Online hearing check
Eight quick questions about how you manage day to day. It takes about a minute, and it will tell you whether a proper hearing test is worth booking. Free, and nothing is saved.
It cannot measure your hearing, diagnose anything, or tell you how much hearing you have lost. Only a proper test with an audiologist can do that. What it can do is help you decide whether it is worth booking one. Nothing you answer is saved or sent anywhere, it all stays in your browser.
How are you managing?
Do you often ask people to repeat themselves?
In a busy pub or restaurant, how easy is it to follow a conversation?
Do other people say your television or radio is too loud?
Do you find it harder to hear women or children than men?
On the telephone, how clear are voices?
Do you miss the doorbell, the phone ringing, or a kettle boiling?
After a day of socialising, do you feel unusually tired from concentrating on listening?
Has anyone close to you suggested you might have a hearing problem?
Check with tones.
If you would rather try listening to sounds than answering questions, this plays quiet tones at four different pitches into each ear separately. You will need headphones and a quiet room, and it takes about three minutes.
Before you start
You will need headphones or earbuds and somewhere quiet. This will not work properly on a phone speaker, because we need to test each ear separately.
It takes about three minutes. Nothing is recorded or sent anywhere.
Step 1: check your headphones
We will play a short beep in your left ear only, then your right. Tap play and make sure each one comes from the right side.
Step 2: set your volume
A steady tone is playing now. Turn your device volume down until you can only just hear it, then tap the button.
This gives us a rough starting point. It is not a calibration in the way a clinic would measure it, but it stops the results being wildly different from one device to another.
Listen carefully
A tone will start very quietly and get slowly louder. Tap the moment you hear it.
Your result
This is an indication only. It is affected by your headphones, your device and any background noise, and it cannot tell you what is causing anything. A proper hearing test measures all of this precisely.
Book a Free Hearing TestSound is not working
We could not start audio in your browser. Try tapping the button again, check your device is not on silent, or use a different browser. If it still will not play, the questionnaire above works without any sound at all.
When to see a doctor instead.
Some symptoms need a medical opinion quickly rather than a hearing check. Contact your GP, or NHS 111 if your surgery is closed, if you have:
- Sudden hearing loss in one or both ears, especially if it came on over hours or days
- Hearing loss in one ear only, particularly alongside tinnitus or dizziness
- Pain, discharge or bleeding from the ear
- Dizziness or balance problems you cannot explain
- Hearing loss following a head injury or very loud noise exposure
Sudden hearing loss in particular is treated as urgent, because treatment works best within the first few days. Please do not sit on it.
What this can and cannot tell you.
Both checks above are useful, and neither is a hearing test. It is worth understanding the difference before you read too much into either.
A hearing test in a clinic measures sound at precisely known volumes, through equipment calibrated to a standard, in a room that is properly quiet. That is what allows us to say how much hearing you have lost, at which pitches, and in which ear.
The tone check on this page cannot do that. The actual loudness reaching your ear depends on your headphones, your device, your volume setting and how quiet the room really is. Two people with identical hearing can get different results on different phones. The volume step at the start reduces that variation but it does not remove it.
So treat the result as a rough indication of pattern rather than a measurement. If it suggests the higher pitches are harder for you, that is a genuinely useful thing to notice, it is the most common way age-related hearing loss begins. What it cannot tell you is how much loss you have, or whether the cause is earwax, the middle ear, or the nerve. Only a proper test can separate those, and that matters because the treatment is completely different in each case.
What a proper test involves.
A full hearing test at our Birmingham clinic, with your results explained on the day.
Learn more →The same test in your own home for £50, anywhere across the West Midlands.
Learn more →Often the whole problem. Microsuction and irrigation, from £60. Adults only.
Learn more →Online hearing check FAQs.
No. Neither the questions nor the tones can measure your hearing or diagnose anything. Only a proper test with an audiologist, using calibrated equipment in a quiet room, can tell you how much hearing you have lost and what is causing it.
It gives you a rough idea of pattern, not a measurement. The real loudness reaching your ear depends on your headphones, your device and how quiet the room is, so two people with the same hearing can get different results on different phones. Useful as a prompt, not as a diagnosis.
No. Nothing is saved and nothing is sent anywhere. Both checks run entirely in your browser and disappear when you close the page.
If you are wondering, yes. Hearing loss comes on slowly and is easy to miss, and a test now gives us a baseline to compare against in a few years. It is free at our Birmingham clinic.
Book a hearing test. It may turn out to be earwax, which is quickly sorted. If it is hearing loss we will explain exactly what we have found and what your options are, with no pressure to buy anything.
You can, though answers work best coming from the person themselves. If you are worried about a family member, the questions are a useful way to start the conversation.
Yes. We test each ear separately, and a phone speaker cannot do that. Any headphones or earbuds will do. If you do not have any, use the questions instead, they work with no sound at all.