New hearable products now appear on the market frequently. This trend is a welcome development for the millions of people with mild to moderate hearing loss who are underserved by the medical profession due to the high cost of traditional hearing aids. IDC and other market analysts predict that hearables will lead global wearable market growth, most recently in the September 2020 IDC Worldwide Wearable Device Tracker. In the past few months, we’ve written about the Phonak Audeo Paradise smart hearing aid platform, Nuheara IQBuds Max, and Lexie Lumen hearing aids. In October we wrote new Bose hearables designed to help users sleep.
This past July we wrote about Olive Union’s Smart ear, a personalized hearable designed to help users improve understand conversations with others and while watching television. The Smart Ear is sold in singles or pairs and comes with a smartphone app-based hearing calibration test. Olive Union recently launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for its next hearable, the Olive Pro 2-in-1 hearing aids and Bluetooth earbuds. Like the Olive Smart Ear, the Olive Pro comes with a self-calibration user hearing app.
The manufacture claims the Olive Pro 2-in-1 employs artificial intelligence to simultaneously capture, isolate, filter, and reduce background noise while maximizing gain and amplification for human voice frequencies to help wearers understand speech and enjoy music. The company refers to the process as “automatic background noise cancellation” machine learning that listens for human voices and adjusts the device settings on-the-go based on ambient sounds and user calibration test results.
Olive Union states the Olive Pro hearables are a registered FDA Class II medical device that — at $299 per set — will cost a minor fraction of conventional hearing aids. The Indiegogo pre-order price is $199 for a pair of Olive Pros with a charging case; this represents a $100 discount. Olive Union projects Olive Pro shipping will begin in the first quarter of 2021.
We haven’t had the opportunity to try the Olive Pro hearables, but we welcome participants in the hearables space. As our population ages, increasing numbers of Americans will benefit from approachable and affordable hearables that assist with mild to moderate hearing loss.
