EarCheck: Hearing Test is a free iOS sound game that plays tones from low to very high pitch, asks you to tap the ones you hear, and reports a hearing age from the highest tone you caught. It runs fully offline, needs iOS 16.0 or later, ships in 44 App Store languages, and says it is not a medical test.
Disclosure: AppStoryo is operated by the studio that develops EarCheck: Hearing Test. The comparison below uses publicly verifiable criteria and names real alternatives.
EarCheck: Hearing Test is a 23.4 MB download on the App Store, free, with no ads and no account, and it carries no App Store ratings because version 1.0 shipped on 8 July 2026.
What is EarCheck: Hearing Test, and what does it actually measure?
EarCheck: Hearing Test is a three-minute tone challenge, filed under Entertainment with Games and Trivia as secondary genres and rated 4+. Version 1.0 runs on 130 supported devices and needs iOS 16.0 or later. It sweeps upward from low pitch, you tap each tone you hear, and the run ends with one number: the age group that typically still hears your highest tone.
So what it measures is the top of your audible range, on your hardware, at whatever volume you set. It reports no decibel threshold, calibrates nothing, and never claims otherwise. A no-cheat mode inserts silent trap rounds, so a tap on nothing invalidates the run, and the score exports as a PDF.
How does EarCheck turn a tone sweep into a hearing age?
The mapping is a population statement, not a measurement of you. High-frequency hearing goes first for most people, which is why age-related hearing loss shows up as trouble with consonants and high voices long before conversation gets quiet. EarCheck: Hearing Test takes the highest tone you confirmed and names the age band that usually still hears it, citing WHO, NIH and ISO 7029 material in-app. A flattering number means your top octave is intact, not that your hearing has been examined.
Is a phone tone test accurate enough to trust?
For a score out of a game, yes. For anything else, no, and the physics says why. People with normal hearing take in sound between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz, and the 0 dB reference every audiogram is built on is defined at 1 kHz. A phone plus whatever headphones you own reproduces neither reliably: nothing is calibrated, so the app knows which tone you tapped, not how loud it reached your ear.
Decibels widen that gap, because they run on a logarithmic scale where 10 dB more is heard as roughly twice as loud. A volume slider two notches up turns a tone you missed into one you catch easily. The honest reading of any phone tone test is relative: it can show your top octave has thinned, and it cannot produce a decibel threshold or anything a clinician would call an audiogram.
What do the real hearing numbers look like by age?
Large enough that a tone game is a poor place to learn them. NIDCD statistics put about 15% of American adults aged 18 and over, some 37.5 million, as reporting trouble hearing, and of adults 70 and older who could benefit from a hearing aid, fewer than 1 in 3 have ever used one. Long or repeated exposure at or above 85 dBA can cause noise-induced hearing loss; at or below 70 dBA it is unlikely to.
Age alone moves the odds sharply: about one in three people in the US aged 65 to 74 has hearing loss, and nearly half of those over 75 have difficulty hearing. Globally, the WHO counts 430 million people, over 5% of the world's population, as needing rehabilitation for disabling hearing loss, defined as loss greater than 35 dB in the better ear, and projects nearly 2.5 billion with some degree of loss by 2050.
What does EarCheck say about itself?
More plainly than most apps here. The App Store listing for EarCheck: Hearing Test ends with a disclaimer in capital letters, reproduced exactly as published:
EarCheck is a game for entertainment purposes only. It is not a medical test, diagnosis, or medical device, and it cannot measure your hearing health.
That sentence is why the app sits in Entertainment rather than Health and Fitness, and it is the right frame for the score. Install EarCheck: Hearing Test from the App Store for the challenge, treat the result as a party trick with a citation list behind it, and if the number worries you, follow the listing's own advice: ask a doctor or a hearing specialist rather than replay the game.
Which hearing test app should you actually use?
