{"id":48401,"date":"2025-07-08T16:25:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T20:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=48401"},"modified":"2025-07-08T16:25:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T20:25:10","slug":"hearing-aids-vs-airpods-pro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/08\/hearing-aids-vs-airpods-pro\/","title":{"rendered":"Hearing Aids vs. AirPods Pro"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.hayman.net\/2025\/07\/08\/hearing-aids-vs-airpods-pro.html\">Steve Hayman<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/blog.hayman.net\/2025\/07\/08\/hearing-aids-vs-airpods-pro.html\"><p>Apple has spent a ton of money getting AirPods Pro approved by the FDA and other regulators to work as over-the-counter hearing aids, including providing a hearing test app on the iPhone that tweaks the audio profile on the headphones.  This feature is available in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.apple.com\/airpods-pro\/feature-availability\/\">whole lot of countries<\/a>, not yet including Canada, but, um, &#8230; I don&rsquo;t work there any more so I guess I can say &ldquo;it&rsquo;s not too hard to work around that.&rdquo;  So I&rsquo;ve had my AirPods Pro 2 set up as hearing aids for a few months now and have been trying them sporadically for hearing assistance (and more frequently just for listening to music or podcasts or whatever.)<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>The hearing aids <strong>cost 25 times as much as AirPods Pro<\/strong>.  Are they 25 times better? No.  Maybe for some people. Not for me.  AirPods might still be good enough in some situations.  I have only <em>mild<\/em> hearing loss, so I&rsquo;m probably on the edge of hearing aid utility here.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>If you&rsquo;ve got your AirPods in, it&rsquo;s totally obvious to everyone, and they all assume you&rsquo;re listening to music and not paying attention to them. Kind of a stigma there.  Conversely, these hearing aids are pretty inconspicuous, especially because they match the colour of the wire to the colour of your hair.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>I already miss the tight integration between AirPods and my phone. Apple is doing some proprietary Bluetooth things that these hearing aids can&rsquo;t match. The hearing aids do let you answer phone calls or adjust volume by tapping a button, but they&rsquo;re sure not as tightly integrated as AirPods+iPhone are.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/09\/airpods-4\/\">AirPods 4<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/26\/using-airpods-as-a-hearing-aid\/\">Using AirPods as a Hearing Aid<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/17\/apples-2023-accessibility-feature-preview\/\">Apple&rsquo;s 2023 Accessibility Feature Preview<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steve Hayman: Apple has spent a ton of money getting AirPods Pro approved by the FDA and other regulators to work as over-the-counter hearing aids, including providing a hearing test app on the iPhone that tweaks the audio profile on the headphones. This feature is available in a whole lot of countries, not yet including [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-07-08T20:25:13Z","apple_news_api_id":"3da3e213-f04e-487e-8e60-e4f02a67aa80","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-07-08T20:25:13Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/APaPiE_BOSH6OYOTwKmeqgA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[930,1422,95,31,2586],"class_list":["post-48401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-accessibility","tag-airpods","tag-audio","tag-ios","tag-ios-18"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48402,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48401\/revisions\/48402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}