Elehear Beyond 2 Pro OTC Hearing Aid Review

About the Elehear Beyond 2 Pro OTC hearing aids

• Self-fitting or preset: Preset; behind-the-ear fit
• Warranty: 1-year limited warranty
• Battery life: Up to 20 hours per charge (hearing aid mode only)
• Battery or rechargeable: Rechargeable, lithium-ion
• FDA status: FDA-cleared OTC hearing aid
• Sound customization: Balanced Sound Control, ±8dB in 1dB steps
• Connection: Bluetooth HFP calls/A2DP audio; Bluetooth Auracast
• Weight: 4.4g (excluding ear dome)
• Dimensions: 3.9 inches L x 2.24 inches W
• Ingress protection rating: IP67 (for sweat, moisture, and light rain)

How we tested

As with other Elehear products I've reviewed, the company offered to send me a pair of the Elehear Beyond 2 Pro. OTC hearing aids don't require a visit to a licensed audiologist or a Hearing Instrument Specialist (HIS) at a specialized hearing care clinic.

The box includes several ear tip ("dome") sizes for self-fitting, and like the other Elehear pairs I tested at Reviewed, the tips already on the hearing aids fit my ear canals well.

Setup is easy, even for those who aren't tech-savvy. Once you download the Elehear app from the App Store (iPhone) or Google Play (Android), follow the prompt to connect the hearing aids to your phone via Bluetooth. An Elehear account is required, but it asks for little information. An animated walkthrough shows how to wear the hearing aids, and once you insert them in your ears, they power on automatically and you'll hear "Connected." You're then prompted to test their on-device volume controls. The app also lets you adjust volume, tone, and several other features.

As with previous hearing aids I've tested for Reviewed, I wore the hearing aids for several days, both inside and outside my home. This included going for walks, talking with friends at a café over lunch, streaming TV shows, listening to music and podcasts, taking calls, and even wearing them while playing pickleball to assess the fit during exercise.

What we like

Powerful, clear audio

Forget the bells and whistles—at their core, hearing aids need to help people hear better.

The Elehear Beyond 2 Pro are the most powerful Elehear hearing aids we've tested, delivering crisp, clear sound from both the environment and the paired phone.

Much of that clarity comes from Vocclear 3.0, a proprietary, AI-based speech-enhancement and noise-reduction system. Especially with Auto Enhance enabled in the app, all sounds become amplified and clear. Elehear says Vocclear 3.0 introduces an updated deep neural network (DNN) algorithm for steady background sounds (like traffic, AC units, or constant room buzz), with a second layer called Target Speech Enhancement (or FocusClarity) for complex situations where competing sound comes from other voices.

Speaking of AI, the hearing aids include real-time speech isolation to identify and highlight a target conversation while suppressing background chatter and environmental noise—without requiring manual mode switches or button presses.

Elehear says the Beyond 2 Pro are 39% clearer than the previous generation, which sounds about right.

Feature-packed app

As with other Elehear hearing aids, many of the features are tied to the companion app on iPhone or Android devices.

These include adjusting volume per ear, tuning phone call enhancements, adjusting noise control and environmental settings, seeing battery life per hearing aid, choosing optional modes (like music or restaurant), selecting adjustments (like bass and treble), and using spatial audio, to name a few handy features.

(For music, Elehear suggests using the double-layer ear domes found in the box, so the audio sounds less tinny and treble-heavy. It did make a difference.)

As with other Elehear hearing aids, you can take a hearing test within the app. Alternatively, with ElePro Plus (sessions start at $99; available in 27 states), you can have a live video session with a licensed audiologist, who conducts a test and explains your results in plain language.

An underrated feature: You can play and fuse together white noise and soundscape options for those affected by tinnitus, the perception of sound in your ears—such as ringing, buzzing, or hissing. Our favorite combination was heavy rain with a thunderstorm (and frogs!). There are 26 options you can mix and match. Clever. Tap the Serene tab in the app to get going.

The Elehear app and hearing aids also offer translation for up to 20 languages. Select your mother tongue and the language of the person you're chatting with in the app, and the hearing aids will translate complete sentences as you converse. The translation works fairly well, but the voice you hear in your ears sounds robotic compared to the much more human-sounding voices in other solutions from companies like Apple and Google.

Auracast support

For the first time in an Elehear hearing aid, you can enable Auracast broadcast audio.

If you're unfamiliar with Auracast, it's a Bluetooth technology that functions like a local radio station: A single audio source broadcasts clear, wireless sound directly to an unlimited number of compatible earbuds, headphones, or hearing aids, without needing a traditional one-to-one pairing.

