Fans of Apple's home-brewed wireless earbuds were expecting the Glowtime iPhone 16 event to bring some major product updates across the board. They were sadly wrong, but while we didn't see the AirPods Pro 3, AirPods Lite (although they're kind of the new AirPods 4 – the version without ANC) or AirPods Max 2, the company did announce three new features coming to an older device.
Coming "this fall", the Apple AirPods Pro 2 are going to get three new features that are all themed around your hearing health. These are aimed at "prevention, awareness and assistance" according to the company, and while they might not all be useful to all AirPods users, the more niche one could still be a game-changer for some users.
Before we jump in, though, we need to cop to some vague wording in the headline: that "very soon" is from Apple but there isn't an official release date for these three features. The company has said that the last one will come to over 100 countries and regions "this fall" but that could mean any time before December.
When these features do roll out, they'll be available via an iOS 18 update that's pushed to your smartphone.
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AirPods Pro 2: hear, hear...
Let's start with prevention. This first new AirPods Pro 2 feature is a hearing protection mode that's designed to remove particularly loud sounds around you. With it, a machine-learning algorithm will identify and cancel out dangerously-loud sounds, with the Glowtime presentation showing some people playing loud rock music with AirPods in.
Presumably, this hearing protection mode works like a super-powerful heavy-duty noise cancellation, that lacks as much nuance as the standard mode but substitutes that for pure strength. Apple has confirmed that the mode will be turned on by default, which implies you can turn it off if you'd like to damage your hearing quicker.
Next up is awareness, which Apple is using to inform people better about their hearing health. This is a hearing test, which is hosted in the Health app on your iPhone or iPad, that lets you work out just what your hearing is really like.
The test will apparently take around five minutes, and consists of you having to identify a hard-to-hear sound. Once you complete the test, you'll be shown a hearing profile through the Health app, and can use this to chart the changes in your hearing over time.
Apple isn't the first company to offer a hearing test feature on its earbuds, with Sony and Nothing amongst the others, but these are largely to better tune the music on the buds. The AirPods Pro 2 seemingly won't use this hearing data to equalize or improve your music, but it actually gives you the hearing data so it's better for health.
Finally is the assistance mode, which is a clinically-approved hearing aid mode that you can use with your AirPods Pro 2. As that description suggests, this turns your buds into a hearing aid to help you hear speech and background sounds.
Medical hearing aids can run to be thousands of dollars for top-tier offerings and the AirPods Pro 2 don't cost anywhere near that.
These are the only three features announced for the AirPods Pro 2; AI skeptics will be happy to know that there was no mention of Apple Intelligence anywhere near them, and it was a bigger update than the ones the AirPods Max are getting (which is purely a few new color schemes).
For bigger AirPods updates, look to the AirPods 4, the only all-new earbuds announced by Apple today.
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