How’s Your Hearing? Apple's Latest AirPods Pro 2 Update Can Let You Know

From Sandy Liang’s just announced collaboration with Beats to CHANEL’s $15,000 USD Première Sound Watch, headphones have become a part of our style and a way to express ourselves as much as they serve us in listening to music. The market for earbuds and headphones has significantly increased in recent years and, in a report published today, global market analysis firm Credence Research claims the trend will continue and predicts the industry will be worth $218.2 billion USD by 2032 – an increase of over 205% compared to the its market size of $71.5 billion USD in 2023.

This boom in popularity has also helped to thrust ear health into the spotlight – an often overlooked issue, even amongst Gen-Z’s health-conscious generation – with one of the lesser talked about fallouts from it been an increase in hearing loss in young adults. Typically associated with old age, the condition is affecting young people more today than ever before, with the World Health Organization (WHO) recently stating that “over 1 billion young adults are at risk of permanent, avoidable hearing loss due to unsafe listening practices.”

Amongst the millions of iPhones, iPads and Macbooks that it sells, Apple also makes the world’s bestselling headphones – AirPods. The tech giant’s unmistakable little white dots are easy to spot and, according to Bloomberg, will drive over $22 billion USD in revenue for it throughout the 2024 fiscal year.

So, then, how does a company that makes a product at the center of a growing health problem emerge as the unlikely hero in the battle against it? Before we go on, we should clarify that Apple’s AirPods have not been linked to hearing loss, directly or indirectly – rather, according to the WHO, hearing loss is becoming more prevalent due to increasing “exposure to loud sounds in recreational settings”, which, in layman’s terms, means listening to music too loudly, with or without headphones.

This year, Apple is celebrating a milestone that very few of its 2.2 billion active users are likely to be aware of: it is marking 40 years of accessibility efforts as a company, having first opened its Office of Disability back in 1985, a fact that two-decade Apple veteran Sarah Herrlinger, its current Global Head of Accessibility, is immensely proud of. To illustrate this, Herrlinger tells Hypebeast that Apple’s 1985 decision to create a division tasked with ensuring that accessibility was woven into the fabric of its corporate culture and the products its creates even “preceded the Americans with Disabilities Act by five years.”

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Hearing Test on the AirPods Pro 2, which have been certified as “clinical-grade hearing aids”.

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Apple’s products have evolved as technology has advanced, and they tend to do more than they say on their proverbial tin. Apple Watch, for example, can read the time or read the electrical activity of your heart. When it comes to your ears, Apple’s flagship AirPods Pro 2 are now officially classified as “clinical-grade hearing aids” – and, this week, the Cupertino-based brand expanded some of the health related functionality of its earbuds to new markets including the U.K..

But Apple isn’t just targeting the deaf and hard of hearing community with these features. Like Apple Watch – which can notify users of irregular heart beat rhythms, a sign that something may be wrong – AirPods Pro 2 now includes preventative health functionality that the brand hopes everyone will use.

One of the coolest amongst these is the self-explanatory sounding Hearing Test. It takes approximately five minutes to complete and involves checking your hearing ability at various frequencies, measuring this response in decibels (dBHL) before providing you with results based on one of five categorizations: “Little to No Loss” (-25 to 25 dBHL), “Mild Loss” (26 to 40 dBHL), “Moderate Loss” (41 to 60 dBHL), “Severe Loss” (61 to 80 dBHL) and “Profound Loss” (81 dBHL and above). While this feature isn’t intended to replace professional medical care, it’s something that can be easily done at home and a way for users to periodically check in on their hearing health. Apple’s Sarah Herrlinger describes it as a “medical grade hearing test available on iPhone or iPad” – and it’s available now to AirPods Pro 2 users.

Apple’s Music Haptics feature lets you experience the music physically.

Apple has also recently expanded its Music Haptics feature, one that it launched last year to allow its users to literally feel the music. Music Haptics takes advantage of the iPhone’s Taptic Engine to create “taps, textures, and refined vibrations” that mirror a song’s rhythm and cadence and act as a physical compliment to the sonic experience. Though it’s a feature originally aimed at the deaf or hard of hearing community, it’s one that anyone can experience now with Apple continuously adding to the already existing “millions” of songs that have had the feature activated on Apple Music.

It seems that, when it comes to hearing loss, Apple is all ears. How does the famous saying go? An Apple a day keeps… your ears healthy? Something like that. If you’re an AirPods Pro 2 user and curious about your hearing health, why not give Hearing Test a try now.