Sony CRE-E10 Self-Fitting OTC Hearing Aids for Mild to Moderate Hearing Loss, Prescription-Grade Sound Quality, Comfortable Earbud Design, Bluetooth Enabled for iOS, and Rechargeable Battery, Black

I tried Audien Atom X's, but they made background noise worse, not better. Then tried these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FT2N3XCS, which were somewhat better, but not worth keeping (I returned them). On the assumption that you get what you pay for, and based on some reviews on YT and elsewhere, I bought these Sony's. They are drastically better than the above. The app is certainly useable, but could use some improvements when it comes to saving custom settings and maintaining the settings between wearings. As it stands right now, each time you put the hearing aids in they are at the default settings. The defaults are pretty good, but I would prefer my custom settings stay set until I change them. The other thing is that the closed sleeves that come with the hearing aids work, but you get a "plugged up" feeling that is unnatural. Not being able to hear yourself very well also tends to degrade the experience. Although Sony doesn't mention the availability of vented sleeves for the CRE-E10, the ones they sell for the CRE-C10 fit perfectly and fix those issues. I'm now very happy with the E-10s using these vented sleeves: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BHVFHH5C. Sony is really doing the buyer a disservice by not including vented sleeves with the E10s, nor promoting the use of them with the E10s. 2026-01-11 UPDATE: though I really like the E10s, I decided to try the Sony CRE-C20s, which are much smaller - mostly invisible in-ear-canal style. They lack Bluetooth support of any kind, and instead use ultrasonic communication between the app and hearing aids. Since I have an Android phone, the E10s Bluetooth streaming was of no use to me, so I didn't lose anything trying the C20s. So happy I tried the C20s. Even more comfortable than the E10s since there's no part of them potentially pushing on your outer ear. Also, the settings in the app are "sticky" - I don't have to re-set them every morning when I put the hearing aids in. Regarding sound quality and noise reduction, they are at least as good as the E10s, and probably a little better. I've tested them in every situation, and most importantly for me, noisy restaurants, and I can easily hear the conversation at my table. However, as with the E10s, I highly recommend buying vented sleeves since that makes the sound much more natural. Whereas with the E10s I needed medium-size vented sleeves, with the C20s I needed to go with small ones (tried medium first and they kept sliding out of my ear canal, though still worked ok). Note that the vented sleeves for the E10s and C20s are not cross-compatible - the E10 vented sleeves do not fit on the C20s, and probably vice versa (I didn't check). These are the ones for the C20: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9R5R1BZ.

13 months ago I purchased these Sony hearing aids, avoiding "real" hearing aids at 3 times the price. Silly me. Despite several changes of the silicone ear sleeves, they fell out of my ears more than once every day. The sleeves made my ear canals itch. The hearing aids have been retrieved from the kitchen sink garbage disposal and as I empty the dishwasher. The Sound app used to adjust volume is not robust. As I shopped for replacement hearing aids it occured to me that perhaps high quality ear buds could be used as hearing aids. They can! I have a Samsung Galaxy S24+ phone, so I started with that in mind and found Samsung Galaxy Buds FE True Wireless Bluetooth Earbuds for $65. Upon arrival the buds bluetooth-paired perfectly with my phone. The Samsung "Wear" app was easily downloaded and installed from Google Play. The most important configuration change that I needed to make was to change the phone's sound to Ambient. The complete directions for connecting and configuring are available online via Googling the obvious key words. I am able to answer my phone by tapping an earbud, along with other tap sequences to raise or lower volume. While I have been outside today bending over to pull weeds for several hours, the earbuds have not fallen out. The silicone ear pieces do not make my ears itch - most likely because they do not extend deeply into my ear canals. Fun fact: the ear buds Translation feature live-translates conversations with Spanish-speaking callers. (The frosting on the cake has been adding a bluetooth Samsung Galaxy 4 (or 5, 6 or 7) watch, which works with my phone to track sleep quality and report on snoring - tho not officially sleep apnea - when used with the Samsung Health app)

I've had these less than 24 hours. I purchased them to compare to my current hearing aids that cost more than twice as much (and that I rarely wear). This is a preliminary review and I'll update it when I've run these things through there paces. 1. Fit - great. My current CIC aids constantly work themselves out of my ears - I've tried every type and size of sleeve available, but it happens; eating, running, talking. Anything that moves my jaw or bounces it around works them out. The Sony CRE-E10s stay comfortable and firmly in place regardless of what I'm doing. I usually have trouble with ear bud style devices due to surgery on my right ear - they tend to fall out, but these Sony aids stay. Very happy about that. 2. Setup - RTFI! If you follow the instructions carefully, you'll get these things setup fairly easily. Important - the app doesn't use Bluetooth to send instructions to the hearing aids; it uses high frequency sound from your phone speaker. 3. Sound - good. As good as my more expensive hearing aids and as good as the Eargo aids that I had a couple of years ago. Music from our house speaker system sounds good. I often get distortion from my CIC aids when listening to music or TV. Doesn't seem to be a problem with the Sonys. There is more mid-frequency boost (2k hz) than I need, but will be playing with the fine tuning for that. The aids come with six pre-programmed sound profiles (pg 77 of the user guide), but they are apparently not selectable by the user. I'm guessing the setup process selects the profile for you based on your response to the setup hearing test. I'd really like to try profile three, but not sure how to get there. The frequency response range is good 125 - 8000 hz (Eargo aids are only 250- 5500). 12 ms of latency though (vs 5.6 ms for Eargo) - guess I wasn't wrong last night when I perceived words lagging lips while watching those Law and Order reruns last night. To be fair, there is some latency built into the TV audio processing as well so I was likely dealing with layered latency. 3. Streaming. These are not go-to devices for streaming music. Okay for phone conversations, but bass response is missing when streaming music. That's weird, because bass comes through okay when listening to external speakers. Clearly the devices can produce bass sounds - so perhaps a software update can fix the lack of bass while streaming. Listening to music reminds of listening to music on those small hand-held transistor radios that were so ubiquitous in the 1960s. 4. The app. I see a universal program but no ability to select or create other programs? Maybe I'm missing something. The app is almost identical to other hearing aid apps with regard to the user interface. An ability to select or create other listening profiles in the app would be good. How about a graphic equalizer for music. I believe these hearing aids have more capability than the app is allowing me to squeeze out of them.