[thefabsta]

I've bought AirPods Pro in early November right after they were released. From my personal experience, the background firmware updates have had a very noticeable effect. I can attest to the perceived weakening of ANC (as opposed to the initial firmware) the article mentions.

One firmware update has even rendered one of my AirPods Pro practically unusable due to a strange clicking noise that would occur whenever I was walking/running with ANC enabled, likely due to accelerations acting upon it. I was convinced it was a hardware fault and was ready to return them until another firmware update fixed the problem (until now at least).