Review: Oticon Zeal

Oticon, a subsidiary of Danish hearing support company Demant, markets a substantial collection of behind-the-ear hearing aids with the traditional teardrop-and-wire design. Now, with the Oticon Zeal, it’s making a big move to a much more discreet in-the-ear design, an entirely new category for the manufacturer. (Oticon’s other line of in-the-ear devices is all custom-fit hearing aids that sit deep inside the ear canal.)

As with most in-the-ear hearing aids, the big sell with Zeal is all about size and discretion, and on that front, the device is an immediate success. At 1.68 grams per device, it’s the lightest prescription hearing aid I’ve tested to date.

Vanishing Act

Photograph: Chris Null

Like the Phonak Virto R Infinio hearing aids, the Oticon Zeal are designed to all but disappear when worn, fitting neatly into the ear canal with no protruding components. But unlike the Virto R, the Zeal is not a custom-fit design. With these, it’s one size fits all, save for your choice of ear tips that affix to the end of the lengthy tube-like structure that pushes the receiver as far as possible into the ear canal.

Take note of the curved wire that juts out of the back of each Zeal hearing aid. This isn’t a standard retrieval wire as you find on a typical ITE device, used to pull it out from the ear canal, nor is it solely a retention lock that loops around inside the concha to hold it in place. This piece of the hearing aid does double duty, working both as a retention lock and as an antenna, so it can better communicate with your mobile device and the Oticon app.

While many ITE hearing aids offer a retention lock as an optional feature that can be snipped off with scissors if you don’t like it, here it’s a mandatory part of the Zeal—and given the way it sits in the ear, I couldn’t imagine using it without the wire, even if it wasn’t required. The Zeal’s body is narrow as it snakes into the ear and comparatively bulbous on its external end, making for a somewhat back-heavy design. This mimics the shape of the ear canal, but since it isn’t custom-molded to your individual ears, it causes the hearing aid to wiggle around a bit. Even with the retention lock in place, I was never able to get an absolutely perfect, snug fit, especially over lengthy testing sessions.

Impressive Audio

Photograph: Chris Null

After an hour of tuning in an audiologist’s office, I found audio quality to be exceptional in most cases, with the Zeal providing a gentle lift to my weakest frequencies. No frequencies were ever blown out—even usually troublesome staccato sounds like keyboard taps and footsteps— though I did sometimes find my own voice to come across as just one notch too loud. Oticon’s app includes a limited equalizer function (with three frequency bars) that can help fine-tune this, and your audiologist can configure as many customized environmental programs as you’d like, though these can’t be altered by the user.

Streaming quality was better than expected, given the tiny size of the Zeals, with a separate three-bar equalizer available while listening to media, independent of the hearing aid equalizer. It has no noise cancellation capability to speak of, which means you won’t be using these to stream on an airplane or at the gym—even with the closed ear tips my audiologist suggested. (I normally wear hearing aids with open ear tips.) The closed tips proved to be the right call, and I did not experience much, if any, occlusion—the uncomfortable booming sensation caused by blocked ear canals—during my time with the devices.

Another thumbs up goes to Oticon’s app, which is extremely intuitive and dead simple to use. (It also includes a “find my hearing aids” feature.) Pairing was quick with an iPhone, and while I was unable to test the feature, Oticon also says these are the world’s first hearing aids that work with Google’s Fast Pair system on Android and ChromeOS devices. Auracast is also supported.

As expected, the Zeal hearing aids have no physical controls due to their diminutive size, but they do offer tap controls that your audiologist can turn on or off in their office. These can be used to manage volume, change environmental mode, or answer incoming phone calls through various combinations, but as my audiologist noted, many folks opt to turn these off because they often inadvertently trigger when the hearing aids are inserted or removed. I didn’t end up using them much.

Long-Term Comfort, for a Price

Photograph: Chris Null

The Oticon Zeal hearing aids were surprisingly comfortable in my testing, even for hours-long usage sessions. I expect their tiny size has a lot to do with that, but I also feel that picking the right size ear tips is equally critical.

That said, they can be quite difficult to get into and out of place, not just due to their unique shape and the need to spiral the retention lock into your concha, but because they are so very small. I expect users with dexterity issues will struggle mightily with these, as they must be twisted into place just so—and with no easy way of seeing them clearly, even if you’re working with a mirror.

Oticon specs the Zeals at about 20 hours of battery life; I got about 14 hours in my testing, which is still impressive given the small size of the units. They ship with a fairly sizeable, but still pocketable, case that can provide three additional recharges before it needs to be topped up via a USB-C connection.

As with any prescription hearing aid product, price is perhaps the biggest obstacle to purchase, with Oticon quoting a typical range of $5,000 to $8,000 per pair—invariably set not by Oticon but by the prescribing doctor. That places them in line with or above some of the most expensive hearing aids I’ve tested. Put another way: Assuming an average price of $6,500, that comes to a dizzying cost of more than $1,900 per gram. Not that it means anything, but that’s more than 10 times the price of gold.

In other words: Keep tabs on ’em.