Owners of the current AirPods Pro look set to get an update aimed at helping them learn more about their hearing. And that can only be a good thing.
The AirPods Pro 2nd-gen has been out for a good two years, and while they regularly rack up nods from reviewers, this one included, Apple has been improving the feature set since they arrived. Gestures have already been added, and now Apple looks set to add something else to the mix: a health-related feature.
Alongside the AirPods 4 announcement, Apple looks set to turn the AirPods Pro 2nd-gen into a clinical grade hearing aid complete with a clinically-validated hearing test.
The feature will bring hearing protection to the AirPods Pro, leveraging the H2 chip inside to monitor loud noise and reduce it, technically able to work in places where volume is a concern, such as concerts.
At the same time, the feature addition will roll out a test using pure tone audiometry to measure hearing threshold levels and define whether hearing loss has occurred. The feature appears similar to the hearing tests used by other headphones, including the Australian Audeara headphones, which are built with a tone-based hearing test inside and are available on the NDIS.
The AirPods Pro will store the audiogram in the Apple Health app, complete with classifications and recommendations, and has been built from real-world data to define hearing loss in each ear, and cite whether a hearing aid will help.
That’s important, because the addition will add a Hearing Aid feature for AirPods Pro owners with mild to moderate hearing loss. The feature will take point from the profile made from the Apple hearing test, providing personalised adjustments to sounds delivered when the AirPods Pro are running as a hearing aid.
In the US, the hearing aid feature has already been given clearance by the Food and Drug Administration, set to be available in a subsequent update to iOS, but the release in Australia might be a little longer yet.
While Apple expects the hearing test and hearing aid features will be rolled out to more than 100 countries and regions in the coming months, the hearing protection feature appears limited to the US and Canada, at least initially. Features like these tend to require approval by Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Association, the TGA, but as of the time of publishing, no application from Apple could be found for hearing features.
The most recent TGA application from Apple relates to heart tracking with Afib, a feature found in the Apple Watch, while other recent hearing aid applications have been made more recently. This could suggest Apple’s release of hearing features could be on the cards for Australia, though may not be as immediate as the rest of the world.
The same could be said for another Apple feature set to come to the Apple Watch Series 10 and the Apple Watch Ultra 2, with sleep apnoea tracking monitoring breathing disturbances and notifying users over a period of every 30 days to suggest whether sleep apnoea requires diagnosis and treatment. Approval for that feature also could not be found in the TGA database, and so may arrive later on, as well.
We should know more in the weeks to come, though, with Apple’s next slate of devices on the way shortly. That could give Apple the time to lodge what it needs to get these features approved, and hopefully working on helping wearable owners locally.
