Review: Phonak Audeo Infinio Ultra Sphere

If you’re comparing the photos of the Audeo Infinio Ultra Sphere—Phonak's most powerful hearing aid to date—to the product's name, you’re not crazy: It’s not the slightest bit round. Rather, it’s a traditional, teardrop-shaped, behind-the-ear hearing aid that takes its name from Phonak’s new Spheric Speech Clarity 2.0 system, designed to enhance the understandability of conversations in noisy conditions, no matter what direction the voices are coming from.

Yes, Phonak Audeo Infinio Ultra Sphere is indeed a mouthful. For this review, I’ll call it the Ultra Sphere. The other new hearing aid system in the Infinio Ultra line, called the R, is available as a less advanced, cheaper model.

The big sell with the Sphere is that it includes not one processing chip but two. The new DeepSonic DNN (deep neural network) chip is responsible for multidirectional speech processing in noise. That’s included on top of Phonak’s older Era chip, which launched in 2024 and handles core audio processing and wireless functions. Are two chips better than one for hearing clearly? I wore the Ultra Sphere hearing aids for a week to find out.

An Oversize Profile

Photograph: Chris Null

The Ultra Sphere hearing aids are visibly larger than most modern behind-the-ear (BTE) aids, clearly due to the extra silicon inside. At 3.39 grams each, that’s a significant size increase over devices like the 2.58-gram Jabra Enhance Select 700 or the 2.68-gram Horizon Go 7IX. But while they’re more readily visible to outside observers, that differential doesn’t noticeably impact comfort, even with long-term wear. (More on this later.)

Both hearing aids have a two-way rocker button used for power, volume, and media control. Tap control is also an option for certain Bluetooth functions, but this is disabled in the MyPhonak app by default. The units carry an IP68 weatherproof rating and are available in seven colors. (I tested them in black.) You’ll also be fitted with your preferred eartip style (open, closed, or Phonak’s new wax-resistant EasyGuard domes) during your professional evaluation.

These prescription hearing aids worked quite well across the board in my testing. Tuned professionally by a Phonak representative, their claims of hearing better in noisy conditions were accurate, mildly—though not transformatively—dulling background sound in most cases. It’s nearly impossible to quantify exactly how much better the Ultra Sphere aids worked compared to other models on this front. Oddly, they worked better in noise than they did in relative silence. In a quiet room, the hearing aids would occasionally hiss gently for a few seconds, then stop, only to hiss again a few minutes later. This light hiss effect was sustained throughout my experience, but I could only detect it when there wasn’t any other noise in the room.

Photograph: Chris Null

The aids offered an appropriate and gentle level of support—never overwhelming me with sound when I didn’t need it and overall improving my ability to understand speech both in person and while watching TV. High-pitched and sharp sounds like keyboard taps and mouse clicks registered a bit too loudly for complete comfort, but this could likely be improved with a return visit to the audiologist.

Bluetooth streaming quality is very good for BTE hearing aids. These aids can’t effectively cancel heavy ambient noise during media streaming (particularly with open eartips), but on the whole, they were good enough for casual music and phone call usage. However, I encountered a few brief connectivity drop-outs during listening sessions.

I was stunned by how comfortable these hearing aids are, even for long periods of wear stretching into multiple hours. I expected the extra weight—and the perennial headache of dealing with BTE hearing aids while wearing glasses—would wear me down in short order, but that wasn’t the case.

Phonak specifies a huge battery range of up to 56 hours, depending on usage patterns. In my testing, I achieved 27 hours on a charge with a mix of streaming and hearing aid usage. The rechargeable ChargerGo case isn’t unique to the Ultra Sphere, but Phonak generally says the case provides enough power for three top-ups of the hearing aids.

Peripheral Parade

Photograph: Chris Null

Phonak offers several add-ons that work with the Infinio Ultra line, including its TV Connector (about $320), which plugs into your television and pipes sound straight to your hearing aids, similar to how Auracast works, bypassing the need for ambient sound amplification.

Perhaps more interesting is the Roger On 3 (colloquially known merely as “Roger”). This device, which sells for a hefty $1,800 to $2,000, is a portable microphone that can also be used to pipe remote sounds into the Phonak hearing aids. It’s both a unidirectional and omnidirectional microphone, depending on how you set it. In unidirectional mode, you can point the microphone at an audio source—a television speaker or a person talking across the room—and the microphone will home in on that source, amplifying it exclusively.

In omnidirectional mode, it can be laid flat on a table to amplify everyone within a few yards, helpful for picking up all the voices in a crowded meeting. The mic can also be clipped to a lapel or worn like a pendant to amplify the wearer's voice (and only the wearer), picking up audio from a person standing up to 80 feet away. It’s insanely powerful, though I noticed it also had a tendency to pick up every sound in between me and my desired source: running water, rustling clothes, people chewing, and so on. Bottom line: If you pick up a Roger, plan to spend a lot of time fine-tuning and mastering it.

Two thousand dollars is a lot to pay for a fancy microphone; same with the Phonak Infinio Ultra Sphere hearing aids, which sell for an estimated $4,000—only from a licensed audiologist. (Prices can vary widely and are dependent on the provider.) That’s in line with earlier top-tier Phonak hearing aids and similar aids from competitors. My classic advice on this front still stands: Most people with moderate hearing loss will do perfectly well with one of our over-the-counter hearing aid picks, and save a lot of cash to boot. Those with more profound hearing loss and/or the need for significant tuning may want to consider a more sophisticated hearing support device like the Ultra Sphere.