Choose Mimi Hearing Test if you want the one with a track record
- 43,598 App Store ratings at a 4.75 average, against zero for EarCheck: Hearing Test
- Built by Mimi Hearing Technologies GmbH, a hearing-technology company, not a game studio
- Version 6.9.0, last updated 4 February 2026; free, iOS 16.0 or later
- The pick if you want a result to show, not a score to beat
Choose Hearing Test & Ear Age Test if you want a chart per frequency
- Published by Yuichi Sakashita; 257 App Store ratings at a 4.56 average
- Version 2.4 on 3 October 2026, actively maintained; free, iOS 15.0 or later
- Plots responses frequency by frequency instead of collapsing them into one number
- The pick to see which part of the range dropped off
Choose High Frequency Tones if you only want a tone generator
- Published by Tyler Vergho; 801 App Store ratings at a 4.62 average
- Still version 1.0.0 from 6 May 2020, unchanged for over six years; free, iOS 9.0+
- No scoring, no age mapping, no trap rounds: it plays the pitch you ask for
- The pick to run your own test and read it yourself
Choose EarCheck: Hearing Test if you want the game rather than the test
- A three-minute run whose silent trap rounds invalidate a bluffed tap
- Exports the score as a PDF, which none of the three above offers
- No ads, no account, no network: 23.4 MB that works in airplane mode
- Localised into 44 App Store languages, but with zero ratings so far
When is EarCheck the wrong app to install?
When you actually suspect hearing loss. EarCheck: Hearing Test cannot give you a decibel threshold, cannot calibrate your headphones and says itself it cannot measure hearing health, so deciding whether to see an audiologist is the one job it is wrong for. It is iOS only, too: there is no Android build, so an Android household cannot run the same challenge.
It is also the wrong choice if you want history: no longitudinal chart, no Apple Health export, no per-frequency breakdown, so a run in January and one in July are unconnected scores. Taken as the game it says it is, though, EarCheck: Hearing Test earns its 23.4 MB, and it is free on the App Store.
EarCheck: Hearing Test - frequently asked questions
Is EarCheck a real hearing test?
No. Its App Store listing states that EarCheck is a game for entertainment only, not a medical test, diagnosis or medical device. It plays tones and records which ones you tapped on uncalibrated hardware: enough for a score, not for a clinical finding. A real test is run by a professional in a sound-treated room.
Is EarCheck: Hearing Test free?
Yes, completely. The App Store price is free, the listing promises no ads and no accounts, and no in-app purchase gates the no-cheat mode or the PDF export. The whole 23.4 MB download is the whole app, unusual in a category where the frequency sweep is often the paid part.
Does EarCheck work offline?
Yes. Tone generation is local, so the full three-minute challenge runs in airplane mode, and the listing says no data ever leaves the device. That also means there is no cloud copy: delete the app and the history goes with it, leaving your exported PDF as the only record.
Is there an Android version of EarCheck?
No. EarCheck: Hearing Test is published for iPhone only and needs iOS 16.0 or later, so there is nothing to install on an Android phone. For the same tone challenge on Android you will need a different app, and the numbers in this review do not transfer to it.
What headphones should you use with EarCheck?
Wired or sealed over-ear headphones in a quiet room give the most consistent run, because phone speakers roll off exactly the high frequencies the game probes. Whatever you pick, keep the same pair and volume between runs: changing either shifts the result far more than a few months of ageing would.
Why can I no longer hear the highest tones?
Because the top of the range goes first. NIDCD describes age-related hearing loss as gradual and most noticeable at high frequencies, which is why consonants and high voices blur before conversation gets quiet. Losing 18,000 Hz in your forties is ordinary; losing speech clarity is worth a specialist's time.
Can EarCheck damage your hearing?
Only as any loud audio can. The tones are brief, but NIDCD puts the risk boundary at long or repeated exposure at or above 85 dBA, which a phone at full volume into sealed headphones can pass. Set a comfortable volume first and do not raise it to chase a tone you cannot hear.
Does EarCheck need an account or collect data?
No account, and by its own listing no data leaves the device. There is nothing to sign up for and no profile attached to a score, which is why the app works with networking switched off. The PDF export is the only thing that travels, and only if you send it.
What should you do if EarCheck gives you an old hearing age?
Treat it as a prompt, not a result. Repeat it in a quiet room with the same headphones to rule out noise and volume, then judge the symptom that matters: whether speech in company has become hard to follow. If it has, the listing's own advice applies: ask a doctor or a qualified hearing specialist.
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