Elehear Delight Hearing Aids Review: Good Fit, Poor Sound

Source: Wired

Overview

The Elehear Delight hearing aids come pre‑configured with four additional environmental modes plus room for four custom modes. In practice, these settings made little difference to overall hearing clarity, regardless of the environment. Streaming media sounded fair but lacked bass and became unusable in loud settings.

Performance

• Quiet environments – The Delight system provided only minimal support, even when watching TV in a quiet room.
• Noisy environments – Amplified ambient sound overwhelmed conversations, making the aids ineffective.

Features

• Language translator – Simple on‑device translation.
• Environmental noise meter – Measures surrounding sound levels.
• Remote sound capture – Allows a phone’s microphone to pipe audio directly to the hearing aids.
• “Serene” soundscapes – 26 meditative background tracks (e.g., Waterfall, Cicadas, Cat) that can be played through the aids.

I found the bonus features more enjoyable than the core hearing support they provided.

[Image: Elehear Delight hearing aids])

Photograph: Chris Null

App Experience

• The Elehear app often requires manual reconnection to the hearing aids each time it is opened, even when Bluetooth is already active.
• Initial pairing was problematic: the left aid paired, but the right did not, necessitating several factory resets before both could connect reliably.

Design & Fit

If judged solely on design and fit, the Delight aids would receive near‑perfect scores. However, the promised AI‑powered audio engine with enhanced noise cancellation and amplification did not deliver noticeable benefits.

Verdict

While the design and ancillary features are impressive, the core hearing performance falls short, especially in noisy environments. Users who rely on precise audiogram tuning may find limited value, whereas those seeking simple amplification might experience modest improvement.