Research: AirPods Pro can compete with expensive hearing aids

Taiwan scientists checked the effectiveness of AirPods 2, AirPods Pro, conventional hearing aid and top-end hearing aid for 10 thousand dollars. The test subjects were 21 people with moderate to moderate hearing loss who tested all four devices in everyday use scenarios.

In tests, AirPods Pro proved to be at the level of an affordable hearing aid and only slightly inferior to an expensive one. AirPods 2 coped with the task much worse. If AirPods Pro fully comply with the US ANSI/CTA-2051 standard for personal hearing devices and outperform the baseline on all counts, AirPods 2 pass only two of the five.

While AirPods aren't marketed as hearing devices, this use case is possible thanks to the Hearing feature. It uses the microphones on the iPhone or iPad connected to the headphones and streams the sound to the AirPods. This works a bit like highlighting voices in transparency mode: you hear the interlocutor or lecturer better, but not the surrounding noise.

Perhaps in the future, headphones will be able to be certified as hearing aids and help more people with moderate hearing loss.

If you'd like to try Hearing mode, go to your iPhone or iPad's settings and select Control Center and tap the "+" to the left of the "Hearing" line. This will add a new icon to the shortcut menu. Tap it when you plug in your AirPods or Beats and select Live Listen. Here you can also adjust the background sounds and their volume.

It is important to note that this mode increases the load on both devices, and they will be discharged faster.