JLab Hear OTC Hearing Aid Review: Super Affordable

If a hearing aid, astatine its astir fundamental, is designed to re-create sounds, wherefore can’t it besides enactment similar modular wireless earbuds? That’s the question JLab answers with its Hear OTC Hearing Aid & Earbuds, and with a resounding response: Yes, it can.

JLab’s Hear looks similar mean earbuds due to the fact that that’s what the company is known for, with much than a twelve models of earbuds connected the marketplace successful each shapes, sizes, and capabilities. The Hear OTC is its lone hearing assistance product, a two-in-one instrumentality that switches amazingly seamlessly betwixt the 2 modes. (It can’t—and astir apt shouldn’t—do simultaneous duty.)

Note that the JLab Hear is technically not a existent proceeding assistance but a personal dependable amplification product (PSAP) that has not been formally approved arsenic an OTC proceeding assistance by the FDA—although JLab markets it arsenic such. That said, it performed arsenic good arsenic oregon amended than galore authoritative proceeding immunodeficiency successful my testing, but idiosyncratic mileage volition undoubtedly vary.

Available successful black, white, oregon beige (should you privation to replicate an old-school proceeding aid experience), these chunky devices aren’t exactly discreet, weighing a hefty 4.94 grams each. They aren’t uncomfortable, but they are bulky and tin measurement you down implicit time. There’s nary hiding these immunodeficiency erstwhile you person them in.

As over-the-counter proceeding aids, the devices are elemental and a small blunt. Four measurement levels are available, arsenic are 4 operating modes—loud environment, restaurant, conversation, and quiescent environment. In adjacent quarters it’s hard to archer the quality betwixt the operating modes, but extracurricular I recovered the “loud environment” mounting didn’t assistance capable with sound reduction, and upwind sound was a immense issue. At higher measurement levels, hiss tin beryllium a concern.

Lowering the measurement and maxing retired the inheritance sound removal enactment helped connected this front—and successful fact, I recovered some of these changes to beryllium mostly utile successful each types of settings. JLab doesn’t connection a proceeding trial oregon immoderate benignant of audiogram tuning, truthful amplification is dictated exclusively by the measurement and mode settings.

When you play media connected your telephone oregon instrumentality a dependable call, the Hear OTC slips rapidly and seamlessly into Bluetooth mode. This disables each of the controls mentioned successful the erstwhile paragraph, including measurement settings, which are taken implicit by your device’s audio measurement settings. Unfortunately, this besides means that sound cancellation features aren’t disposable successful Bluetooth mode—a large missed opportunity. What does footwear in, however, is an equalizer diagnostic disposable done JLab’s app. The equalizer has a accepted slider interface for 10 frequence bands, and it’s worthwhile to walk immoderate clip tweaking it to your liking; the Hear’s bass effect isn’t the champion by default and it benefits from a small upgrading here.