I use the “Ear Tip Fit Test” almost every time. The largest tips are too small for me, so it takes a couple of tries to get a good seal. With a good seal, there is at least a chance of them not falling out. Without a good seal, it’s hopeless. The fit also seems to slowly degrade as I wear them. If I can’t find a third party tip that addresses this, I am sorry, it could be a deal breaker.
Been researching them a good part of the evening. No decisions yet.
I have tinnitus and a slight hearing loss. Not enough for me to get a prescription for a hearing aid. The only situation where this bothers me is at family get together like birthdays for grandchildren, where there is a lot of activity. I would love to hear if people here can share their experience in that kind of setting.
I also wonder if the hearing aid function of the AirPods is any help if you stand side by side with the person you talk to and both of you are looking in the same direction.
Over the past few years, I’ve noticed I have sometimes had trouble hearing what my students were saying, so I was looking forward to trying out the test. The test, however, reported only a little hearing loss, not enough to enable the hearing aid feature. I can’t say I’m that surprised, however. An audiologist tested my hearing last year and told me while I had some hearing loss at high frequencies, my hearing was actually very good for my age. I guess I’ll be asking my students to repeat themselves for the foreseeable future. 
This is the case with an audiologist testing your hearing. They will play tones that I think are frustratingly faint until I realize that the purpose of the test is to measure the level of sound that I can just barely hear, which normally would be frustrating. I’ve learned to just relax during the test, and breathe through my mouth because my ‘breath noises’ sometimes are louder than the faint test tones. :-)
You could enter an alternate audiogram that just boosts your high end a little? I’m, of course, not an audiologist, but if you start with small tweaks, you aren’t going to hurt yourself. Medical hearing aids let the user tweak low-mid-high by many decibels (around 30 dB or more). Apple gives you much more granularity with six bands from 250 Hz - 8000 Hz. (Apple claims 10,000 Hz upper-end)
The way I read Apples docs, the initial audiogram can just be a starting point. One of the reason, I’m optimistic for improvement yet. My test had several unexpected noises in the middle of it (unusually large vehicles going by the house). I’ve been meaning to redo and compare mine to recent ones from ENT/audiologists.
They also have long and short gaps between the sounds so you don’t anticipate them. Reading the responses to the test has been funny for me. I’ve had so many, I figured everyone has had at least one by now. Apple’s sound just like the “real thing” ;-) …maybe a bit shorter…
There are apps that can do hearing tests now if you want to start. I’ve used this one: [Mimi Hearing Test]
IMHO, that’s the most reliable 3rd-part app for testing hearing loss. I’ve used it multiple times over the past few years; using its results with Hearing Assistance for my AirPods Pro 2. Results were fairly similar to the audiogram testing results from my ENT.
Yesterday, I tried Apple’s new hearing test for the first time. It was a LOT like the Mimi test with the audiogram showing more data points, showing a better fit to my ENT-provided audiogram.
After that, I turned on the new iOS 18.1 AirPods Pro 2 Hearing Aid feature (in place of just the old Hearing Assistance), and was impressed. As an OTC hearing aid, the AirPods Pro 2 now work a lot more like my regular hearing aids ($5k Starkey mRIC).
Mileage will probably vary for others. But for this, I certainly would have bought the AirPods Pro 2 – if I didn’t already have them – in place of any other OTC hearing aids. Would probably also have upgraded my iPhone, except that my SE 2 just makes the cut for being able to run iOS 18.
There are several advantages to using the Pro 2s instead of traditional hearing aids, the over-the ear models at least:
On the other hand, if you are used to using an open earpieces (that let ambient sound through), the closed earpieces of the Pro 2’s will take some getting used to. There is some of own-voice occlusion, and you’ll hear yourself chewing more:-) Also, if your regular hearing aids provide some sophisticated programmatic filtering (e.g., for wind noise or non-conversational background noise), you may find the controls for the Pro 2’s Hearing Aid mode kinda limiting.
