Kingwell Melodia Hearing Aids Review: Unique and Affordable

In use as a hearing aid, the Melodia has two modes—throughout and “hear in noise,” which is designed for louder settings. Each have been moderately efficient, however I had the very best outcomes with the aids in quieter settings, because the noise discount characteristic—tunable to a few completely different ranges—tended to dam out extra important seems like voices when dialed up. With noise discount at a minimal, I encountered a relentless little bit of barely-there background hum and a noticeable contact of echo.

Nevertheless, the most important subject I had with the Melodia aids was that I needed to flip the quantity all the way in which as much as most to get a lot of an impression, one thing I not often encounter on different aids. The Kingwell app has an in-app system to ask for assist in case your listening to expertise isn’t good. A tech assist agent shortly prompt resetting my audiogram settings with numbers 10 factors larger throughout the board, amongst different fixes. This did assist with total quantity, however the echo impact acquired worse, with audio seeming to flux out and in, up and down in stage—an issue which may make you are feeling slightly loopy over time.

As streaming earbuds, the Melodia items sounded nice, at the very least with music: Nice instrumental depth, strong however not thumping bass, and crystal-clear vocals throughout the board. Unusually, I bumped into a brand new subject when watching a dialog-heavy movie with the aids: Voices didn’t appear to be in sync between each ears, creating extra echo. Additional testing after restarting the aids by placing them again within the case and altering modes to listening to support mode and again appeared to alleviate the problem to a point.

Sadly, Kingwell’s noise discount mode solely works in listening to support mode. The truth is, you may’t even management quantity to the aids within the Kingwell app if you’re in streaming mode—though, bizarrely, you may nonetheless work together with quantity sliders for every ear that don’t really operate. You’ll want to make use of your cellphone’s quantity controls as a substitute.

The promised battery life appears formidable, and streaming actually does some injury to the cost stage: An hour of strong streaming had knocked the reported battery life down by a 3rd. Kingwell says that the nine-hour lifespan is legitimate for listening to support mode solely, and also you’ll get nearer to 6 hours in streaming mode. However even that appears optimistic.

Whereas the Melodia listening to aids are slightly tough across the edges, they’re reasonably efficient and surprisingly snug for long-term put on. I used to be in a position to hold them in for hours on finish with out a lot as an itch, a declare I can’t make for a lot of different aids. On the sub-$500 stage, they’re not my favourite aids, however they’re at the very least value a pay attention.