Would sleeping with Airpods Pro with ANC be bad for your ears?

[Starfyre]

I have a neighbor who is a late night sleeper and likes making noise. I usually sleep with earplugs, but would it be okay to use the Airpods Pro in active noise cancellation mode while sleeping? Would that have any negative side-effects or health-effects on your ears? I know the battery won't last the whole evening, but I think it should be plenty enough for it to last until my neighbor falls asleep.

I know ANC is actually playing negative noise into your ear to drown out the noise, but am concerned if that would have any bad effects on your ears, or if this is even a good idea at all.

 

[retta283]

It would be about the same amount of damage as if you were commuting for a few hours with ANC on. I am not sure how much damage it would do to your hearing, I would need to know the ANC frequencies.

RF output is honestly not important at this point, you take enough RF in daily that it would not make much of a difference, and AirPods put out a much lower signal than most of what you take in.

 

[Petrophas]

These products being commonplace and so close to our brain is very new to society. There's not nearly enough data to convincingly say there would be no long-term damage. Sleeping is 6-8 hours everyday. That's a lot of exposure.

Please don't do it.

 

[Venderious]

If you are concerned about the 'negative noises' causing hearing loss - the short answer is that it does not and can not cause such effects. The negative noise actually cancels out the sound waves produced by the external environment. However, sleeping with noise cancelling headphones does cause a certain sensation and pressure in the ear that could potentially result to some unsettling effects in long-term use. My recommendation would be to just use regular earplugs - or only use the AirPods Pro ANC when really needed to fall asleep.

or talk to your neighbour kindly

 

[boodle]

As mentioned above, ANC itself won't hurt your ears.

A good pair of reusable silicone earplugs would be my recommendation for a number of reasons:

• More comfortable for sleeping
• Less likely to get lost during the night
• Fewer battery cycles means longer life for your Pods
• You wake up with your Pods charged not at zero