Many employers who have noisy work areas spend thousands of dollars each year on audiometric testing of their employees’ hearing. Some other employers with noisy work areas would like to test their employees’ hearing, but are unable to do so because they either can’t afford it or there are no audiologists in their local area. For the latter employers, is there any other option that might help them?
As we already know, there are many apps currently available that will turn your iPad/iPhone into a sound level meter. But did you know that there are also dozens of apps that will turn your iPad/iPhone/iPod-Touch into a hearing testing machine?
Hearing test apps range in price from free to $799.00 (see below graphic)! But which of these hearing testing apps are the best value? Are any of the more inexpensive ones fairly accurate? To answer these questions, I reviewed and tested 29 affordable hearing test apps.
For all of my tests I used an iPad 4 and new “Ergofit” insert type earphones by Panasonic .
In the real world, it would be unsanitary to allow employees to share the same earbud insert headphones. Of course earbud headphones could be sanitized between tests, but a better alternative might be to give each employee their own set of earbud headphones. These earbuds are inexpensive ($10) and could be used for future tests on that employee.