I took the test last night, while my tinnitus was raging, and there were some very long gaps so that I anticipated a worse result than my last test with the Mimi hearing test app last year. Instead it was better, reported as “little to no loss” with a score of -15 in my left ear and -10 in my right (which is closer to the first Mimi hearing test I did 18 months ago.)
I’ve still activated the hearing aid function and did some limited testing, but I need a lot more time to see how much difference it makes. A very nice feature that I noticed is that if you are listening to media and pause it the AirPods switch right back to hearing aid mode.
Rather than tweaking the audiogram, I recommend tweaking the AirPod Pro 2 Hearing Aid controls. Kinda fascinating, actually. You won’t see most of those inside Control until you turn Hearing Aid on. For starters, you get two earphone volume controls:
On the left, you see the usual volume contro for AirPods. On the right (with the ear) is the Amplification control for Hearing Aid.
Note that turning Transparency off (or turing Noise Cancellation on) will disable Hearing Aid.
If you click on the little ear symbol in Control Center, you’ll get to all the Hearing Aid fitting controls (including Amplification):
Supposedly, only the Amplification control shows up on Apple Watch. Although it seems you need something newer than my Apple Watch 5.
Bottom line: try tweaking these controls first, before going back and trying to tweak the audiogram.
In my experience, you need much finer adjustment of the audio spectrum than the AirPods alone offer. It used to be said that that most speech differentiation was around 4 kHz. Recent studies are indicating it’s more like 8-10 kHz. Bass/Mid-Range/Treble just don’t cut it for adjusting even 4 kHz much less 8-10 kHz.
Haven’t actually tried it, but entering your own audiogram sounded trivial from the docs.
But then for year’s my hearing response tested flat then Grand Canyon’ed at 4 kHz. Your experience may vary.
;~}
I have to say quietly impressed by the extent and thoughtfulness of Apple’s implementation on this overall.
The chewing isn’t near as bad as EarLens. Wasn’t a problem at all when I ate Mexican w/ my wife.
The voice occlusion mostly doesn’t bother; however, I discovered that while my guitar sounds very good with AirPods, if I try to sing along with my guitar, my voice sounds like…sigh…bad.
Please, no cracks about my voice… I have a good voice… ;-)
I wonder if could get alternate earpieces w/o complete seal for my practice sessions?
Apple now has a support article on how to take the hearing
And another on how to use Hearing Aid after taking the test
Apple Support also has a new video on YouTube wihich does concise show & tell of both of those things together.
If you use an AirPod Pro 2 that you’ve had and been using for a while, Apple Support also put a video up on YouTube about two weeks ago showing how to clean the the meshes on your AirPod Pro.
This PDF is buried in iOS Settings. You can read it if you’ve got really good eyes, but I could find no way to get it out to print, save off, AirDrop, etc. I somehow found it on Apples site, but can’t find it again. A couple of my favorite headings:
“INDICATIONS FOR USE”
“Contraindications”
“CLINICAL BENEFIT (EU)”
Reads like a prescription handout, but actually is one of the most concise and inclusive documents I’ve found for this.
Indications-for-Use-099-42809-E HA 1.X IFU_en_US.pdf (1.8 MB)
Correction: while you are listening to media with transparency mode on, the hearing aid function remains live. Also hearing aid still seems to work with only one AirPod in, so you can grab a quick charge for one and still get some help with one AirPod.
I hear the next version of Hearing Aid Mode will have an Autotune option… 
I wonder if you can have several pi’s of AirPods be use battery life would be an issue if you need them from morning to night. Even 2 pairs would be way cheaper than $5500 Hearing aids.
Especially considering my last pair was a bleeding edge $12K, fortunately I got a full refund.
I see no reason why not—I’ve had multiple pairs of AirPods (original and Pro) paired to my iPhone.
You saw Amazon has them $70 off? My wife thinks I should…
;~}
