Adam Savage Tests the Apple AirPods Pro Hearing Aid!

@tested It's definitely also a challenge when not only having an exceptional long experience of daily use of hearing aids (51+ years for me) but also being a high tech person and keen to get proper description of what parameters there are.

Here in Sweden we have free hearing aids. Where I live we just pay a 100$ for all the testing, fitting, support, warranty/insurance etc.

What's "18%" hearing loss??

If you lived in australia, you would have got them for free

Hey Adam. I can relate to a lot here- I have a genetic hearing loss in the lower frequencies and I love that Costco offers excellent service & hearing products at a great rate! And I still don’t understand why decent hearing aids are sooo much expensive than a smartphone.
PS. Thanks for all your mythbuster videos- the best for science teaching!!

I just enabled the hearing aid feature on my Pro 2’s this week. I have moderate hearing loss in both ears with pulsatile tinnitus. These things have completely changed how I go about my day now.

can these work if you have an android phone instead of an iphone?

I am in a region that Apple still has geofenced for the hearing aid functionality. I got the later model phone and Airpods just for the hearing aid technology only to learn after the fact about the whole regional approval list and that my region was not included. I have been patiently waiting with no feedback whatsoever on any kind of timeline. Big disappointment.

wish this worked in canada

I have tinnitus and moderate hearing loss. I use the signia pure charge & go all the time. I thought going to movies or being in loud environments would be out of the question until I started using my AirPod pro 2's on "adaptive" mode. I mostly always have them both with me for instances where my tinnitus could get overwhelmed, I take out my hearing aids and pop in the AirPods. It is such a relief. I am also looking for other peoples experiences with how they cope with tinnitus and hearing loss?

I have little to no loss but I use these and they do help.

As an 80 year old male, I have slight to moderate hearing loss. I use the AirPod Pro 2. Most days I can get away without hearing aids. When I do use them I do notice the increased everyday noise. People closing doors, not hard but just normal closing sounds like slamming when using the hearing assist. Cars, cats purring, dogs barking, my wife talking without me saying, please repeat. Another great feature is at Musicals, we have seats close to the speakers, even without hearing aids it was very loud and booming. With the AirPod Pro 2 the sound is reduced to a very comfortable level. I don’t feel like my head is going to burst with loud passages. I’ve taken the AirPods out during loud passages and the effect is quite noticeable, much louder. Taking the hearing test and applying it to the Air Pods, I can hear spoken words clearly, music is much more defined, much more enjoyable. I can watch TV at a much lower volume level. All in all, the AirPod Pro 2 is a great buy, and can be a great start to realize having hearing aids is a plus.

Adam, my audiologist told me to never use AirPods because they push ear wax deep into your ears. Eventually, the wax builds up so thickly that it can cause temporary total deafness, which necessitates irrigation, i.e., using a water stream and then 'vaccuuming' the mix of wax and water from the ear canal. It's not a painful procedure, but it is expensive! Of course, since you use them as hearing aids when you're not using your "regular" ones, my points are somewhat negated by your benefits. But, for the rest of us who do not wear hearing aids, and who do not use AirPods as a medical device, using a pair of earphones that are softer and more rounded might be better for our ears.

Spouse input here. Bluetooth enabled hearing aids are ruining my life. They don't have a transparency mode. At least the ones in my home don't. They also don't have a pause or stop button on them. So if someone, I will not name names here, is using Bluetooth mode to hear music or a podcast they cannot hear you. And depending on the range of the device it could take quite awhile to find and pause it. By that time everyone is royally pissed off. We will be trying these for the first time soon and I truly hope both transparency mode and buttons will solve most of the problems we're having.

3:36 Are you aware that Jabra is a Danish product?

Why can't hearing aids have graphic equalizers built in to their software?

My Media Player is VLC and it has a built in Graphic EQ and it is wonderful!
On my PC I have a FREE third party Graphic EQ called FxSound and IT is wonderful.

So... why?

My opinion is that when it does happen it will eliminate the high cost of commercial hearing aids and Audiologists. Think of it: You would be able to dial in and customize your own personal preferences for what you hear.

just got a pair and was amazed how well the hearing aid worked. mostly have hearing loss in my left but it still effects overall loss. I would wear one airpod in my left while working but if someone talked to me I would have to remove the one to hear them. Now I can wear both and hear them better than without. Not to mention if I talk, whatever i'm listening to the volume goes down and now can hear the person speak without stopping my podcast i'm listening too.

