Big Improvement over 1st Gen, not so sure they are hearing aids
Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2024 | Rating: 4/5 | Best Sellers in Electronics
i was fairly satisfied with my first generation airpods pro having bought them several years ago mostly for use when working out when apple announced the addition of hearing aids features i thought it was a good excuse to upgrade and it would be one less lightning connector id have to contend with this review is written for those of you who are considering upgradingi bought these prior to the release of ios 181 the setup was the same as before find comfortable rubbers run the test that plays the little tune and thats it with ios 180 the sound didnt seem much better over gen 1 airpods pro but the noise cancellation was an improvement however with the update to 181 theres a big change theres now a hearing assistance screen where you toggle on hearing aids youre prompted to take a hearing test this test is similar to hearing tests you might have had in school or at a doctors office where tones of differing pitch and loudness are played and you tap a button on the screen when you hear it it takes about 10 minutes or so the phoneearbuds then produce a profile based on your test results you can also take the report to an audiologist the report is in the health app although im not all that sure theyd bother to review itonce youve done a hearing test the hearing aid is enabled you can then make adjustments to the default settings i found the default setting to have far too much high end for my liking and too much gain as well but then again maybe im just used to being halfdeaf 😉 i did discover i have a device with a bad fan though so maybe thats a good thing i dont seem to get any squealing or feedback when using the hearing aid feature but ive only used it a few times it did come in handy when at a meeting with a quiet talker speaking boosting up the sound made it much easier to listen but ultimately id say the hearing aid function is a gimmick if youre really worried about hearing loss go to an audiologisthowever there is one thing that going through the hearing test and setting up hearing assistance does improve and thats the playback of music because it is able to adjust eq to match your hearing profile theres a drastic improvement in how good the airpods sound id put them on par with my bose qc3 headset now maybe even slightly better bose still has much better noise cancellation of course adaptive noise cancellation works but tends to be little too aggressive so i just use full cancellation the personalized volume and conversation awareness functions are also a little too touchy and seem to be constantly changing the volume control in response to false alarms im sure theyll get better over time but for now i wouldnt say theyre a reason to switchthey also have the same problems connecting to whatever random device happens to grab them i work out with my watch but leave my phone at home so if i start playing a podcast or music in my driveway it will originate from my iphone even if im using my watch to initiate the media it is getting slightly better in that eventually the airpods will abandon the iphone then connect to the watch i used to have to pull them out of my ears wait a few seconds then try to start playback on the watch but theres still a gap of a few annoying seconds while they sort things out again not the end of the world but seems like a solvable problemif youre hoping to get budget hearing aids look elsewhere i cant imagine wearing these for 1216 hours a day im not so sure the batteries will last that long anyway besides youre wearing earbuds so people probably wont realize youre using them in hearing aid mode and lets all admit it they look kind of dorky