Alas, enhancing ambient audio just isn’t the Wave Lite’s forte. Across all of its modes and various settings, I was only able to achieve a moderate improvement to my hearing. As noted, while the units can get very loud – while keeping hiss to a minimum even at higher volume levels – it’s the quality of the audio that’s a miss here.

Voices regularly sounded tinny and thin during my testing, while sharper staccato sounds like keyboard clacks and footsteps could be overpowering. And instead of filtering out low-level background as I would have preferred, the Wave Lites instead boosted the audio on that considerably.

Lastly, the app has a system to let you dial down the volume of your own voice, and while this works to a degree, I needed my own voice tempered even more than what was offered on the highest setting.

Ultimately, my hearing experience was often better with the Wave Lite hearing aids in than with them out, but I found conversations and movie-watching were not measurably improved no matter how I tweaked settings in the app.

Limited Lifespan

Photograph: Christopher Null

Cearvol claims a battery life of 6.5 hours per charge; I achieved close to that in my testing – 5 hours and 45 minutes, with a combination of ambient listening and streaming. The case adds another 15.5 hours of running time on a full charge. (Cearvol says that it is extending those times, and that upcoming production batches will have an 8-hour battery life, with 20 extra hours of life in the case.)

Speaking of the case, spin it around and you’ll find a curious feature I don’t think I’ve ever seen on a hearing aid product: A 3.5mm AUX port that lets you connect the case directly to an audio source. These pipes sound to the case, which then transmits it directly to the hearing aids. It’s a strange addition to the product that I doubt will see much use, but it’s not something to complain about.

For $299, the Cearvol Wave Lite system isn’t a massive investment considering the inflated pricing endemic to the hearing aid market. But unfortunately, while it has a few bright spots, unfortunately the audio assistance provided just wasn’t nuanced enough for me.