We put OTC hearing aids from top brands like Apple, Eargo, Lexie, and Sennheiser through rigorous tests to find out which ones work best and are easiest to use
Our tests of OTC hearing aids employed professional audiology equipment, CR’s user experience experts, and panelists with hearing loss.
By Catherine Roberts
Hearing aids have been available over the counter for a few years now. That means that for people with mild to moderate hearing loss—which is the majority of folks with any hearing loss—accessing hearing aids has gotten a lot easier.
Or at least it has in theory. The flip side of being able to get hearing aids over the counter is that you don’t necessarily have the same level of support with your aids as you would have if you’d gotten prescription aids from an audiologist or another hearing care provider. That can make it tough for people to figure out which OTC hearing aids are right for them, and which are worth buying. While OTC hearing aids are usually cheaper than prescription ones, some still carry a hefty price tag of $1,000 or more per pair.
That’s where CR comes in. For the first time, we’ve brought OTC hearing aids into our labs to evaluate them thoroughly for their audio performance and usability, which can help you shop with confidence. We’ve also recruited a panel of people with hearing loss to test them in various scenarios. (Read more about how we test, below.)
One important piece of advice: Take advantage of the trial period for whichever OTC hearing aid you choose, says Kathleen Havelah, who led CR’s OTC hearing aid testing. “As soon as you get them, start using them,” she says, including contacting customer support to see whether it’s responsive and helpful. Hearing aids can take time to get used to wearing—especially for first-time users—so give yourself as much of the trial period as possible to determine whether they’re a good fit. If they’re not working out, return them—that’s exactly what the trial period is for.
Here are details on five of our top-rated OTC hearing aids. For more on different types of hearing aids, see our buying guide, or access our full ratings of 14 over-the-counter hearing aids.
Lexie B2 Plus Powered by Bose Self-fitting OTC Hearing Aids
Our top-rated OTC hearing aid, Lexie’s B2 Plus earns excellent marks for ease of use, performance, and sound quality. It’s a self-fitting hearing aid, which means you can use the accompanying app to tailor its settings to your particular hearing loss. It also offers several preset programs. Settings can be controlled through an app or via switches on the device itself. Panelists found this receiver-in-canal style aid to be comfortable and felt confident using it. It did an especially good job of improving understanding of movie and TV dialogue, though its performance in improving speech understanding in a noisy environment was less impressive. Its sound quality is high, though it does produce some noisy interference in loud environments. Nice features include a discreet profile (even with a unit that sits behind the ear), the ability to stream phone calls, and a rechargeable battery that can last up to 18 hours. One small downside: It was slightly more difficult to identify the right and left aids than with other models we tested.
Soundbright Discovery
Soundbright’s Discovery model earns top marks for sound quality and performance, plus high marks for ease of use. It’s our top-rated non-self-fitting hearing aid model. Setting up and using the hearing aid is very easy with helpful directions. Users can control the volume and select from several preset programs using either a connected smartphone app or controls on the device itself. You can stream both phone calls and music directly to the hearing aids. Our panelists found wearing this device to be comfortable, and although the aid’s hardware sits behind the ear, they noted that it is still relatively discreet. It’s rechargeable with a battery that lasts up to 17 hours. This hearing aid provides small improvements in hearing speech in noisy environments and in hearing TV audio, and the overall quality of its amplified sound is strong.
Eargo SE
Eargo’s SE earns very high marks in all three main categories of our tests. It’s a self-fitting hearing aid, which means you can use the accompanying app to tailor its settings to your particular hearing loss. It also offers several preset programs. Setup is easy, though somewhat less intuitive than other models we tested, and settings can be changed only via the app, not on the device itself. As is common with very small completely-in-canal hearing aids, the Eargo SE doesn’t have phone call or music streaming capabilities—the trade-off is that it’s nearly invisible when worn. It’s rechargeable with a battery that lasts up to 16 hours. Our panelists found that it provided some improvement in hearing speech in a noisy environment, and minimal improvement in understanding movie/TV dialogue. The Eargo SE does reduce background noise particularly well, and it offers excellent sound quality. Notably, the SE scores slightly higher in our tests than Eargo’s other model, the 8, which retails at about $1,000 more per pair than the SE.
Eargo 8
The Eargo 8, also a self-fitting hearing aid that offers several preset programs, scored very similarly to the SE across several areas. And our panelists found that it offered slightly more improvement in hearing speech in a noisy environment and in understanding TV dialogue than the SE. But it also performed slightly worse than the SE on a couple of important tests. For one thing, it underperformed on our test for frequency range (how wide a range of frequencies, or pitches, the hearing aid can amplify), slightly missing our benchmark for amplifying high pitches. It also produced slightly noisier interference in loud environments than the SE. The two models are quite similar in terms of the features they offer (neither can stream music or calls), but Eargo says that the 8 can automatically change settings based on the sound environment it detects (we didn’t test this feature). The 8 also charges a bit faster than the SE. Overall, though, our testers suggest most people try out the SE first, since it outperforms the 8 at a significantly lower price point.
Yeasound RIC800
Yeasound’s RIC800 model earns especially high marks for performance and ease of use, and does well in our sound quality tests as well. Technically, the Yeasound is not a self-fitting hearing aid, since it hasn’t received FDA clearance to be marketed in that way. While users have the option to take a hearing test and apply the results to the device’s programming, this is not part of the required setup for the hearing aid. Users can instead decide to simply select from several preset programs. Setup is easy, though slightly less intuitive than other models we tested, and the right and left aid are somewhat difficult to distinguish. Volume can be easily controlled from the app and from the device itself, and you can stream phone calls and music directly to the hearing aids. The company touts its AI-powered noise reduction, and we found this did work well: The hearing aid provided significant improvement for hearing speech in noisy environments as well as in hearing TV audio. One downside is that this aid produced some noticeable noisy interference in loud environments. Its rechargeable battery should last up to 31 hours.
Sennheiser All-Day Clear Slim
Sennheiser’s All-Day Clear Slim earns top marks for its ease of use, and high marks for performance and sound quality. It’s a self-fitting hearing aid, which means you can use the accompanying app to tailor its settings to your particular hearing loss. Setup is easy, and it also offers several preset programs, which you can select from the app or from the device itself. This receiver-in-canal style hearing aid reduces noise well, and it offers significant improvement in understanding movie/TV dialogue and in understanding speech in a noisy environment. It’s comfortable and discreet, and panelists told us they felt they could wear this model more frequently. It has great sound quality, except that it creates more noisy interference in loud environments than some other models we tested. It uses a rechargeable battery that lasts for up to 16 hours, and it can stream both music and phone calls.
How CR Tests OTC Hearing Aids
Our evaluation of hearing aids was designed with input from professional audiologists and included feedback from people with hearing loss. We score OTC hearing aids on three main characteristics: ease of use, performance, and sound quality.
To rate each hearing aid’s ease of use, our usability expert evaluates its ease of setup and operation, and the ease of using the smartphone app if the hearing aid connects to one. To evaluate a hearing aid’s performance, one group of panelists provides feedback on comfort. A separate panel of people with some mild to moderate hearing loss uses it to take a series of listening tests.
We also test each hearing aid’s noise-filtering capabilities using a hearing aid testing device (a standard piece of equipment used by audiologists to make sure hearing aids work as they should for their patients). We use this same device to measure each aid’s sound quality, putting it through a variety of tests designed to assess specs such as the maximum output, frequencies amplified, and the level of interference or “harmonic distortion” the hearing aid produces, which can muddy the sound you hear.
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