I feel a bit the same. I rushed out to upgrade for the better noise cancelling, apparently better mic quality and live translation feature.
All three have been a miss. Noise cancelling is much the same and seems to leak higher pitch noises more. Mic is more or less still bad and the live translation only works in doors in a quiet room.
And I resent the upgrade to 26 and all of the bugs like phantom notifications.
They’re still good ear buds and the noise cancelling is valuable but I shouldn’t have made the upgrade from the 2 pros.
Ahh lastly, it seems the case battery depletes much faster now too.
Apple has done some really shady marketing about live translation because it's also supported on the AirPods Pro 2. It's clear they don't want people to know that to drive the upgrade to the 3s.
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Seems like you should try and get a replacement