Apple Airpods Pro 10 months later - Hearing aid user's perspective

#1

After using Airpods Pro for 10 months continously as hearing aids. (hearing aid user’s perspective)

Pros:
Audiogram values can be input manually.
Crystal clear sound quality (Truly satisfied with speech quality)
Sounds are heard exactly as it is (natural), from behind, side, front.
Conversation boost feature helps while making face-to-face conversation, or with a group.
With my hearing aid on which is Sonic flip 80, i had to read person’s lip movement. With airpods pro i don’t have to lip read, the pure sound can be heard well.

Cons:
Ambient noise reduction works, but further needs to reduce atmospheric noise.
E.g:
We were a group of 6 ppl standing within 5 feet radius each discussing, and road was in forward direction to me at a distance of 50feet. The noise of the vehicles & their horns was heard loudly as the 5 feet radius speech did even with 100% ambient noise reduction.

Needs more focus on the speech or reduce the ambient noise around.

Wind trouble:-
As the bike picks up to 20km/h the airpods reduces the overall sound (as if like noise cancellation) as we
can only hear horn sounds and other loud vehicle noise. (here its very important that we need little
amplification as we need to hear vehicles coming towards us)
Sitting under the fan or in front of table fan, the airpods pro blocks completely.
While running and moving around quickly, it blocks completely.
If you are standing outside and making a conversation, if there is a slight breeze towards airpods pro, it blocks completely.

I am completely satisfied with audio quality of the airpods pro can produce (thanks to apple). As for the Cons, am sure apple will resolve those points in the future updates.

One more thing:
Right now we have these settings in custom transparency mode:

As i have a bilateral moderate sensorineural hearing loss, i need to adjust at sound frequency at specific decible:

I need further more fine tunings to do which is possible on computer connected to hearing aids. We hearing aid users would like to have an Audiology compression feature, so that we can compress the highs (noise) & gain the lows (speech) and amplify each decibel with the desired output value.
Example, see the below video:

Compression is a feature of some hearing aids which attempts to change the amount of gain that the amplification circuits add to the incoming signal to better fit the wearer’s needs.

Compression is especially valuable when the hearing loss results in a reduction in the dynamic range or recruitment.

There are several types of compression techniques:

compression limiting
dynamic range compression
frequency dependent compression
curvilinear compression
multiple channel compression

Thank you

iPhone SE 1st generation
Airpods Pro

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#2

Thank you for providing this valuable information. For purposes of comparison, how up to date are the hearing aids you are using for comparison? I’m not familiar with Sonic hearing aids.Who makes them? How old is the flip 80? What level of technology? Do you feel you had good programming by your audiologist?

#3

I just did some research - the Sonic flip was introduced in 2012, so you are comparing very old hearing aid technology to the AirPods. It would be very interesting to see what you think if you try out some new technology hearing aids for comparison - maybe you can get a trial of a new Sonic hearing aid or another major brand such as Oticon, which now owns Sonic. That comparison would be much appreciated on this forum.

#4

I would like to see your audiogram

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#5

Had my AirPod Pros { first gen) over a year. Got them Black Friday 2021 for $159 at Walmart. Took them home, scanned my audiogram in, and started the process of acclimating my ears to them. First thing is they are not hearing aids and nothing from Apple implies that they are. That being said, they work nearly as good, and in some situations better than my $1800 Jabra aids from Costco.

I use them about 4 hours a day, and the rest of the time use the Jabras. As with any HA how much they help you depends on your amount and type of hearing loss. Streaming is excellent. I had quit listening to music years ago, now I hear the full range of sound. Telephone calls are also great with the voices sounding more natural than when using my HAs. Conversations are good, and again the voices sound more natural then my HA’s. I struggle understanding certain female voices, and the Pros help more than the HA’s. If at home and a female guest is present, I quickly change to the Pros so I can be more active in the conversation.

The HA’s are better handling wind noise and win for not attracting attention in public (for example church or other “serious” events). No question the HA’s have better battery life and more comfortable for day long wear. I like my HA’s, but the Pros are an amazing value at one tenth of the price of the Jabras. Worth noting also that the Jabras are really Resound One’s that sell for $4000+. IMO they make a great low cost backup to hearing aids, and a great alternative for people that cannot afford the greatly inflated cost of “medical” hearing aids.

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#6

The Jabra Enhance Pro sold by Costco is the Resound One. The Jabra Enhance Plus available as an OTC aid is much less capable.

#7

True. Jabra has more than one model now, but the Enhance Pro is the only “medical” one. From what I read their otc’s are very limited. Is Costco selling Jabra OTC’s now? It would make sense if they did.

#8

I do not know but the OTC aids are advertised more widely than Costco’s offering. I did not want someone to think those OTC aids were Resound Ones.

#9

I did not know that Airpods Pro could be mapped to an audiogram with an iPhone until I read this thread, so thanks all for that “heads up.” For anyone wondering how to do this, see: How to add audiogram to iPhone and map AirPods to your hearing profile

I’ll give this a try, mainly for music listening. (I got a pair of Airpods Pro 2 a month ago.) I’ll also compare it to my ReSound LinX Quattros just to see how I think Airpods do listening to people talking.

I can think of another Con though just based on my previous experience with them listening to music. Airpods Pro 2’s have a shorter battery life than most rechargeable hearing aids. Even when new, you’ll probably only get about 5 hours of use before they need a recharge.

