I’ve been overlaying hearing aids for WIRED for practically three years now, and I frequently speak to customers and prospects about them once I put on them in public. Regardless of what I’m testing, one model title has constantly and repeatedly popped up throughout that point: Jabra.

The Danish model has an extended historical past making quite a lot of audio gear, however I’ve all the time related it largely with the Bluetooth headset craze of the aughts. The model made an early entrance into the over-the-counter listening to assist market (by way of an acquisition), and it hasn’t let up since, releasing new OTC fashions at a gentle clip.

The newest of those is the Jabra Enhance Select 300, the model’s smallest and most superior mannequin but. You wouldn’t actually understand it simply from the look of the aids. These are pretty customary behind-the-ear fashions that, whereas fairly small (2.64 grams every), don’t provide any apparent surprises. The demure grey chassis sits near the again of the ear and snakes a silver cable to the ear canal. Each assist carries a single button on its reverse.

Jabra front-loads a whole lot of the acquisition course of to make sure your aids arrive preconfigured. You can take a web based listening to take a look at or, as I did, add an expert audiogram; both choice permits Jabra’s audiologists to tune the product appropriately earlier than it’s shipped. The firm additionally asks you to take a prolonged medical questionnaire to rule out any hearing-related medical issues earlier than sending out the product. Eventually, the digital chatter can get a little bit tiresome: During the purchasing course of, Jabra even asks about your credit standing and suggests a month-to-month cost plan for its lowest-priced product in the event you say your credit score is trash. Once you do place an order, Jabra barrages you with introductory emails and invitations you to schedule an orientation with an audiologist to stroll you thru the {hardware} and the app. Admittedly, a few of that is useful—particularly the Zoom orientation—however Jabra might stand to pump the breaks on the auto-mailer a bit.

There’s lots to discover as soon as your listening to aids arrive. For instance, in the event you aren’t certain which sort of ear ideas are greatest for you, you’ll have ample room to experiment, as a result of the corporate sends seven completely different baggies of them to check out, together with open, closed, and tulip-style ideas in a large number of sizes. I counted 70 completely different ideas in complete, and I’ve little question that Jabra would fortunately ship extra if I requested.

With ideas put in (I normally take a look at with open ideas), I discovered that getting the aids located on my ears was made a bit simpler because of a pinging sound that performs—Jabra calls it Smart Start—when you are guiding the receivers into your ear canal. Controls are as primary as they arrive: the button on the correct assist turns the quantity up for each aids, the one on the left turns quantity down, and both one cycles by way of the packages—4 in complete—in the event you maintain it down for a few seconds.

Naturally you’ll get much more out of the listening to aids in the event you join your set to a cell app, and Jabra really has two apps to select from. The Enhance Pro app comes up first within the app retailer, however the Enhance Select app is newer. They work about the identical means, however for the reason that Enhance Select is newer I’ll write largely about it. Primarily you’ll use the app to maneuver among the many 4 modes—All Around, Restaurant, Music, and Outdoor—all of that are self-explanatory. Each mode has further choices related to it; for many you’ll be able to choose between “noise filter” to mute ambient sounds or “speech clarity” to spice up conversational quantity. These could be additional personalized thanks to a few equalizer sliders equivalent to bass, center, and treble frequencies. Volume could be set globally or individually per ear within the app as nicely. Of particular observe: Any customizations you make to packages apart from the All Around mode are reset to defaults as soon as the listening to aids are put again into the charging case.