Sony CRE-C20 Hearing Aids Review: Rechargeable Batteries Leave a comment

Sony’s CRE-C10 in-ear listening to aids are stunners in each dimension apart from one: The tiny in-the-ear gadgets depend on replaceable listening to assist batteries as a substitute of an built-in, rechargeable one. Whereas some folks might recognize replaceable batteries—for much longer run time, no want to attend for a recharge—I’ve heard nothing however complaints about them. For probably the most half, folks now appear to be gravitating to listening to aids that don’t require fumbling with miniature batteries as soon as per week, after which worrying if the canine will swallow the spent cell.

With its new CRE-C20 listening to aids, Sony corrects this concern, and it does so in model: The brand new listening to aids look practically equivalent to the profitable C10 aids, however the hatch for a replaceable battery has been changed with a small contact that permits its inner cell to recharge in its new case.

Once I say nothing else has modified on the feel and appear of the C20 listening to aids, I imply it. To the untrained eye, they’re nearly unimaginable to inform other than their predecessors, they usually nonetheless vanish extremely properly into the ear canal as a consequence of their small dimension. The load of every assist stays the identical at exactly 1.34 grams.

For higher or worse, little has modified underneath the hood as properly. For context, Sony touts one of many largest upgrades as having six current listening to settings as a substitute of 4 like on the C10s. Word: These aren’t environmental applications however somewhat frequency-tuning settings preconfigured to work for the commonest audiograms.

You may’t manually choose considered one of these listening to presets. The settings are chosen solely after you’re taking Sony’s in-app listening to take a look at, and the person doesn’t know which one they’re getting. A modestly up to date model of Sony’s Listening to Management app walks you thru an in depth configuration process that sends pings to every ear; the person counts what number of pings are heard with every spherical. After about 10 minutes, the app chooses the listening to setting it deems greatest to your explicit model of listening to loss.

In case your assigned settings don’t work, you may retake the take a look at or experiment with Sony’s fine-tuning function, which helps you to register a criticism (“My very own voice sounds bizarre,” maybe), after which look forward to a repair to be delivered to the aids. There’s a quantity slider and a “sound steadiness” choice that lets you choose between “extra sharp” and “much less sharp,” which is principally efficient for calmly tweaking the way in which sure consonants hit your ears.

Skilled assist is accessible freed from cost earlier than or after buy too. It’s all efficient, however largely the identical as earlier than. The underside line is that, in comparison with the C10s, I doubt most customers will discover any distinction in sound high quality. That the C20s nonetheless sound nice isn’t any shock: The underlying processing expertise, created by Signia mother or father WS Audiology, has not essentially modified.

Just like the C10s, there are not any Bluetooth options on these listening to aids. They join along with your telephone through inaudible, high-pitched alerts, whether or not you’re strolling by means of setup or doing one thing so simple as altering the quantity. (There are not any on-device controls, both.) The app can’t even let you know the battery life remaining on the listening to aids: Punch a button within the app and also you look forward to pings to be despatched to every ear. The extra pings, the extra juice you could have remaining. Whereas I encountered some complications getting all of this to work after I examined the C10 aids, the C20 aids arrange with out a hitch—though once more, the method is somewhat sluggish because of the ultrasonic backwards and forwards.

The shortage of Bluetooth makes for a blunt solution to do issues—and it means you may’t stream media or take telephone calls instantly by means of the headphones—however it does hold the {hardware} small and svelte. As with the C10 aids, the C20 aids are comfy for long-term put on, each bodily and aurally. As soon as adjusted correctly, they gave me a near-perfect quantity of assist for my delicate listening to loss, nearly freed from hiss. I not often even wanted to regulate the quantity, besides in louder environments. Once more, there are not any environmental settings that compensate for issues like crowds or wind noise, however I discovered the all-around protocol to work properly all over the place.