Once you enable it in the app, you can find nearby broadcasts that support this technology and tap one to start listening. Use cases include airports and other public transit hubs (for hearing announcements in noisy terminals); gyms and sports bars (tune in directly to muted TVs or sports broadcasts by scanning a QR code or selecting the stream); museums and guided tours; theaters and houses of worship (receive clean, synchronized movie or sermon dialogue directly to your hearing aids); and classrooms and lecture halls.

Auracast works at home, too, with compatible devices, such as Elehear's own TV Streamer for Beyond 2 Pro, a small transmitter that connects to your television's audio output and streams directly to your hearing aids.

Other things we like about the Elehear Beyond 2 Pro hearing aids include long battery life of up to 20 hours (and a carrying case that holds four more charges), four color options to choose from (silver, champagne gold, brown, and black), and several accessories in the box (charging cable, four dome styles, cleaning tool pen, and more).

What we don't like

The price

Elehear made a name for itself by producing effective hearing aids without a high price.

At $799, the Beyond 2 Pro cost far more than the $299 Elehear Delight OTC, which we like a lot here at Reviewed. Yes, the Beyond 2 Pro are more powerful, and there are other premium-priced OTC hearing aids, like the $899 Sennheiser All-Day Clear and $999 Jabra Enhance Select M2 Swift, but that's a big jump in price from one of Elehear's best-known and most celebrated hearing aids.

As clear as the Beyond 2 Pro are, thanks to Vocclear 3.0, I question whether they're $500 better. Plus, the Delight offers the same app extras (language translation, nature sounds, etc.) and battery life.

Those with mild-to-moderate hearing loss should try the $299 Elehear Delight OTC hearing aids first, in case they do the trick.

Case/body is still big

Aside from price, another advantage the Elehear Delight OTC has over the Beyond 2 Pro is the size of the hearing aids themselves.

For those who don't want others to know they're wearing hearing aids, the Beyond 2 Pro have large cases that sit over each ear. By comparison, the Delight OTC look like trendy earbuds. Having multiple colors helps, perhaps, but the Beyond 2 Pro are still large. (Separately, I'm reviewing a pair of Beltone Illuminate 17 hearing aids, which have much smaller cases.)

Apple has also launched a Hearing Aid feature for the AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods Pro 3. Granted, AirPods Pro are far less powerful than the Beyond 2 Pro, but they look like AirPods, which don't carry the stigma that traditional hearing aids can.

Other random issues

There are a couple of minor issues with these hearing aids.

While fully featured, the app may overwhelm some users. For example, the hearing aids amplified my surroundings powerfully the moment I put them on, but they only worked as Bluetooth-connected hearing aids once I enabled that feature in the app (and on my smartphone, too). This may be tricky for those who are less tech-savvy or have dexterity challenges.

Also, the Elehear app says you need to open the charging case so the hearing aids can establish a wireless handshake with the phone. When you open the case lid, the app tells you it has successfully connected to Bluetooth. But if you try to play around with the app (like adjusting some settings), it tells you to remove the hearing aids from the case.

Can't fault Elehear too much for this, but the app isn't optimized for the foldable iPhone Duo either and looks wonky when the device is open.

On an unrelated note, a 45-day trial is OK—if you're not satisfied, you can return them for a full refund with no questions asked. But that's shorter than the trials on some other OTC hearing aids (which have 100-day windows). The same goes for Elehear's one-year warranty, which is shorter than the coverage on some products from brands like Jabra and Eargo.

Warranty

The Elehear Beyond 2 Pro OTC hearing aids come with a one-year manufacturer's warranty.

Should you buy the Elehear Beyond 2 Pro?

Yes, for those willing to splurge for superior performance

While much more expensive than other Elehear products (such as the $299 Elehear Delight), the $799 Elehear Beyond 2 Pro hearing aids (available at ELEHEAR) are powerful and versatile, thanks to their Vocclear 3.0 audio processing and noise-cancellation technology and an excellent app that lets you tweak the settings, enable tinnitus masking with nature sounds and white noise, translate between up to 20 languages, and more.

The battery lasts up to 20 hours between charges, and the case lets you charge the hearing aids multiple times, so you can leave the charger at home even if you're away for a few days (in a pinch, the USB slot on the right side of the case lets you juice them up with your iPhone or Android cable).

For mild-to-moderate hearing loss, the Beyond 2 Pro are some of the best over-the-counter solutions for the price, but be aware that the hearing aid itself—the case that sits above your ear—is somewhat large, at about 1.3 inches long and 0.6 inches tall. There are much smaller and more discreet hearing aids on the market, including Elehear's own Delight OTC, which look like earbuds.

But if your hearing loss is closer to moderate than mild and performance is what you need, the Beyond 2 Pro may be for you.