New Study Revealed That Apple AirPods Can Work As Hearing Aids, A Finding That May Help Make Traditionally Expensive Devices More Accessible
According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDDC), about fifteen percent of U.S. adults over the age of eighteen report having some trouble hearing.
It is also estimated that nearly twenty-nine million adults could benefit from the use of hearing aids.
But these practical tools that can increase people’s quality of life are not always accessible due to being notoriously expensive.
The average cost of just one hearing aid is two thousand dollars, and most people require one hearing aid for each air.
The price can also vary depending on the kind of hearing aid required– for instance, in-the-ear (ITE) devices, behind-the-ear (BTE) devices, receiver-in-canal (RIC) devices, and more.
So during a recent study, researchers from Taiwan aimed to find a more affordable sound amplification device.
“There’s also a social stigma associated with hearing aids. Many patients are reluctant to wear them because they don’t want to appear old.
So, we started exploring if there are more accessible alternatives,” added Yen-fu Cheng, one of the study’s corresponding authors.
And the team ultimately discovered that some commercial-grade earbuds have the ability to perform just as well as hearing aids.
Prostock-studio – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
Back in 2016, Apple released a feature known as “Live Listen” that allowed people to use the company’s wireless earphones, such as AirPods, for sound amplification.
So, the researchers were interested to see whether or not these widely accessible consumer devices could also double as alternative hearing aids.
They specifically focused on the AirPods 2 and AirPods Pro, which the latter offers a noise-canceling feature. Then, the team compared these models against both a basic and premium model of hearing aids.
The basic model costs about one thousand and five hundred dollars; meanwhile, the premium hearing aids are ten thousand dollars.
On the flip side, AirPods 2 cost only one hundred and twenty-nine dollars, and the AirPods Pro is two hundred and forty-nine dollars.
Twenty-one participants who suffer from mild to moderate hearing loss also tested all four devices and were asked to repeat short sentences read by the researchers word-for-word.
This exercise revealed that Airpods Pro performed comparably to the basic hearing aids while in a quiet environment and slightly below the premium hearing aids.
Still, the Airpods Pro actually achieved four out of the five hearing aid technology standards.
The AirPods 2 did have the most inferior performance out of the four devices. Nonetheless, it reportedly helped participants hear clearer as compared to when they wore no hearing aids.
The largest issue with the AirPods Pro occurred in noisy environments. When noise traveled from a lateral direction, the device’s performance was comparable to premium hearing aids.
When noise occurred in front of the participant, though, the device was unable to help participants hear more clearly.
The study’s co-author, Ying-Hui Lai, detailed how two reasons may be the culprit– the lack of an advanced signal processing algorithm that is found in premium hearing aids and the trajectories that soundwaves travel with.
Nonetheless, as the wireless earbud market continues to explode, companies are looking to expand their product offerings using sound amplification features. And Lai believes that the study results are instrumental in paving the way for more thoughtful and accessible consumer device engineering.
“This finding will hopefully inspire engineers to design hearing aids and personal sound amplification products that are more sensitive in certain directions,” he said.
And in the meantime, although the two Apple products are not perfect, the researchers concluded they are good starting options for patients who are unable to access professional hearing aids.
To read the study’s complete findings, which have since been published in iScience, visit the link here.
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