Cearvol’s Wave Design Fights Off Hearing Loss and Aging Stigma

Source: Wired

Alas, enhancing ambient audio just isn’t the Wave Lite’s forte. Across all of its modes and various settings, I was only able to achieve a moderate improvement to my hearing. While the units can get very loud—keeping hiss to a minimum even at higher volume levels—the quality of the audio is a miss here.

Voices regularly sounded tinny and thin during my testing, while sharper staccato sounds like keyboard clacks and footsteps could be overpowering. Instead of filtering out low‑level background as I would have preferred, the Wave Lites actually boosted that audio considerably.

The app includes a system to dial down the volume of your own voice. Although it works to a degree, I needed my own voice tempered even more than the highest setting allowed.

Ultimately, my hearing experience was often better with the Wave Lite hearing aids in than with them out, but conversations and movie‑watching were not measurably improved no matter how I tweaked the app settings.

Limited Lifespan

[Image: Cearvol Wave Lite Hearing Aids closed case]

Photograph: Christopher Null

Cearvol claims a battery life of 6.5 hours per charge; I achieved close to that in my testing—5 hours and 45 minutes, with a mix of ambient listening and streaming. The case adds another 15.5 hours of running time on a full charge. (Cearvol says it is extending those times, and upcoming production batches will have an 8‑hour battery life, with 20 extra hours in the case.)

Speaking of the case, spin it around and you’ll find a curious feature I haven’t seen on a hearing‑aid product: a 3.5 mm AUX port that lets you connect the case directly to an audio source. The audio feeds into the case, which then transmits it to the hearing aids. It’s a strange addition that may see limited use, but it isn’t a drawback.

For $299, the Cearvol Wave Lite system isn’t a massive investment considering the inflated pricing endemic to the hearing‑aid market. Unfortunately, while it has a few bright spots, the audio assistance provided wasn’t nuanced enough for me.