Sennheiser All-Day Clear Slim
Product Review
As the decades roll by, I’m pretty sure my hearing isn’t as good as it was when I was in my twenties. So I’ve experimented with over the counter “hearing aids”.
At first I tried some of the amplifiers. These are fairly crude devices that simply amplify sound (no matter what they might say about enhancing clarity, noise reduction or whatever). These generally cost $25 to $400. Certainly some are probably better than others and they get better with time, but they are still unsophisticated devices. I’ve found no difference in actual sound quality between $50 ones vs $325 ones.
Are amplifiers useful? Yes, I believe they can be but overall I find them more bother than help.
A friend bought some Lexie hearing aids and that motivated me to explore the world of $1,000 hearing aids. I’d been told that if you wanted hearing aids (that weren’t just crap) you really did have to go to an audiologist and buy professional ones ($3,000+). That may have been true a few years ago, but I don’t believe it’s true anymore.
This week I bought some Sennheiser All-Day Clear Slim hearing aids for $1,100. Wow! My first impression is very good.
Sennheiser was bought by Sonova (an established hearing aid company). My previous experience with Sennheiser headphones was the reason I chose Sennheiser. I trust their quality.
Sonova + Sennheiser is a bit late to the over the counter hearing aid market but that’s considered an advantage because they could observe the mistakes competitors made.
There are two products: All-Day Clear and All-Day Clear Slim
No, the “slim” model is not just a slimmer version, it has a completely different design for how the earbud sits in your ear. My preference is not for shoving earbuds into my ear. I’ve never liked that kind of earbuds (even though they are the most popular). Thus I chose the “slim” and I don’t regret it. These are far more comfortable! Also I should mention these work well while wearing glasses (which the amplifiers didn’t do very well).
The audio quality is excellent so I won’t write much about that. Ease of use and customization to personal preferences (or needs) are where the Sennheiser really shine.
Each hearing aid only has a single button and an LED. The LED shows charging status when in the charging pod. The single button allows for basic operation: press the button on the right hearing aid and volume increases, press the button on the left hearing aid and volume decreases. Simple! No confusing fiddling with multiple tiny buttons, and no need to remove them from your ears. In my opinion it’s still far easier to use the phone app for adjusting volume.
The Bluetooth connection to your phone allows usage for phone calls or streaming music. If you walk out of Bluetooth range the music will cut out, so you do need to carry your phone around with you. Hearing aid functionality works fine without Bluetooth so they still work fine as hearing aids when walking around (without your phone).
Where the Bluetooth plus phone app really shines is allowing you to adjust bass, midrange and treble independently to suit your needs and preferences. You can’t do this with just “amplifiers” (or at least I haven’t seen any that allow this). Bluetooth will automatically “disconnect” (from the app) to preserve battery life, everything remains working fine when this happens but it can take a few moments to reconnect if you wish to adjust settings.
The range of adjustment is not large, it’s pretty intelligent. For me it’s enough to go from quiet to nice volume. You don’t seem to be able to “blast” your ears with high volume. Overall the experience is very natural, it’s just like suddenly your hearing is better, not louder!
The wizard for configuring them is quite easy to use and works well.
Tip: If you find that the volume is different in each ear, unless you truly have unbalanced hearing, most likely you simply have the hearing aids positioned differently in each ear. Fiddle a bit and see if adjusting how they sit in your ears solves the issue.
The charging pod definitely could be designed better. It’s opaque so you can’t see the hearing aids when it is closed, thus to check charging status you need to open the pod.
The app could use improvement but it has some wise designs too. The main screen is simply a volume control. This makes it very easy to use. Access to other features is not difficult. You can “split” and adjust left and right volume separately but I’ve found no need for that. The equalizer (bass, midrange and treble) is extremely valuable to achieve an enjoyable experience.
What puzzles me is that I thought there were a lot of different sound modes / programs but it seems there really are just two: “Automatic” (you use the wizard to set this up for your own needs) and “Streaming Music”. Each mode can have the base, midrange and treble independently adjusted.
A delightful surprise is that wearing them while using headset headphones for work meetings results in surprisingly clearer speech! This definitely improves my ability to understand my co-workers talking! That’s worth the price alone!
Sennheiser recommends wearing the hearing aids all day long, every day. Normally I would blow that off as I live alone and don’t “need” them, but they might actually win me over to wearing them all the time. This is where the comfort of the “slim” design really helps.
Update: Even with the “wind noise” feature enabled, if the wind is in your face, these do not handle wind noise very well. You can of course put your hands up to your face and block the wind.