In use as a listening to help, the Melodia has two modes—throughout and “hear in noise,” which is designed for louder settings. Each have been fairly efficient, however I had the perfect outcomes with the aids in quieter settings, because the noise discount function—tunable to 3 completely different ranges—tended to dam out extra important appears 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.
Nonetheless, the largest concern I had with the Melodia aids was that I needed to flip the quantity all the best way as much as most to get a lot of an affect, one thing I hardly ever 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 rapidly steered resetting my audiogram settings with numbers 10 factors increased throughout the board, amongst different fixes. This did assist with total quantity, however the echo impact obtained worse, with audio seeming to flux out and in, up and down in stage—an issue which might make you are feeling slightly loopy over time.
As streaming earbuds, the Melodia models sounded nice, a minimum of with music: Nice instrumental depth, stable however not thumping bass, and crystal-clear vocals throughout the board. Unusually, I bumped into a brand new concern 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 help mode and again appeared to alleviate the problem to some extent.
{Photograph}: Christopher Null
Sadly, Kingwell’s noise discount mode solely works in listening to help mode. In truth, you may’t even management quantity to the aids within the Kingwell app whenever you’re in streaming mode—though, bizarrely, you may nonetheless work together with quantity sliders for every ear that don’t truly operate. You’ll want to make use of your telephone’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 stable streaming had knocked the reported battery life down by a 3rd. Kingwell says that the nine-hour lifespan is legitimate for listening to help 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 comfy for long-term put on. I used to be capable of maintain 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 a minimum of value a pay attention.
