Sony’s CRE-C10 in-ear listening to aids are stunners in each dimension aside from one: The tiny in-the-ear units depend on replaceable listening to help batteries as an alternative of an built-in, rechargeable one. Whereas some individuals could 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, individuals 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 challenge, and it does so in fashion: The brand new listening to aids look practically an identical to the successful C10 aids, however the hatch for a replaceable battery has been changed with a small contact that enables its inside cell to recharge in its new case.
After 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 nearly unattainable to inform aside from their predecessors, they usually nonetheless vanish extremely effectively into the ear canal as a result of their small measurement. The burden of every help stays the identical at exactly 1.34 grams.
{Photograph}: Christopher Null
For higher or worse, little has modified below the hood as effectively. For context, Sony touts one of many largest upgrades as having six current listening to settings as an alternative of 4 like on the C10s. Notice: These aren’t environmental applications however fairly frequency-tuning settings preconfigured to work for the most typical audiograms.
You may’t manually choose one among these listening to presets. The settings are chosen solely after you are taking Sony’s in-app listening to check, and the consumer 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 consumer counts what number of pings are heard with every spherical. After about 10 minutes, the app chooses the listening to setting it deems greatest to your specific fashion of listening to loss.
In case your assigned settings don’t work, you possibly can retake the check or experiment with Sony’s fine-tuning characteristic, which helps you to register a criticism (“My own voice sounds weird,” maybe), after which await a repair to be delivered to the aids. There’s a quantity slider and a “sound balance” choice that lets you choose between “more sharp” and “less sharp,” which is especially efficient for calmly tweaking the best way sure consonants hit your ears.
Skilled help is out there 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 expertise, created by Signia mum or dad WS Audiology, has not essentially modified.
Just like the C10s, there are not 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 are not any on-device controls, both.) The app can’t even inform you the battery life remaining on the listening to aids: Punch a button within the app and also you await pings to be despatched to every ear. The extra pings, the extra juice you could have remaining. Whereas I encountered some complications getting all of this to work after I examined the C10 aids, the C20 aids arrange with no hitch—though once more, the method is fairly gradual as a result of ultrasonic backwards and forwards.
The shortage of Bluetooth makes for a blunt approach to do issues—and it means you possibly can’t stream media or take cellphone calls instantly 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 help for my gentle listening to loss, just about freed from hiss. I hardly ever even wanted to regulate the quantity, besides in louder environments. Once more, there are not any environmental settings that compensate for issues like crowds or wind noise, however I discovered the all-around protocol to work effectively in all places.
