Jabra Enhance Select 300 Hearing Aids Review: Some of the Best We’ve Tested

I’ve been protecting hearing aids for WIRED for practically three years now, and I recurrently speak to customers and prospects about them after I put on them in public. Regardless of what I’m testing, one model identify has constantly and repeatedly popped up throughout that point: Jabra.

The Danish model has an extended historical past making a spread of audio gear, however I’ve at all times related it largely with the Bluetooth headset craze of the aughts. The model made an early entrance into the over-the-counter listening to help market (by way of an acquisition), and it hasn’t let up since, releasing new OTC fashions at a gentle clip.

The newest of these is the Jabra Enhance Select 300, the model’s smallest and most superior mannequin but. You wouldn’t actually comprehend it simply from the look of the aids. These are pretty normal behind-the-ear fashions that, whereas fairly small (2.64 grams every), don’t provide any apparent surprises. The demure grey chassis sits near the again of the ear and snakes a silver cable to the ear canal. Each help carries a single button on its reverse.

Jabra front-loads rather a lot of the buy course of to make sure your aids arrive preconfigured. You can take an internet listening to check or, as I did, add knowledgeable audiogram; both possibility permits Jabra’s audiologists to tune the product appropriately earlier than it’s shipped. The firm additionally asks you to take a prolonged medical questionnaire to rule out any hearing-related medical issues earlier than sending out the product. Eventually, the digital chatter can get just a little tiresome: During the purchasing course of, Jabra even asks about your credit standing and suggests a month-to-month fee plan for its lowest-priced product in the event you say your credit score is trash. Once you do place an order, Jabra barrages you with introductory emails and invitations you to schedule an orientation with an audiologist to stroll you thru the {hardware} and the app. Admittedly, some of that is useful—particularly the Zoom orientation—however Jabra may stand to pump the breaks on the auto-mailer a bit.

There’s a lot to discover as soon as your listening to aids arrive. For instance, in the event you aren’t certain which kind of ear ideas are greatest for you, you’ll have ample room to experiment, as a result of the firm sends seven totally different baggies of them to check out, together with open, closed, and tulip-style ideas in a mess of sizes. I counted 70 totally different ideas in whole, and I’ve little doubt that Jabra would fortunately ship extra if I requested.

With ideas put in (I normally check with open ideas), I discovered that getting the aids located on my ears was made a bit simpler because of a pinging sound that performs—Jabra calls it Smart Start—while you’re guiding the receivers into your ear canal. Controls are as fundamental as they arrive: the button on the proper help turns the quantity up for each aids, the one on the left turns quantity down, and both one cycles via the applications—4 in whole—in the event you maintain it down for a pair of seconds.

Naturally you’ll get much more out of the listening to aids in the event you join your set to a cellular app, and Jabra really has two apps to select from. The Enhance Pro app comes up first in the app retailer, however the Enhance Select app is newer. They work about the identical manner, however since the Enhance Select is newer I’ll write largely about it. Primarily you’ll use the app to maneuver amongst the 4 modes—All Around, Restaurant, Music, and Outdoor—all of that are self-explanatory. Each mode has additional choices related to it; for many you may choose between “noise filter” to mute ambient sounds or “speech clarity” to spice up conversational quantity. These will be additional custom-made thanks to a few equalizer sliders similar to bass, center, and treble frequencies. Volume will be set globally or individually per ear in the app as effectively. Of particular observe: Any customizations you make to applications apart from the All Around mode are reset to defaults as soon as the listening to aids are put again into the charging case.