Headphones of the future could focus on your health

OPINION: What could we expect from headphones in 2025? I find that in trying to predict what’s going to happen with headphones, you’re more or less getting incremental jumps over what’s already possible. The last big innovation was arguably noise-cancellation but has there been anything bigger? I wouldn’t say so, but could we see an increase in health-related features?

It’s an area that headphones brands have been looking at for years. Apple’s big announcement that the AirPods Pro 2 could be used as hearing aids after its FDA approval was an interesting one. I’ll be honest and say that it’s not something I saw coming since I was under the impression that the barrier to entry was very high to be considered as a hearing aid, and I think that approval could open the floodgates for others to join in.

Bose has been circling the hearing aid market for years, as has Sennheiser after its acquisition by Sonnova, launching several products aimed at improving hearing but not calling them hearing aids per se.

Then there are services like Mimi Defined, Masimo’s Adaptive Acoustic Technology and HearID among others that analyse your hearing, understanding the frequencies you can and can’t hear, and tailoring the sound to fit. Not every company is looking to incorporate ‘listening tests’ but audio is becoming more personalised, whether it’s through hearing tests or adaptive noise-cancellation that reduce the impact of loud sounds on your ears, and headphones are leading the charge.

Heading back to Sennheiser and it’s almost a year ago that the company revealed the Momentum Sport. I was there in Las Vegas when it announced a pair of sports headphones packed with fitness tracking tech.

Sennheiser claimed a pair of true wireless offered more accurate results that a smartwatch or chest-strap because of its position closer to the brain; the temperature of your head is closely regulated by the brain to avoid overheating, while a photoplethysmography (PPG) heart rate sensor tracks your heart rate.

The Momentum Sport Wireless aren’t the first type of true wireless to offer these features. Jabra, JBL, and Amazfit have offered similar features in the past, but with the Momentum Sport Wireless these felt like the first that unified biometric tracking across a range of apps from Polar (specifically body temperature for that app), as well as Apple Watch, Strava, Garmin, Peloton, Zwift, Nordic Track, and Samsung Health. More headphones that take this wide approach to compatibility with apps in the future could open up biometric tracking to more people, and in the process standardise these features.

Then there was the announcement of the Master & Dynamic MW75 Neuro over-ears. They claimed to interpret your brain signals (via AI, of course) to know when your brain needs recharge to reduce burnout and boost productivity. Do they work? Well currently the Neuro app isn’t available in the UK so I can’t say, but it’s another way in which wellness and health features are coming to headphones.

Finally we can throw in Dyson’s headphones, the Zone and OnTrac, which can track sound exposure, letting you know whether you’re being exposed to more than 85dB (the WHO’s recommended limit). These headphones aim to protect your hearing.

Like many things in the headphone arena, most of these ideas have been around for a while, but they haven’t fully taken off or been given the attention they’re owed. Health-focused features in headphones aren’t necessarily the ‘future’ but for 2025 we could see a bigger effort to integrate them into headphones, and that could radically transform how we view headphones going forward. They won’t be just headphones, they’d be something more – a gateway to your current state of mind and wellbeing.