Sony’s CRE-C10 in-ear listening to aids are stunners in each dimension apart from one: The tiny in-the-ear units depend on replaceable listening to assist batteries as an alternative of an built-in, rechargeable one. Whereas some folks might recognize replaceable batteries—for much longer run time, no want to attend for a recharge—I’ve heard nothing however complaints about them. For probably the most half, folks now appear to be gravitating to listening to aids that don’t require fumbling with miniature batteries as soon as every week, after which worrying if the canine will swallow the spent cell.
With its new CRE-C20 listening to aids, Sony corrects this situation, and it does so in type: The brand new listening to aids look almost an identical to the successful C10 aids, however the hatch for a replaceable battery has been changed with a small contact that permits its inner cell to recharge in its new case.
Once I say nothing else has modified on the appear and feel of the C20 listening to aids, I imply it. To the untrained eye, they’re virtually inconceivable to inform aside from their predecessors, and so they nonetheless vanish extremely nicely into the ear canal because of their small dimension. The load of every assist stays the identical at exactly 1.34 grams.
{Photograph}: Christopher Null
For higher or worse, little has modified underneath the hood as nicely. For context, Sony touts one of many greatest upgrades as having six current listening to settings as an alternative of 4 like on the C10s. Notice: These aren’t environmental applications however quite frequency-tuning settings preconfigured to work for the commonest audiograms.
You’ll be able to’t manually choose one among these listening to presets. The settings are chosen solely after you’re taking Sony’s in-app listening to take a look at, and the person doesn’t know which one they’re getting. A modestly up to date model of Sony’s Listening to Management app walks you thru an in depth configuration process that sends pings to every ear; the person counts what number of pings are heard with every spherical. After about 10 minutes, the app chooses the listening to setting it deems finest to your explicit type of listening to loss.
In case your assigned settings don’t work, you’ll be able to retake the take a look at or experiment with Sony’s fine-tuning function, which helps you to register a grievance (“My very own voice sounds bizarre,” maybe), after which anticipate a repair to be delivered to the aids. There’s a quantity slider and a “sound steadiness” possibility that lets you choose between “extra sharp” and “much less sharp,” which is principally efficient for flippantly tweaking the best way sure consonants hit your ears.
Skilled assist is offered freed from cost earlier than or after buy too. It’s all efficient, however largely the identical as earlier than. The underside line is that, in comparison with the C10s, I doubt most customers will discover any distinction in sound high quality. That the C20s nonetheless sound nice isn’t any shock: The underlying processing know-how, created by Signia mother or father WS Audiology, has not basically modified.
Just like the C10s, there aren’t any Bluetooth options on these listening to aids. They join together with your cellphone through inaudible, high-pitched indicators, whether or not you’re strolling by setup or doing one thing so simple as altering the quantity. (There aren’t any on-device controls, both.) The app can’t even let you know the battery life remaining on the listening to aids: Punch a button within the app and also you anticipate pings to be despatched to every ear. The extra pings, the extra juice you’ve gotten remaining. Whereas I encountered some complications getting all of this to work once I examined the C10 aids, the C20 aids arrange with out a hitch—though once more, the method is quite gradual as a result of ultrasonic backwards and forwards.
The dearth of Bluetooth makes for a blunt option to do issues—and it means you’ll be able to’t stream media or take cellphone calls straight by the headphones—however it does maintain the {hardware} small and svelte. As with the C10 aids, the C20 aids are snug for long-term put on, each bodily and aurally. As soon as adjusted correctly, they gave me a near-perfect quantity of assist for my delicate listening to loss, nearly freed from hiss. I hardly ever even wanted to regulate the quantity, besides in louder environments. Once more, there aren’t any environmental settings that compensate for issues like crowds or wind noise, however I discovered the all-around protocol to work nicely in every single place.
