Apple is making a big push into some massive medical markets, including hearing health updates to the AirPods Pro II that allow them to function as hearing aids. The tech giant also announced they can function as hearing protection in loud environments like concerts, plus new sleep apnea detection on the Apple Watch.
As part of the rollout, the AirPods Pro II will reportedly be able to administer a five-minute certified hearing test to detect hearing damage with a compatible iOS 18 iPhone or iPad. Apple touts all of these features as “clinical grade,” though the company’s statement does acknowledge it’s still awaiting regulatory clearance from the FDA and other “global health authorities.”
At a little less than $200, the AirPods Pro II are competitively priced for over-the-counter hearing aids. To give you a sense of the market, Wirecutter’s recommendations retail for anywhere from $350 per earbud to more than $1700 for top-end models, and some don’t even take calls or stream music. This means that if the AirPods work well, they could actually revolutionize the hearing aid market. But that’s a big if — the product isn’t even cleared by regulators (“soon” the press release promises) and because there’s so much money to be made in medical devices, the existing tech has come a long way in recent years. Besides, the AirPods Pro II’s extra features come with a cost: only have about six to eight hours of battery life, below the 10-18 hours hearing aid users are used to
The AirPods Pro II will also have a passive hearing protection mode, which should automatically ramp up protection if you suddenly walk past jackhammers or whatever, and after a hearing test, the hearing aids will create a custom profile for your ears and then dynamically adjust based on the volume of your setting: boosting speech, decreasing traffic, and all the other normal hearing-aid features.
As for the Apple Watch’s sleep apnea detections, it uses a “new Breathing Disturbances metric,” FDA approval pending. This and all of the AirPods Pro II updates are expected sometimes this fall in more than 100 countries around the world. And Apple may just be getting started. So far, there’s no word on medical upgrades for the Apple Vision Pro, but given all of the tech visor’s current vision-enhancing features, it seems plausible that they could do the job of prescription glasses. Whether they could do it cheaper is another matter.
Which brings us back to the hearing aid market. If — and this is still a huuuuge if — the AirPods can deliver high-end quality at their current price, they could totally reset hearing aid prices, even with their relatively poor battery performance. The starting prices are insanely high, and Apple has the money and brand muscle to force a change. They have to make a good product first. But after years of AI slop and techno doom, it’s nice to remember that Big Tech can sometimes make our lives better.