Apple's AirPods Pro hearing health features are as good as they sound

Unless I'm misunderstanding, the news here is Apple is adding a hearing test app, and "officially" stating that you can use your Airpods Pro like hearing aids.

I mention this as you can use these today as hearing aids, you just need to use a third party app to create your audiogram. I have fairly bad hearing loss and use Airpods instead of hearing aids.

You are missing that these are now cleared as hearing aids by the government.

Using AirPods as ear protection for concerts was new to me!

Well kinda in my second point but yes correct. I mentioned as I kept assuming you couldn't use these as such yet, but have been using happily for months now after I realized the functionality was all there.

Yep, the path for this official recognition was cleared by the executive order two years ago that allowed for hearing aids to be sold over the counter!

As an approved medical device I wonder if you can buy airpods with a HSA now?

Always been sensitive to sounds and have taken effort over my life to protect my hearing. It may look silly, but I still plug my ears when a large truck/train passes by.

Result is, even at my age, I can still hear those annoying high frequency teenage repellents (ubiquitous in Tokyo). Can also hear some of my electric devices charging.

I'm glad to see such steps being taken by Apple. I always bring my noise canceling buds (Sony, Apple) with me when I go see movies. It's literally painful to watch movies in modern theaters without them. Just too damned loud!

Apple's on the right track. Personalized health and more daily monitoring of said health is gonna be a sea change event.

I use them for movie theaters and other loud places. Works a charm!

Same here, right down to the experience in Tokyo. Both grandfathers had hearing loss and the impact it had on them socially was sad to see. Even with hearing aids. I hope to avoid it.

Based on the graph it looks like the hearing test only tests out to 8 kHz. That's disappointing. That's also the limit at most audiologists offices. It would be nice to have a good test that goes farther.

Fragile and too expensive to replace often. The software updates that apple pushes on to them screws them up. Happened to my first set of airpods and swore off of them since then. The batteries are awful too.

My go to since then has been the one plus z2 headsets, brilliant call quality, great form factor, decent ANC, and fantastic battery.

Went to see an artist (DJ) I liked and forgot my filters. Remembered that I had my AirPods Pro and used them in transparency mode and after only 10 minutes completely forgot I had them even in. I was surprised how good they worked as hearing protection!

Now when I’m at festivals and I have friends without earplugs, I usually recommend them to just use their AirPods Pro (if they have some) instead of buying cheap plugs

Without the new software, there is no boost to external sound in transparency mode, so they are not useful as hearing aids. I’m looking forward to testing the new release.

> there’ll be detailed comparisons between the AirPods Pro 2 and existing OTC devices in the near future once iOS 18.1 is widely available.

As someone with a diagnosed, severe hearing loss, I wonder how these compare to prescription hearing aids. I currently wear a pair of Phonak hearing aids and am looking to replace them, but I wonder if spending 5-6k on another pair is worth it versus the OTC or Apple AirPod options that exist today.

As a mid-50 year old who discovered two years ago that he has moderate hearing loss (50-55 dB HL), I will be forever grateful to Apple for doing this.

If anybody from the accessibility teams is reading this, please know that it is difficult for me to overstate my gratitude and my appreciation for the amount of work this must've taken.

Music sounds unbelievably better through my AirPod pros, and I didn't even know what I had lost until I heard it again.

I'm willing to bet that a lot of my middle aged compatriots don't even know how much they hearing has degraded… Get your hearing test tested, folks, while you still have it!

I've done that. At some point I felt like they weren't doing anything and pulled them out only to discover what a good job they had been doing. They lower the volume while keeping the sound pretty much the same. It's incredible.

Because everything I've ever heard about acquiring dedicated hearing aids has been about what a joy they are to purchase, maintain, and operate.

My experience is that they serve different purposes.

I have a very nice and expensive set of ReSound hearing aids and they're fabulous at what they do, which is focus on speech and kind of on music if I set them for that.

They're also unobtrusive and easily last 18-20 hours on a charge. I forget I'm wearing them, and nobody notices that I have them.

My AirPods I use primarily for running and listening to music because they just sound unbelievably better, and they're probably fine for a concert although I haven't done that with them. But I think for long-term use every day all day it wouldn't be that comfortable or unobtrusive.

Would love to hear the experience of somebody who's trying it, though!