Apple is making a big push into some massive medical markets, including Hearing Health Updates toward AirPods Pro II that allow them to function as hearing aids. The tech giant also announced that they can function as hearing protection in noisy environments such as concerts, as well as new sleep apnea detection on the Apple Watch.
As part of the launch, AirPods Pro II will be able to perform a certified five-minute hearing test to detect hearing damage using a compatible iPhone or iPad running iOS 18. Apple touts all of these features as “clinical-grade,” though the company’s statement acknowledges that it’s still awaiting regulatory clearance from the FDA and other “global health authorities.”
In a just under $200The AirPods Pro II are competitively priced for over-the-counter earbuds. To give you an idea of the market, Wire cutterRecommendations retail for between $350 by headset The AirPods Pro II cost upwards of $1,700 for the high-end models, and some don’t even take calls or stream music. That means that if they work well, they could revolutionize the hearing aid market. But it’s a big unknown: the product hasn’t even received regulatory clearance yet (soon, the press release promises), and since there’s a lot of money to be made in the medical device sector, existing technology has come a long way in recent years. Plus, the AirPods Pro II’s extra features come at a cost: They only have a battery life of six to eight hours, down from the 10 to 18 hours that hearing aid users are used to.
The AirPods Pro II will also have a passive hearing protection mode, which should automatically increase protection if you suddenly walk near jackhammers or whatever, and after a hearing test, the headphones will create a custom profile for your ears and then dynamically adjust based on your volume settings — turning up speech, turning down traffic, and all the other normal headphone functions.
As for the Apple Watch’s sleep apnea detection, it uses a “novel breathing disorder metric,” which is pending FDA approval. This and all of the AirPods Pro II updates are expected to arrive 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 updates for the Apple Vision Pro, but given all of the tech headset’s current vision-enhancing features, it seems plausible that they could do the job of prescription glasses. Whether they could do it for less is another question.
Which brings us back to the headphone market. If (and this is still a huge if) AirPods can deliver high-end quality at their current price, they could completely reset headphone prices, even with their relatively poor battery performance. Starting prices are incredibly high, and Apple has the money and brand strength to force a change. They have to make a good product first. But after years of junk AI and catastrophic technology, it’s good to remember that Big Tech can sometimes make our lives better.
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