For those who suffer from hearing loss and don't want people to know they're wearing a medical device - a hearing aid - they want to look like a normal person wearing a true wireless headset.
This requires leading-edge, medical-grade technology in a compactly designed true wireless headset. Now, Jabra is here with its latest offering!
On August 18, Jabra Enhance Plus was unveiled. It's a cross between a true wireless headset and a hearing aid, a hearing enhancement device for those who are starting to experience hearing loss.
Shenzhen Bay reported on the Jabra Enhance Pro in June, which adopts the RIE-style design of traditional hearing aids, and was officially launched by Jabra's parent company, GN Netcom A/S, and has been approved by the US Pharmaceutical Control Agency (FDA).
In comparison, Enhance Pro is more like a hearing aid and Enhance Plus is more like a regular headset.
The Jabra Enhance Plus looks similar to the newly launched Jabra Elite 3, and even looks similar to the Jabra 75t and 85t, with an in-ear design that is compact, small, and lightweight.
Despite being half the size of the Jabra Elite 75t's earbuds, it still delivers 10 hours of battery life, and, when used with the charging case, a total*** of 30 hours of battery life, which is more than the average battery life of any of today's mainstream TWS headphones.
IP52 rated for dust and water resistance, and available in gray and beige.
In addition to fulfilling the basic needs of a true wireless headset for listening to music and making phone calls, the Jabra Enhance Plus also features medical-grade hearing enhancement to help people hear conversations, music, and even TV and movies better.
With powerful speakers, a sophisticated four-microphone array, and a proprietary microprocessor that combines with algorithms to provide noise reduction and feedback suppression.
The specific experience comes in the form of eliminating unwanted background noise, amplifying what the wearer is listening to, and improving speech intelligibility.
The product also has a companion Jabra Enhance App to personalize hearing needs, which Jabra says lets you "experience the advanced hybrid medical-grade technology for yourself, with expert guidance every step of the way.
To maximize the user's environmental and hearing needs, the Jabra Enhance Plus also offers several listening modes, which can be switched between Adaptive, Focus, and Surround listening modes.
As we covered in our previous Shenzhen Bay story, the companion app to the Jabra Enhance Pro allows you to set the volume of your hearing aid, adjust the focus of your voice, the noise and wind levels, and more, requiring more assistance from a hearing healthcare professional than the Enhance Plus.
The Jabra Enhance Plus is scheduled to be released first in the U.S. by the end of the year and will be available from hearing care professionals.
More and more manufacturers are blurring the lines between in-ear headphones and hearing aids, bringing medical-grade hearing enhancement technology to consumer products, and ultimately to people with hearing loss. (See the feature roundup at the end of this post.)
Just recently, Apple added Conversation Boost to the latest firmware release of the AirPods Pro, which looks just like Jabra's hearing enhancement feature.
Apple's technology is based on computational audio that uses microphone beamforming to separate the human voice from ambient noise, allowing the wearer to focus more on the human voice of the person talking across the room.
On the mobile side, Apple also offers a lighter, more integrated control interface than the Enhance Plus App, which can adjust the amount of ambient noise coming in.
> Read more: From 'Transparent Mode' to 'Conversation Enhancement', Computational Audio Accelerates Apple's Exploration on the Road to 'Hearing Aids'
Consumer brands like Apple, Google, Jabra, Bose, Sennheiser, and others are pushing into the hearing aid space, and Shenzhen Bay will continue to follow and report on this.
Attachment: Feature Roundup - Pushing into the big hearing health market
Apple reaffirms its big digital health strategy with 9 new health features in iOS 15 and watchOS 8 | WWDC21
Pushing into the big hearing health market of 700 million people! After Bose, Jabra's hearing aids
Bose, moving into the oligopolistic hearing aid market!
Hearing aid maker Sonova acquires Sennheiser's headphone business
Finally, hearing aids that look like AirPods!