my first meeting with Elehear, an over-the-counter hearing aid brand, earlier this year was positive. The company’s Alpha Pro hearing aids are traditional behind-the-ear devices designed for users with mild hearing loss. They come with an online audiologist session to help new users get up to speed and a “remote sound” feature that allows you to place your phone in front of an audio source and connect it directly to the hearing aids. At $459, they’re a solid price and were good enough to earn second place in my Best Headphones guide.
Now the company is back with a sequel: the Elehear beyond. Equipped with a wider operating frequency range, better noise cancellation, and a tinnitus mode, on paper the Beyond aids look like everything you get with the Alpha Pro and more. Unfortunately, as I discovered after a few weeks of testing, more doesn’t always mean better.
Photography: Christopher Null
Let’s start with the hardware because it’s a big change, and I mean that literally. Weighing in at around 4 grams, Elehear’s Alpha Pro headphones aren’t exactly small, but the Beyond headphones are even bigger. At 4.75 grams each, they weigh almost twice as much as Jabra’s 2.56-gram Enhance Select 500 headphones, although both have a traditional behind-the-ear (BTE) design. I was surprised by the size from the moment I took them out of the box, and even more so after looking in the mirror. There’s no hiding these gigantic tears – they made my ears visibly stick out on the side of my head.
But let’s say you’re not as vain as me. What about the audio quality? In this case, Beyond’s aids didn’t impress me too much either. From the moment I put them on, these headphones displayed a noticeable level of background noise, audible even at fairly low amplification levels. It’s best described as a rattle rather than a whistle, a bit like an old nearby desk fan that squeaks on bare metal as it spins.
Photography: Christopher Null via the Elehear app
