AppleCare is leaps and bounds better than any other insurance you can buy for mobile or laptops.

For accessories I don’t see the point, those are effectively disposable wear items.

Ironically a large part of deciding to migrate to an iPhone from android was final frustrations with even Google purchased devices under warranty coupled with hardware quality requiring repairs. My wife’s experience with AppleCare won me over.

If nothing else it’s first party insurance. I will never purchase device insurance offered via a third party ever again. Either its first party so I’m dealing with the place I bought it or nothing at all.

AppleCare is only worth it for expensive things with big repair costs; the "repair fee" for AirPods is such a high percentage of the replacement price that it just is not worth it.