Cearvol Wave Design Fights Hearing Loss and Aging

Unfortunately, audio amplification is not the Wave Lite’s forte. For all its colors and different settings, I managed to get a little more control over my ears. As we’ve seen, while the units can get really loud – while still sounding a little teary even at high volume – it’s the sound quality that’s missing here.

Voices always sounded tinny and sparse during my tests, while sharp staccato sounds like keyboard strokes and footsteps could be the best. And instead of filtering out the low end like I would have liked, the Wave Lites instead amplified the sound even more.

Finally, the program has a system that allows you to sing your own voice, and while this works slowly, I needed my voice to sound better than the one offered at the highest level.

In the end, my hearing experience was generally better with the Wave Lite hearing aids than when I took them out, but I found that conversations and watching videos were not as good no matter how much I adjusted the software.

A Little Life

Photo: Christopher Null

Cearvol claims a battery life of 6.5 hours per charge; I achieved close to this in my test – 5 hours and 45 minutes, with a combination of surround and motion listening. This case also adds 15.5 hours of running time to the full charge. (Cearvol says it’s expanding those times, and that future models will have 8 hours of battery life, with 20 hours of additional battery life.)

As for the case, spin it around and you’ll find an interesting feature that I don’t think I’ve ever seen on a hearing aid: a 3.5mm AUX port that lets you connect the case to an audio source. These pipes are heard in the case, which sends directly to the hearing aids. It’s a strange addition to a product that I suspect will be used a lot, but it’s nothing to worry about.

At $299, the Cearvol Wave Lite system is not a huge investment considering the rising prices in the hearing aid market. But unfortunately, although it has a few bright spots, unfortunately the audio support provided was not enough for me.