Specialists at Taipei Veterans General Hospital conducted a study in which they compared Apple’s AirPods with several models of hearing aids. A comparative analysis showed that wireless headphones from the ‘apple’ giant can be used as a cheap alternative to expensive hearing aids.
Live Listen has been supported by AirPods since 2016. It allows you to use mobile devices as microphones to transmit enhanced sound to AirPods. For the comparative analysis, medical professionals used entry-level hearing aids costing $1,500, premium-level hearing aids costing $10,000, as well as AirPods Pro and AirPods 2, which have a noise-canceling function.
The researchers selected 21 people to test the above-mentioned devices. Each of the experiment participants was diagnosed with hearing loss. Specialists of the medical institution read short sentences to the participants, after which they were asked to repeat them.
AirPods Pro managed to show a result comparable to basic level hearing aids. They are slightly inferior to premium-level devices costing 10,000 USD. According to Newatlas, 15% of US residents have hearing problems. Not all of them have the opportunity to purchase a quality hearing aid. AirPods Pro can be purchased in the US for $249. Thus, wireless headphones will cost six times less than an entry-level hearing aid.