I just got my widex allures a week ago, and without having seen this, I tried the AirPods first as a “will I wear them / is it worth it?” test. Answer, yes, and hell yes. But I did find they were only good for a couple hours at a time before (a) they hurt and (b) they needed to recharge. So a great “gateway” as Adam says, but if you need proper aides, it’s worth it to go ahead and do that.

Apple sellout

Watched it all the way through. Going to get these asap, thank you Adam!

Are the Airpods just doing passthrough audio? Because my cheaper Sony Link Buds do the same thing.

I’ve had 11 surgeries now 6 left 5 right, it’s a horrible process 💙

Hair

Worked with a geriatric who lost his hearing due to Meningitis. He got the implant with a magnetic gadget that sticks to his temple. It's an improvement, but so frustrating having to slowly mouth every word for him to Read*.
Value your Hearing, folks. You don't know...

I've been wearing hearing aids for just about my entire life (first two years we didn't know I was hearing impaired). It's so great to see and hear someone else talking about them. As much as I need them to walk around out in the world, there are times at home I will leave them out for some extra peace and quiet.

But yes, humidity, sweat, earwax can all plug up an ear canal and it does make hearing difficult and it is difficult to function in the world when you're missing sounds. In fact, the first time I switched from analogue to digital, the first commercial I heard was for Ford and the jingle "31 metro Detroit Ford dealer, think Ford first." almost had me crying because of how crisp that was.

There is a hearing aid called the cros and the idea is that all the sound transfers to one hearing aid while it's still seems like it picking up on the original side. However, as you mentioned about the sudden feeling of a hearing aid stop working. If the cros stopped, not a big deal. But if the one receiving the input stopped, then there's too dead weights.

Having grown up back when the behind the ear hearing aids were the size and length of a finger, the fact that we're now able to have bluetooth amazes me. That I can actually listen to music without having headphones if I want is something my younger self had wanted for a long time and now it's been great.

One last fun thing. Where most people go "you don't hear that?" I say to people, "wait, you can hear that?"

I have try few diferent and expensive hearing aids. And they suck. This Apple. Hearing aid work for me. They are great

I have to agree that the Airpod Pro 2 are a great product but prescription hearing aids supplied by an audiologist are all round better. I bought new hearing aids in January and last month heard about the Airpods being used as hearing aids so I bought a pair. I mainly wanted to find out if they would be better for listing to the TV but unfortunately they did not improve the sound for me.
A big positive is using them in my car to receive phone calls, to be able to just press the stem to receive the call. The sound quality was amazing and I could not hear any road noise.
The negatives were
Battery life only 6 hours.
They would not fit my ears and could fall out. I bought some different soft buds which did improve this.
Connecting to my TV for me was too complicated having to go through the list of settings on the TV..
The Airpods have less volume than the hearing aids
However if I had known about the Airpods before I bought the new hearing aids which cost me $2000 I would have bought the Airpods and most probably not bought the hearing aids

Great job Adam. I'm trying to understand the hearing aid jungle and will use AirPods as my gateway tool until I find what I need. How can you lose at that price?

I've had ear infections since I was a little kid. My dad and his dad had hearing aids back into the '50's.
I've had a middle ear prosthesis for 25 years. I've got good insurance and got hearing aids 10 years ago. They really help but nothing's perfect. I had thought of trying to jury rig some audio ear phones into hearing aids. But was afraid it would be for nought. It's good to hear your feedback on that project. I feel (hear?) for you.

Hello Adum love your show followed it from first day through all of your adventures. My children and I learned along the way and listening to your assessment of the Apple EP AirPod Pro two clinical great hearing aids was amazing. I ran out and bought a set programmed everything and I have a moderate hearing loss and these are a game changer for me. I didn’t realize that I had lost the ability to know where sound is coming from these devices helped me to locate it. It’s to left right behind me. That is a big deal when you’re driving and you hear an ambulance and you don’t know where it’s coming from. Thank you buddy. Keep up the good work

Any tip on tinnitus?

I just started using the AirPod Pro 2 hearing enhancement and I concur!! I especially like the various modes: Transparency, Conversation Boost, etc.

Works great from you.

I paid $6,500 for starkey AI hearing aids, in 2021. "That was a horrible idea!" I did not nead hearing aids much at all, and I subsequently moved to the EU where I have NO SUPPORT for that product. Basically I wasted all that money. They no longer pair with the smart phone APP, and the wind turbulence sounds make them impossible to use outside. And when I put my phone in my pants pocket, the streaming future drops out. We don't have COSTCO here, but I know I can get cheaper hearing aids that work better than the Starkey. Air Pods arre amazing. I sleep with the noise canceling mode on because my husband snores. LOL!!! NOW I need hearing assistance more now. Oh. BTW: not all boys do that. Of course.

