Review: Elehear Beyond Pro

In the world of hearing aids, size is second only to audio quality. Manufacturers regularly tout when they shave a few hundredths of a gram off a model, and many jockey for top position as “the smallest hearing aid on the market.”

Never mind any of that, Elehear said in 2024 when it released its Elehear Beyond. At 4.75 grams, the devices were some of the largest I’ve ever tested (nearly double the weight of some competing models), which made them cumbersome and uncomfortable, a major theme in my review. Recently, Elehear announced the Beyond Pro. Back to the drawing board with a slimmer, lighter profile, right? Nope: At 4.73 grams, the Beyond Pro hearing aids look and feel functionally identical to the original. The hardware looks nearly the same—the upgrades are under the hood.

New Algorithm

Photograph: Chris Null

I’ll start with what’s new. Most of it revolves around audio processing, with a new algorithm that Elehear says improves speech intelligibility by 30 percent and “eliminates muffled, distorted, and sharp tones.” The frequency range over which the hearing aids work has expanded from 125 Hz to 7,000 Hz to 125 Hz to 8,500 Hz, and there’s a new music mode designed to improve both live music and streaming experiences. Naturally, the price has changed too, from $399 for the Beyond to $599 for the Beyond Pro.

Out of the box, I was shocked to find that audio quality was rather dismal: scratchy and filled with gravelly hiss, and rather bombastic when listening to both live speech and recorded media. My solution to this was to dial down the volume level quite a bit—but anything above level four on the 19-step volume scale in the Elehear app led to so much static that I couldn’t even think straight.

A firmware update arrived just as I was ready to give up, and thankfully, this provided a major improvement. The staticky hiss was still present after the update, but it was far less noticeable, and I was able to crank the volume up to level seven or eight without being inundated with background noise. The update also evened out various frequencies so that talking to my wife no longer made it sound like she was yelling at me, as well as making my own voice more tolerable.

Photograph: Chris Null

I don’t have the original Elehear Beyond hearing aids on hand anymore, but I would agree that there have been some improvements to audio quality—though at high levels of amplification, the static and hiss issues remain overwhelming. As with the old Beyonds, volume can be adjusted per ear in the app or with the rockers on the back of both hearing aids.

Just like the original, the Beyond Pro is not tunable, but you can use the app to adjust a sort of bass/treble “tone” effect and adjust noise cancellation (now knocked down from the previous eight levels to five, which is still plenty). In addition to the new Music mode, environmental modes for Restaurant, TV, and General use are preloaded—along with four extra modes you can set yourself. There’s not a lot of variation among these modes, but I will say that Elehear sounds far better with music playback than most other pure hearing aids (i.e., not hearing aid/earbud combos) I’ve reviewed, thanks to a much better bass response. Phone calls over the Beyond Pro hearing aids were also crisp and clear.

Hearing Test

Photograph: Chris Null

The Beyond Pro hearing aids now include a basic hearing test, but this is really just for your edification and can’t be used to tune the hearing aid settings. It’s a standard ping test at various frequencies and volumes, and after I completed the 10-minute experience, I was given results that stated, “The test results indicate potential [sic] hearing loss” in each ear and no guidance on how to manage that loss.

One additional feature is a tinnitus mode that I didn’t test because I don’t suffer from tinnitus. However, some previously available features like the remote sound capture system and a built-in audio translation system have been jettisoned from the app. (Correction: These features are actually still available, just relocated in the app.) There’s no way to adjust directional listening anymore, either. Battery life is specified at an impressive 20 hours—it’s difficult to gauge perfectly but that was roughly accurate in my testing, with the (naturally) oversize case providing extra juice for four recharges.

Ultimately, while Elehear’s quality advances are heartening, its lack of attention to industrial design is not. The hearing aids became uncomfortable after a couple of hours of use each time I tried them, especially when I was wearing my glasses (always). As I noted before, the size of a hearing aid may be second only to its audio quality, but it’s a really, really important second.