advantage over Android.
The Apple Pencil can also go under 10ms latency when drawing, there must be a way of taking advantage of that for music apps?
Is there really _any_ other measurement? This is the number quoted by a lot of PRs, but e.g. professional reviewers put much larger numbers
e.g. rtings puts AirPods Pro 2 at 160ms https://www.computerbase.de/artikel/audio-video-foto/apple-a... (AirPods Pro 3 review is in progress)
and ComputerBase puts AirPods Pro 3 at 160-180ms. https://www.computerbase.de/artikel/audio-video-foto/apple-a...