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At the start of the year, hearing aid brand Zepp Clarity announced a new program to try to encourage more of the millions of people with hearing loss to give hearing aids—and particularly Zepp Clarity’s aids—a spin. The idea: try before you buy, with no strings attached.
Zepp Clarity hasn’t rolled out that business model yet, and a spokesperson says there’s still no ETA for the launch. Meanwhile, Zepp Clarity is still selling aids on a pay-up-front basis, with a 60-day money-back guarantee offer. (That’s in line with most other over-the-counter hearing aid sellers, which typically have generous returns policies.)
The hearing aid hardware isn’t changing after the try-on plan goes live, and Zepp Clarity will continue to sell the three hearing aid models I’ve reviewed below after it does. They are all markedly different. What they have in common is the basics: All have rechargeable batteries and a case that recharges via USB-C, and they come with various open and closed ear tips. All of them work with the Zepp Clarity app (Android, iOS)—pay attention, because there are a lot of apps called “Zepp” out there—though the interface is different for each device. None of the aids let you upload an audiogram, so you’ll need to do all your tuning within the app. I tested all three—here’s what they’re like.
Zepp Clarity Omni
These are the only behind-the-ear hearing aids in the Zepp Clarity collection, and they’re the cheapest of the trio. They’re also—by far—the largest, weighing a massive 4.97 grams each, heavier even than the Elehear Beyond hearing aids and just shy of twice the weight of the Jabra Enhance Select 500. The large aids at least leave room for physical controls, with a volume up/down rocker on each (volume is controlled universally via either aid) and a multifunction button that can change the environmental mode or be used to stop/start streaming media.
Completing a basic hearing test in the app is mandatory during setup, after which each aid is programmed with one of six preset frequency-tuning configurations. These are somewhat blunt configurations that can’t be further refined, but for users with relatively mild hearing loss, these types of programs—which are commonplace in lower-cost competitors—usually get the job done well enough.
The listening experience is hit-or-miss. After configuring the aids to my hearing needs, I found their overall audio quality to be on the thin and tinny side, dulling a lot of the lower frequencies and making for a slightly unnatural aural experience. There was quite a bit of feedback while putting them on, but this settled down quickly after getting them situated in my ears. On the plus side, I found the aids to be nearly hiss-free, which goes a long way toward smoothing out any complaints about the way the aids sound.
The experience was roughly the same while using the aids to stream media: There’s no real bass response, so music and dialog both sound a little unnatural, with none of the depth needed to make for an enriching listening session. The aids do however include Auracast, should you find yourself in the presence of a compatible streaming source.
While the units carry a respectable 18-hour battery life—with another 65 hours of charge available through the compact yet quite tall case—they have one fatal flaw, and that’s their gigantic size. I’ve never tested a pair of behind-the-ear hearing aids that are this big and bulky. They’re heavy and quickly become uncomfortable on their own. When paired with eyeglasses, they were almost nonfunctional, unable to coexist behind my ears alongside my frames.
These aids were priced at $899 when I began my review but were promptly slashed to $399 by the time I filed it. That makes for an immensely more compelling purchasing calculus, though all the discounts in the world won’t get you around their distinct lack of comfort.
Rating: 6/10
Zepp Clarity One
A much different concept than the Omni, the Zepp Clarity One is an in-the-ear hearing aid designed with invisibility in mind. With a weight of just 1.06 grams per aid, the One hearing aids stand as some of the lightest I’ve ever tested, barely edged out by the 0.96-gram Ceretone Core One hearing aids.
They are, unfortunately, not a great experience. To start with, these aids do not work with or support Zepp’s hearing test, and configurability is extremely limited. The app allows you to create up to four listening programs, each configurable with four settings for bass and treble adjustment and three for volume. I suspect most users will end up using three of the programs to set the aids to each of the three available volume levels while leaving bass/treble the same across them all.
To switch among the programs, you have to tap your ear rather hard twice, and the program for each ear must be set separately. An audio prompt lets you know which program you’re on, but God help you if both ears are on Program 1 and you want to move to Program 4. In a public space, the sight of you repeatedly slapping yourself on either side of your head will undoubtedly draw stares.
Bizarrely, the Zepp app only interacts with the hearing aids while they are in the case. When out of the case, the app doesn’t do anything except instruct you to replace them so it can “retrieve your hearing aid information.” If you want to try different bass/treble/volume settings, you’ll have to keep swapping the aids between the case and your ears until you find settings you like.
And good luck on that front: The Zepp Clarity One aids are so limited in capabilities that I never found any setting that did me much good, though the level 2 volume and low-level bass and treble boosts were at least tolerable. At the highest volume level, I found the hearing aids close to unusable, creating a low-level hum that began to grate on the nerves after just a few minutes, while blasting loud noises like footsteps and keyboard taps. During parts of my testing, seemingly at random, the aids exhibited a terrifying amount of high-pitched feedback whenever the slightest noise was registered, making them all but unusable.
Battery life for the aids is specified at 17 hours of continuous use, and Zepp Clarity says the case adds up to two more weeks—336 hours—of additional capacity. Note that these aids cannot be used for streaming media or taking phone calls over a Bluetooth connection; they work with real-world listening only.
Like the Omni, these aids saw their price slashed, from $1,199 to $699, while I was working on the review. They’re still dramatically overpriced for what they do.
Rating: 2/10
Zepp Clarity Pixie
The Zepp Clarity Pixie hearing aids take a design cue from the One aids, with an in-the-ear design and a per-aid weight of just 1.17 grams. The similarities diverge from there, however, as the Pixie aids are more customizable, with features more in line with the Omni than the stripped-down One.
The Pixie aids support the Zepp hearing test. As I’d already taken it for the Omni, I was able to copy those settings over to the Pixie aids without having to take the test again (though I later did a retest anyway). The same six program options appear to be available to the Pixie as well as the Omni.
Zepp’s app for the Pixie is different from both the Omni and the One, offering a volume slider on one tab and eight preset environmental programs on another. These range from general to TV to restaurant to crowd.
I’d like to say that there’s a significant difference among these listening modes, but the best that I can suggest is that the main difference involves the amount of hiss and high-pitched feedback they suffer from. Much like the Zepp Clarity One aids, the Pixie aids feature frequent and random bouts of ear-piercing squeals that are impossible to ignore, even at the bare minimum volume. A layer of static underlies this, ranging from minimal to grating, which makes the listening experience even more unbearable. The amplification and clarity improvements otherwise aren’t bad, and in the absence of all that feedback they might make for a compelling product. Alas, I was never able to dial the noise down to an acceptable level.
The aids have no physical controls and rely on the same tap-your-ear method as described above to switch among up to three different environmental modes you select in the app (though one is always set as the default mode). The aids can’t be used for streaming via Bluetooth, though they do feature a phone setting that is supposed to make it easier to hear phone calls played over your handset’s speaker without removing the aids from your ears. The feedback issues unfortunately didn’t make that possible for me.
Battery life is specified at 17 hours per charge, with an extra 187 hours in the case. The case, incidentally, can be charged wirelessly in addition to the USB-C port.
The aids are comfortable enough physically, but so acoustically troubled as to make that largely irrelevant. As with the rest of Zepp’s aids, these were slashed in price from $1,999 to $999 while I was testing them. Compared to a similar product like the vastly superior Sony CRE-C20 aids at the same price, the calculus should be plainly obvious.
Rating: 4/10
