Review: Kingwell Melodia Hearing Aids

With Melodia, hearing aid newcomer Kingwell continues the popular trend of disguising hearing aids as Bluetooth earbuds. With their drop-down arms and all-white color scheme, these may look the part more effectively than any other over-the-counter hearing aids.

The hearing aids each weigh 5.62 grams, which is hefty but in line with some standard earbuds, and that’s OK, as these aren’t made to disappear into the ear. That said, they aren’t especially obtrusive either. When worn, these make you look like anyone else headed to the gym. When not in use, the aids store in a white charging case that is larger than some but definitely not so large as to be unable to slip into a pocket. The aids promise a battery life of nine hours, with an extra 26 hours offered by the case. They carry an IP54 weatherproofing designation and FDA approval.

Photograph: Christopher Null

You get a selection of eartips of varying sizes in both closed and (sort of) open format—Kingwell dubs them “no hole” and “hole,” respectively. The open eartips include a pinprick-sized hole in the silicone that’s almost impossible to see and whose intent and impact are not readily apparent. Three sizes of optional ear fins—sport clips that help the aids cling to the concha—are also in the box.

Like most earbud-style aids, the Melodia aids do double duty as streaming receivers, and I’ll explore each function in turn.

Kingwell has one of the most unique approaches to configuring your hearing settings of any hearing aid product I’ve encountered, particularly at this price. You can take a standard “ping” style hearing test in the app, or—more interestingly—you can manually enter the values from your existing audiogram into the app directly. Just plot 12 key numbers from any audiogram you have on hand into the system and the app adjusts things for you, plotting out your frequency levels on screen for you to visually verify.

The in-app hearing test does the same thing, creating a visual and numerical audiogram based on your results. (The in-app test closely mimicked my professional results, definitely a good sign.) Unfortunately you can’t manually tweak any of the resulting numbers after you’ve created your in-app audiogram. If you want to make changes, you have to start over from scratch with a new one.

Photograph: Christopher Null

In use as a hearing aid, the Melodia has two modes—all around and “hear in noise,” which is designed for louder settings. Both were reasonably effective, but I had the best results with the aids in quieter settings, as the noise reduction feature—tunable to three different levels—tended to block out more essential sounds like voices when dialed up. With noise reduction at a minimum, I encountered a constant bit of barely-there background hum and a noticeable touch of echo.

However, the biggest issue I had with the Melodia aids was that I had to turn the volume all the way up to maximum to get much of an impact, something I rarely encounter on other aids. The Kingwell app has an in-app system to ask for support if your hearing experience isn’t perfect. A tech support agent quickly suggested resetting my audiogram settings with numbers 10 points higher across the board, among other fixes. This did help with overall volume, but the echo effect got worse, with audio seeming to flux in and out, up and down in level—a problem which can make you feel a little crazy over time.

As streaming earbuds, the Melodia units sounded great, at least with music: Great instrumental depth, solid but not thumping bass, and crystal-clear vocals across the board. Strangely, I ran into a new issue when watching a dialog-heavy film with the aids: Voices didn’t seem to be in sync between both ears, creating more echo. Further testing after restarting the aids by putting them back in the case and changing modes to hearing aid mode and back seemed to alleviate the issue to some degree.

Photograph: Christopher Null

Unfortunately, Kingwell’s noise reduction mode only works in hearing aid mode. In fact, you can’t even control volume to the aids in the Kingwell app when you’re in streaming mode—although, bizarrely, you can still interact with volume sliders for each ear that don’t actually function. You’ll need to use your phone’s volume controls instead.

The promised battery life seems ambitious, and streaming really does some damage to the charge level: An hour of solid streaming had knocked the reported battery life down by a third. Kingwell says that the nine-hour lifespan is valid for hearing aid mode only, and you’ll get closer to six hours in streaming mode. But even that seems optimistic.

While the Melodia hearing aids are a little rough around the edges, they’re moderately effective and surprisingly comfortable for long-term wear. I was able to keep them in for hours on end without so much as an itch, a claim I can’t make for many other aids. At the sub-$500 level, they’re not my favorite aids, but they’re at least worth a listen.