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.
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!
Comfort? To me, very comfortable. I just leave them in there with Active Noise Canceling on all the time.
I may be showing my age, but if you remember "Get Smart", AirPods Pro 2 are like a Cone of Silence -- except they actually work.
Hearing aids are actually a a lot more complicated than just boosting frequencies. At the very simplest, these days they are wide/multi band compressors that try to balance discomfort with natural hearing, generally focusing on speech intelligibility since that is by far the most important target.
If you have severe hearing loss I would strongly recommend putting yourself in the care of a professional. Costco is a great source of probably the lowest cost versus highest quality hearing aids these days... but the reason I say "professional" is because there are so many kinds of hearing loss and they all affect your perception markedly differently.
It's a lot more than just "missing some sensitivity at some frequencies".