Review: Elehear Alpha Pro

Hearing aids: Not only for the near-deaf? We’ve already seen one product in the emerging category of hearing aids designed for users with relatively mild hearing loss—the Olive Union Olive Max. Now there’s Elehear’s Alpha Pro, another affordable over-the-counter product that aims to acclimate users to what hearing aids can do … before things reach crisis mode.

Elehear’s Alpha Pro doesn’t break any new ground in the design department, offering a traditional behind-the-ear design with a receiver connected to the primary device via a thin wire—perhaps just a bit longer than most. The units are available only in a dark gray color, which I find more aesthetically pleasing and unobtrusive than the more common silver or beige (yech).

Photograph: Elehear

The units arrive unconfigured, but new users get a free 30-minute online session with an audiologist if they need help setting things up and getting the lay of the land. If you’re a first-time hearing aid user, this is a good idea, as the audiologist can guide you through which settings and eartips are likely to work best for you, not to mention provide general usage and cleaning tips. The audiologist (there’s just one at Elehear) can also help later, on an ad hoc basis, via phone and email.

The Alpha Pro's hardware controls are simple, with an individual volume rocker on the back of each unit. They will work out of the box, without Elehear’s app, but you’ll need to delve into said app if you want to get the most out of the hearing aids. While the app is simple on the surface, there’s a lot more to it underneath. Naturally, individual volume controls dominate the main screen, with selections for controlling the amount of ambient noise reduction plus the ability to opt between a forward-facing speech focus or a 360-degree listening mode. I also found the Mute button here handy, which cuts out all amplification and lets you work in silence should you need some peace and quiet.

The Adjust tab lets you drill down further, where you’ll find four presets that correspond to various levels of hearing loss, from Mild to Moderate II. Elehear’s audiologist told me these are all tuned based on common hearing loss patterns—boosting high-level frequencies more than lower ones—but you can tweak them further by tapping the Edit icon, which opens a rudimentary equalizer where you can set levels for Ocean Wave, World Sound, and Birds Chirping (i.e. lows, mids, and highs). All of the settings on this screen can be made globally or per-ear. There are also four environmental modes—General, Restaurant, Outdoor, and TV—which are fairly self-explanatory. Elehear says the only real difference among them is the amount of noise reduction along with the use of the directional focus mode.

Photograph: Elehear

Finally, in the top right of the app, you’ll find two somewhat hidden features worth mentioning. A “remote sound” feature lets you use your phone as a microphone, which you can drop in front of a TV or the speaker at the other end of the conference table, and have the audio piped directly to your hearing aids through your phone’s mic. Also, there's an environmental noise meter that measures ambient sound in decibels. If the environment is too loud, the app will advise you to remove your hearing aids altogether to avoid the risk of hearing damage.

My interaction with Elehear’s audiologist was quite helpful, as her advice was immediately useful in setting a baseline that gave me good results. (Mild loss level, single-layer eartips.) I ran through all of the additional settings options in the app and wasn’t able to improve significantly over those defaults; in some cases I made it quite a bit worse. The background hiss with Elehear is noticeable but manageable, but any finer adjustments I made (namely in the equalizer settings) only added hiss or crackles without improving audio fidelity. While Elehear can advise on configurations, it does not have the means to fine-tune settings beyond those that are available to the user, so improving on fidelity will likely involve some trial and error.

The remote sound feature works well, at least audio-wise: Drop your phone in front of the TV and it’s like you’re sitting in a movie theater. The only problem? There’s a lag of half a second or so. This probably doesn’t matter if you’re listening to a lecture, but the lack of sync became too problematic for media watching.

Photograph: Elehear

The Elehear Alpha Pro offers exceptional battery life, with each aid promising 20 hours on a single charge. I certainly wasn’t able to drain them during a full day. The sizeable case carries enough juice for seven additional charges, which means you can take a topped-up Alpha Pro on a weeklong trip and it'll still have power when you get home. The only operational issue I encountered was an occasional one when I wandered too far away from my phone, causing the loss of my Bluetooth connection. To get the hearing aids reconnected, I often had to put them back into the case for up to a minute to prompt a reset.

At $499 (often discounted to $459), Elehear’s Alpha Pro land about in the middle of the pack of OTC hearing aids, and they perform right about where you would probably expect: Considerably better than lower-end models but short of the clarity you find in the $1,000 range … and perhaps ideal for road warriors prone to losing their charging cable.