Online hearing check
Check your hearing at home, then decide about a full test
You need headphones and a quiet room. Each ear hears five pitches, from low to high, getting quieter until you stop hearing them.
Before you start
- Find a quiet room and put on headphones, wired or wireless.
- Set your volume to about half, then play the volume tone.
- Adjust until the tone is soft but clear in both ears, then leave the volume alone.
Nothing plays until you press a button. About 20 tones, 6 to 8 minutes.
Right ear · 1,000 Hz
Press play, listen, then answer. You can play a tone again before answering.
Not a diagnosis. This check cannot know how loud your headphones play, and it tests tones, not speech. It is a rough guide to whether a full hearing test is worth booking. If you have sudden hearing loss, pain, discharge or dizziness, contact your GP or NHS 111 today.
How to read your result
- Typical hearing
- You heard the quiet tones across the range. If conversations still feel hard work, a full test can pick up what a headphone check cannot.
- Some difficulty
- You missed some of the quieter tones. This often shows up first in noisy rooms and on the phone. A full hearing test will tell you why, and whether anything helps.
- See an audiologist
- You needed the tones louder than usual, or your ears answered differently. Please book a full hearing test so we can look properly. It may be as simple as wax.
The chart uses the same layout as a clinic audiogram: pitch runs from low on the left to high on the right, and the further down a mark sits, the louder the tone had to be before you heard it. A full test also checks bone conduction and speech in noise, which this cannot.
