A quick Google search for AirPods gives you results that point to the little devices being quite expensive. It's not necessarily unusual to pay that kind of money—$120 (USD) or more—for a pair of headphones, especially if they're high quality. But compared to other headphones, their gimmick is the missing cables.

But what if you don't want to spend that kind of money? What if you like the Bluetooth headphones you already have? Well, your favorite pair of Bluetooth headphones might be your next choice when using Live Listen.

The Live Listen feature is also known as Hearing because that is the name of it in the Control Center. You can turn on live listening without AirPods and the better the headphones and microphone, the better the sound quality will come from your headphones. So you can enable live listening without AirPods and in some cases they sound better with other headphones.

Live listening doesn't just work with AirPods. You can use Live Listen with other supported Bluetooth devices. You can use the Live Listen feature with other headphones, not just AirPods, as long as you have iOS 12 or higher. All iOS versions below this do not have Live Listen so you will not be able to use it. The only reason people think the Live Listen feature only works with AirPods is that when you select the Hearing feature on Live Listen, it says [your name]'s AirPods. This might lead you to believe that the live listening feature only works with AirPods.