- Airpods Pro 2 audience test now available in Australia
- It transforms Apple headphones into hearing aids
- Your AirPods Pro 2 should be updated automatically to provide the new feature
When Apple announced a new audience test for AirPods Pro 2 during its Glowtime event in September 2024, it may be one of the biggest announcements of the whole evening. Now, finally, the characteristic of the hearing test, which can transform the AirPods Pro 2 into hearing aids as well as testing your hearing capacity, has made its way in Australia.
The firmware update is available now, after the functionality has received the green tick from Australia Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
The AirPods Pro 2 could already support a peak ear test to determine how much they settle in your ears, and they could let you know when your listening volume was realistically noisy. But now, they can support the technology of clinical hearing aids that allow them to help people with audience problems, hearing speech sounds and history.
In addition to hearing aid technology, AirPods Pro 2 now supports two other hearing features: a five -minute hearing test to help you better understand your hearing health and a hearing protection mode that promises to delete strong sounds around you when you wear the headphones.
Australian users will first have to take the audience test before they can use the AirPod Pro 2 as hearing aids. The test is to listen to beeps and other sound tones on the left and right ear.
Listen and you will hear
I tried the test this morning when the update news deployed in Australia broke. However, you will have to make sure that you are in an incredibly calm environment, because after doing the test in my left ear, my iPhone told me that the background noise was too strong to generate a result.
However, I was surprised by the difficulty of the test. The beeps at the start of the test were clearly audible, but deepening, I did not hear much – so I plan to test it again later to see what my test result is.
One of my American colleagues has already made her father finish the hearing test, and he revealed that the results are grouped into categories, namely little or no loss, light loss, moderate loss, serious loss and deep loss. The AirPods Pro 2 can only be used as hearing aids if the result is a light to moderate loss.
Apple says that the technology “will allow personalized dynamic adjustments so that users have the sounds that surround them and increase in real time”.
The results of hearing tests will be stored in the Health application and you can take over the test each time you want to explain how your hearing changes over time (if applicable). The hearing protection mode could be useful in environments such as concerts, to help reduce high volume and allow you to have fun without damaging your ears.
The next time you connect your AirPods Pro 2 to your iPhone, you should receive a pop-up notification informing that the update has been applied. All you have to do is go to the AirPod settings in your iPhone and you will see the option to run the audience test.
