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There are a few days in a person’s life that stand out as memorable among the rest: the day you learn to ride a bike, the day you have your first kiss, and the day you are sitting, staring at your TV, and realizing you haven’t understood anything that was just said. The day you think to yourself, “I might need hearing aids.” While the Elehear Beyond Pro OTC Hearing Aids can’t teach you to ride a bike or give you a memorable smooch (to the best of my knowledge), they can help you with your hearing loss. In my case, they can be the source of a happy end to a harrowing journey.
A few years back, I found myself in the office of an Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor experiencing what I would come to learn was called “ear fullness.” The doctor recommended I take a hearing test. This wasn’t surprising—”ear” is right in the doctor’s name and, as far as I’m concerned, hearing is one of the top ten things that an ear does. What was surprising? The result.
“You have mild hearing loss.”
“Oh my goodness! What do we do?”
“Do?”
“Yeah. How do we fix it?”
“Oh, sweetie…we don’t. You’re just getting older.”
“I am?!?!”
“You are.”
The doctor gave me a lollipop and sent me on my way, back into a world that I couldn’t hear as well as I once could. I envisioned what my life would be now that I had mild hearing loss: TVs turned up so loud that my neighbors would pound their fists on the wall (not that I would hear it), having to say “what?” more than any other word, constantly being snuck up on and tapped on the shoulder, startling me and causing me to grab my chest while breathlessly saying, “Oh my gosh! I didn’t even hear you!” Life was going to be hell! That’s when the ringing started.
If you are unfamiliar with tinnitus, it’s an incurable affliction where you start to hear a constant high-pitched ringing in your ears, and that’s the rest of your life until you die. Neat. So not only did I have a hard time hearing everything, but the things I did hear were competing against an ever-present ringing. Enter the Elehear Beyond Pro OTC Hearing Aids.
First impressions
Right out of the box, it’s apparent that Elehear engineers its products with the user in mind. The charging case for the hearing aids is sleek, rivaling any pair of high-end earbuds. The brand makes the claim that the included assortment of ear domes will fit any shape and size ear, and believe me when I say they aren’t kidding. I was floored at the assortment of ear domes that were included with this product. As my wife likes to point out, I have “jumbo ears,” and I had absolutely no problem finding a giant ear dome to fill my enormous ear canals.
Looking at the plethora of included ear domes, I couldn’t imagine any size or shape of ear that wouldn’t be accommodated. If you have ears, they’ve got an ear dome that will work for you. If you don’t have ears, I would probably wonder why you purchased hearing aids to begin with.
The hearing aids themselves are light and fit on the ear nicely. If you didn’t know somebody was wearing them, you might not even notice them. There are points during use that I completely forgot I even had them on; they’re that comfortable. One of the best things an assistive device can be is unobtrusive, and these hearing aids nail that function. If there is one drawback to the design, it’s that they’re so light it can be mildly awkward maneuvering the domes into your ears without causing feedback, but a second of discomfort feels like an acceptable trade-off for an entire day of hearing bliss.
Noise reduction
Elehear uses its Vocclear 2.0 technology to provide AI noise reduction. This means that not only are you hearing everything you want to hear better, but the hearing aids are filtering out background noise, so you aren’t bogged down by the things you don’t want to hear. Long gone are the days of cacophonous, crowded bars, faking your way through conversations that you can’t hear by simply nodding at everything and smiling. That’s how you end up agreeing to pick up your cousin at the airport at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday. With the Beyond Pro hearing aids in my ears, I’ll never agree to pick up anyone at the airport ever again.
If you’re the type who needs to manage every detail, including the level of background noise you allow in, you can manipulate the levels of sound and noise control manually in an app to make sure you’re always hearing exactly what you want.
Tinnitus masking features
While increased hearing is the hallmark of any hearing aid, the most impressive feature of this product is the tinnitus masking. As I said before, there is no cure for tinnitus. Fortunately, you can mask it. If you supply your ears and brain with a constant other sound to focus in on, it tricks your brain into not hearing the ringing anymore. The tinnitus masking feature here is off the charts. Immediately, the ringing was gone, and all I heard was the constant sound of a gentle rainfall.
This was such a relief after hearing ringing for years straight. If rain isn’t your thing, there are 22 different soundscapes to choose from that will help relieve your tinnitus misery. You can manually control the volume and ear balance to make sure it is masking exactly how you need it for your particular case. If this product did nothing else, it would be worth it for this feature alone!
Bonus features
From a hearing standpoint, Elehear has you covered with those features… but they were clever enough to think about what other things they could add to make this product truly top-notch. This includes adding Bluetooth capabilities to the hearing aids so they effectively double as earbuds for your calls, TV watching, and music listening. Playing Spotify through the hearing aids, I was blown away that the sound quality rivaled my everyday earbuds. The best part about this feature is that it doesn’t interrupt the tinnitus masking, letting the soundscape play gently under the audio so you have constant relief no matter what you’re doing.
If that weren’t enough, they’ve also included real-time AI translation into the app. You simply open up that feature, choose the language that you want to translate, and on-screen text displays the conversation as you speak it for you and your conversation partner to read in a split screen facing both directions. The translation of what is being said is also played into your hearing aids so you can both hear and see what’s said.
Of all the features, this is the one I had the least opportunity to test in a real-world environment, but I did test using some foreign language videos on YouTube. The accuracy of the translations, while definitely in the ballpark, didn’t seem to get to 100 percent. I could see that being a point of frustration if you were using this feature in a high-stakes environment, but for the casual user, it will probably suit your needs.
What I would change
The two main criticisms I have with these hearing aids are that, in some modes, you can hear a consistent light static. Having not used other hearing aids, I’m not sure how comparable this is to different models, but it is noticeable. For my personal use case, it blends in seamlessly with the tinnitus masking, but if you are only looking for hearing improvement and not the masking, it may be bothersome.
The bigger issue for me is that the hearing aids are only IPX5 rated, meaning they can only handle a light sweat or rainfall,and no dust. I listen to music while working out, and I sweat like a man in hour 17 of interrogation while doing it, so these hearing aids won’t be joining me on any long walks through the woods.
Overall thoughts
Overall, the Elehear Beyond Pro hearing aids are an excellent product. For someone like me who struggles with “wanting to hear better” and a crippling, incessant ringing, they’re a lifesaver. If you want to help alleviate the problems that come with “old ears,” the first thing you can do is not listen to music as loud as possible at all times when you’re young… but if you weren’t smart enough to do that and you’re looking to improve your hearing (while saving a couple thousand dollars and a trip to the doctor in the process), they may be right for you, too.