Even Adam of all people who cares more for function vs form is not immune to the fake social stigma created by the hearing aid companies. More people get make fun of for glasses than hearing aid.
--- rant below ---
I grew up with partially bad hearing from alports... and all i needed were "reading glasses" of hearing aid. The only time I was forced to use it was meeting. It's useless in school with the noise and you can't hear other students with all the echo in rooms.

2:10 I never understnd the "invisibilty" issue, we wear stupid looking glasses for ages... me 45+ years of hearing aid and NOTONLY are they as terrible as they were 40 years ago, they are still banking of social stigma and can't even play back music or cancel the loud squeels that even a cheap mixer using analog sound dampeing can do... it's the orgiginal enshitification. the "HEARING AID" classification is a scam... it's no differnt than glasses, some poeple just need 5 dollar reading glasses all the way to surgery blindness fix... but the "hearing aid" lumps it all together to try to force every level of hearing loss to make money, and cleary it's only for the RICH to afford, and even when you buy one it's a POS 💩. In collage, i had to use my grado headset and a tape recorder, and it work amazing, except that the professor thought i was listening to music ahah, but that easy to explain. Ive been using the Bose Hearphones since 2017, which are basically bionic ears, but they stopped making it.... talk about the lie of "shareholders value".... but that's a rant for another day.

I will have to try the Airpods Pro 2 , as my mom got these terrible hearing aid for thousands... and still has the same complaint about loud noises. what a joke. i'm wouldn't be suprised if the tech is still the same as 40 years ago with bluetooth tacked on.

I am not a hearing aid user, however I am completely blind and am a dedicated voice over user which is apples native screen reader technology. I have been faithfully been using voice over and accessibility features for roughly 13 years when it originally launched. Imho apple has some of the best native accessibility options for people with different ability levels in an intuitive and consistant way across it's product lines. I would sincerely not be able to interract with the world if I didn't have an iPhone to tell me what's up. This is how I can read the comments and tap buttons. I am even typing this comment right now using braille on iphone where you can type braille directly on the touch screen called braille screen input. Whomever you are, regardless of your ability level or type of disability you work with as it's not just vision and hearing, sincerely give apple ecosystem accessibility settings a try. It genuinely could help improve your quality of life like Adam, all of these wonderful people in the comments, and myself. It is also important to note that Android OS has a talkback feature that is their proprietary screen reader. I am no elitist because I understand people have different needs and wants for their devices, but given a chance, it is incredibly lacking, with unintuitive clunky gestures, inconsistancies between devices, and does not stack up to apple's voice over. The reason for most of the inconsistancies with android are because every device manufacturer like samsung, LG, ZTE, and so on, have functionally the same OS, but it looks different to distinguish the different brands. Screen readers work on landmarks and positional data of different elements in order to navigate, and iOS remains almost exactly the same across phones, and some other devices in their ecosystem and has also been mostly unchanged for over a decade. Disability should not be stigmatized, especially since we are the same as everyone else, just with different needs, and 2 because becoming disabled is one of the easiest class of citizen to become either through genetics, illness, or injury. Keep the conversation going. Educate those who don't understand. There are people out there who just don't know about or understand disibility and are receptive to learning about it. You are all lovely people, I wish for the best for everyone, and it warms my heart to hear about people's lives being positively impacted by technology. Cheers to more and better assistive technology and a more understanding world

I'm not a hearing aid user, I just wanted to say I find hearing aids fascinating and wish more people weren't so stigmatized against wearing them!

I recently found out that there's wireless hearing aid technology that people wearing can tune into for concerts, live events, hospitals, etc. so friggin cool.

I find accessibility technology very humbling and wish there were more advances seeing as a lot of people need some form of it 🥹

I also have the high ranges and not the low ranges. I’ve been wondering about the AirPods so it’s great to see you talk about your experience with them.

I’ve been watching everything you do science mythbusters when I was a kid, always loved the humor, your cleverness and most of all the quality of human being that you share in camera, I’m now 25 and still watch mythbusters sometimes, anyway I hope this comment finds you, than you for everything and loved the video

Ive worn hearing aids for years and recently purchased the air pod pros as a backup hearing aid. They offer a different “view’ of the sounds around me and like you say work well when using apple products.