Airpods Pro and nausea

[tim0409]

This may seem like a strange topic, but has anyone else suffered nausea when using in-ear Apple Airpods Pro, or any other noise cancelling over-ear headphones?

Last week my wife bought me a pair of airpods for my birthday and I when started using them today I felt pretty nauseous. This didn’t come as a massive surprise as I had a similar experience when using a pair of over-ear Bose noise cancelling headphones in the past, but I thought it was the over-ear element that had caused it. Today I turned off the noise cancelling element and used transparency mode, which I thought might help but it didn’t. I’m now thinking it could be caused by anything that “seals” my ears, as the airpods pro have rubber bungs; I didn’t have an issue with my old set of standard airpods, which effectively just sat in my outer ear.

Any similar experiences, or am I just weird…?

[e-honda]

Try with noise control off.
Transparency mode is active just like noise cancelling, it just does it the opposite way. If sensory mismatch is the cause of your nausea its likely to be a problem in either mode.

[x5tuu]

Not with AirPods Pro but when I first start using by Bose 700s with their ANC feature I found it really disconcerting and nausea inducing - it did wane after a couple of hours though and it’s a non-issue now

[robsa]

Not nausea, but when I upgraded my AirPod Pros to 2's, I gave my missus my old original AirPod Pros. when we went running she said that all she could hear was the sound of her feet on the pavement through the earphones and it was really distracting. I of course told her she's imagining things, but after some investigation it seems that there are some people that AIrPod Pros just work really weirdly with, and they can reverberate inside their heads or make them feel unwell. She can't use hers to run now, she uses her normal AirPods instead.

So maybe you're just one of those people?

[tim0409]

robsa said:

So maybe you're just one of those people?

I think I must be! I tried them again today and felt sick by the end of the walk. I turned off transparency mode as suggested above but it didn’t help. I normally bump into a couple of people when out walking my dog and with the old airpods, I would keep them in my ears but turn the music off. With the pros (with transparency off), it was just a weird feeling talking with them in due to the rubber tips sealing my ears. It’s a shame as they sound great, but just not for me.