In all honesty, I fly with a lot of half-deaf pilots. They get that way over many years, but the noise in piston prop planes early in their careers had to have had a big impact. I'd go with ANR headsets from day one.

The regular ipad the airline gave me works fine. Bear in mind that an ipad won't be a primary tool in general aviation training, and airlines will give you one loaded with their software when the time comes.