I Tried Apple's AirPods Pro 2 As a Hearing Aid. Here's What I Found

Hearing test is sensitive to noise around you

Next, find a quiet location and snugly place the AirPods in each ear.

This proved frustrating when I attempted to take the test in an otherwise empty Manhattan office. Though I moved as far away from windows as possible, I repeatedly got the message that “too much noise” was in my environment, which I suspect was caused by the barely audible building air conditioning.

Even after I finally found a quiet enough spot, I had to fiddle with the AirPods’ fit. It didn’t seem to matter that they felt comfortable in both ears and sounded fine when I played music.

I swapped ear tips — four sizes come in the box — but still didn’t seem to satisfy the fit requirements.

After trial and error, I finally met the conditions to start the test. The phone automatically turns on its Do Not Disturb function to curtail distractions.

During the test, tones play at different volumes and frequencies, each pulsed three times. Starting with the left ear, you’re asked to tap the screen whenever you hear the tones. Apple says it’s OK if you miss a tone since you’ll have a chance to hear it again.

The test paused a few times because background noise was detected, but I was always able to resume. After the left ear was done, I repeated this exercise with the right.

Can you trust the results of the hearing test?

This first test result indicated that I had “little to no hearing loss.” Apple provides a personalized hearing profile or audiogram, which the company says is validated against “the clinical gold standard or pure tone audiometry” and based on hearing loss classifications from WHO.

If you already have a hearing test from an audiologist, you can scan it into the Health app on the phone, which is where the audiogram Apple generates is also stored.

I wasn’t convinced the results were spot on because of my experience in noisy restaurants or crowded rooms where I sometimes have trouble making out certain voices, typically female. Plus, those pauses during my test gave me pause.

Apple generates a personalized audiogram based off hearing test results with AirPods Pro 2s and the iPhone.

AARP

Indeed, I took the test two more times in the office and the results came back as “Unable to Classify.” It seems the background noise raised questions around accuracy. I took the test again at home where I had a much easier time finding a quiet room and getting started.

I was more confident in results that indicated at 26 decibels (dB) I had mild hearing loss in my right ear and at 23 dB, little to no loss, in my left. Apple uses the abbreviation dBHL, which stands for decibel hearing loss or the number of decibels below which you have trouble hearing.

From there, I tapped Set Up Hearing Aid and after receiving a Hearing Aid is Ready message on the screen, tapped Turn On Hearing Aid.

That’s the setup. Apple says the AirPods are fine-tuned to your hearing profile and the clarity of your voice and sounds in your environment.

If need be, you can make some adjustments in Control Center by swiping down from the upper right corner of the screen. Or you can go into Settings | AirPods Pro | Hearing Assistance | Adjustments.

For example, you can tweak the amplification or turn on a Conversation Boost feature to make it easier to hear a person speaking in front of you. Another feature, Media Assist, promises to bolster the clarity of calls, music and videos.

However, unlike some hearing aids I’ve tried in the past, you can’t manually or via an app fine-tune the specific environment you’re in, indicating whether you’re in a restaurant or theater.

How well did I hear using Apple AirPods Pro 2?

Apple says you may need a few weeks to get used to the “new sound” of the AirPods Pro. So understand that I wore them only a few days before writing this article.

I generally kept the AirPods in my ears for several hours at a time — aware that the battery life with active noise cancellation turned on is up to about 6 hours. Conventional hearing aids with replaceable batteries can last days or a few weeks.

The volume on a TV and radio as well as in-person voices sounded louder than when I wasn’t wearing the AirPods.

I was especially cognizant of other sounds I never heard much or paid attention to previously: the hum of my home’s air conditioning, the keyboard’s sounds as I typed, even my hands on the railing as I went down the stairs. Over time, I suspect that these and other sounds in the environment blend into a new normal, at least once the brain is retrained.

The most distracting thing I heard was occasional feedback in my right ear, which may have had more to do with the fit than the hearing aid functionality.

Apart from the hearing aids, you can tap a Loud Sound Reduction feature in Settings to actively minimize your exposure to environmental noises when the AirPods are in Transparency or Adaptive modes. Apple also serves up a lot of information around hearing loss in the Health app on iPhone.

The hearing aid inside the AirPods does introduce a bit of uncertainty in the world: Can you be sure a person wearing them is listening to you and not music?