On the plus side, though, they come with a wireless charger case that will get depleted Airpod batteries back up to 70% strength in just 15 minutes. Apple’s wireless charger case, similar to ReSound’s, only more compact (easily pocket-sized) has its own batteries and can be used to recharge the Airpods several times before the case itself will need a recharge, which you do with a USB-Lightning cable.

#10

Just a word of warning that Apple iPads don’t support the Apple Health app and therefore you cannot get audiogram accommodation on your AirPods Pro 2 on iPads, only iPhones. I’m not sure about MacOS. And for sure you won’t get audiogram accommodation when you connect it to Android and Windows devices.

I’d love to hear what you think about the Transparency mode on the AirPods Pro 2 as a hearing aid device in place of your real hearing aid.

There’s another thread on this forum titled “AirPods Pro 2 as hearing device” if you’re interested in reading up about it as well.

#11

People who get Airpods Pro thinking that they can replace their hearing aids will probably be disappointed. As a lifestyle accessory and for short-term situational hearing assistance (it’s definitely better than no assistance at all) it’s brilliant.

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#12

I have had Costco v9 hearing aids for about three years. I also own Airpods Pro. I watch television all the time, so my definition of ‘success’ is being able to watch my shows without captions. Thus far I have been unable to turn off captions and still fully understand the dialog. I get most of it but miss too much. I have not tried to use my Airpods as hearing aids.

(However, I listen to books via audible.com using the Airpods and can hear the narration quite well, even at 1.5x speed.)

Are you able to watch TV without captions, using either your HA’s or the Airpods?

#13

I’m confused. You used your Air pods as hearing aids? How?

#14

I understand the iPhone lets you enter your audiogram to use with the AirPods. IOads do not work because they do not have the Apple Health app.

#15

Not sure to whom this question was aimed at specifically. But I’ll take a stab at answering. While you can use the AirPods Pro in the Transparency mode to pick up the environmental ambient sounds around you, according to a credible Apple support specialist I talked to, the amplification in the Transparency mode of ambient sounds is not aided/boosted based on the audiogram you enter into the Apple Health app. It’s only amplified flatly for a normal hearing person.

But ONLY for streaming audio from the iphone, yes, the streaming content can be aided/boosted based on the audiogram you have in the Health app, assuming that you set your AirPods Pro up to do that.

Bottom line is that it cannot be used like a complete hearing aid because the ambient sounds amplification in the Transparency mode is not boosted for HOH people per their audiogram.

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#16

Transparency mode seemed to work for me with my loss put into the health app. There is a lot of fiddling to make it work.

It doesn’t have enough ooomf for my loss though. Helps. I was SO glad to get my aid back from Phonak. But the air pods pro were better than a sharp stick to the eye.

Using Customize headphone audio levels on your iPhone or iPad

WH

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#17

Thank you. That was the kind of information I was hoping for. It does make you wonder if the product could be tweaked in the future to allow for that kind of use.

#18

Looking at your audiogram, it looks like you only have a mild mid frequencies loss in both your ears around 1 and 2 KHz, and although your right hearing loss continues to be mild to moderate at 3 and 4 KHz, your left hearing seems to be OK in these frequencies.

So I find it consistent with your description that the Transparency mode seems to work for you with your loss, but without enough ooomf. I would contend that the Transparency mode is still only providing flat amplification of the ambient sounds, but because it doesn’t provide the slight boost that you need in the 1-2 KHz range to compensate for your mild loss in that range, hence it’s lacking the ooomph like you said (compared to your hearing aids which do compensate properly for your loss in that range).

You do have a mild loss in the 3-4 KHz range on your right ear, but you don’t have that same loss in your left ear, so I would contend that even though the flat Transparency amplification also lacks the ooomph for your right ear between 3-4 KHz, it’s not as noticeable a lack compared to the 1-2 KHz, simply because your normal hearing in your left ear in the 3-4 KHz makes up for that mild loss in your right ear there.

So all in all, I think your perception of how the Transparency mode works for you OK, but not enough ooomph compared to your hearing aids, is still consistent with the AirProds Pro only giving you flat amplification and not aided/boosted amplification based on your audiogram.

The telltale sign would be that if you find streaming content from the iPhone giving you enough ooomph for your hearing loss, but the Transparency mode doesn’t give you enough of the same ooomph, then that confirms that your streaming content is aided by your audiogram, but the Transparency content of the ambient sounds is not aided the same way.

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#19

The streaming is weak, too. Better than before putting in the audiogram. Better than nothing while my aid was in for repair.

It is easy to get it out of the mode where it boosts. I wonder if the sw config necessary for this to work is too fiddly. I would find it really flat, and discover it wasn’t configured to do the job.

WH

#20

That’s interesting to hear that the streaming is weak for you, too. One would think that a 40 to 50 dB correction should be within the range that the AirPods can handle. But then there’s also a possibility that the hearing aids were REM adjusted to your target but the AirPods doesn’t have this advantage over the hearing aids, hence it may not be up-to-target as referenced against what you’re used to with your hearing aids.

I don’t have a problem with the AirPods Pro getting in and out of the audiogram accommodation configuration at all when streaming, so it’s interesting to hear that you have that issue. Are you using the 1st gen Pro or the 2nd gen? I have the 2nd gen, and iOS 16.2. I wonder if the flakiness you see is due to versioning or not?