The Best Hearing Aids in Background Noise in 2024

Hearing aids can have a huge impact on your ability to follow conversations, both in quiet and loud environments. If your current hearing aids leave you struggling with background noise, it might be time to upgrade.

We tested over 80 modern hearing aids in an acoustic lab to provide the first list of top-performing hearing aids for background noise based on hard science.

Best Hearing Aids for Noise: Our Top Picks

After measuring background noise reduction in over 80 products in the HearAdvisor acoustic lab, we've identified the top performers on the market in 2024. Here, we present the top 2 products—a winner and runner-up—from three product categories: 1) prescription hearing aids, 2) OTC hearing aids, and 3) speech-enhancing earbuds.

This is not a comprehensive list by any means, so be sure to check out the full list of winners, which includes devices from ReSound, Starkey, Bose, and more.

A Few Key Differences

Here we compare the key noise-reducing features offered by each device:

The Best Hearing Aid in Background Noise: Phonak Infinio Sphere

The Phonak Audéo Infinio Sphere is an advanced hearing aid featuring Bluetooth LE Audio, AI-based denoising, and the DEEPSONIC™ neural network processing chip for enhanced speech clarity in noisy environments. These rechargeable devices offer robust connectivity, durability, and customizable comfort, setting a new standard in hearing aid technology.

According to a perceptual clinical study conducted at the Phonak Audiological Research Center (PARC), real users experienced double the likelihood of understanding speech in noisy environments when using Sphere's AI denoising technology. Additionally, speech understanding improved by up to 36.8% compared to two leading competitor devices.

The HearAdvisor lab has confirmed that Sphere's technology is effective. The lab recently produced this image showing Phonak Sphere is in a class of its own when it comes to removing background noise:

Grab a pair of headphones (take out your hearing aids first, if you're already wearing a pair) and listen to the new Phonak Infinio Sphere in background noise by visiting the Infinio Sphere product page (you'll need to scroll to the lower part of the page for audio samples).

Best OTC for Noise: Sony CRE-E10

The Sony CRE-E10 is an over-the-counter self-fitting hearing aid with the look and feel of a typical earbud. Designed for everyday use, it can automatically adjust to your environment for comfort and speech enhancement. The HearAdvisor™ lab found that it offers greater speech-in-noise benefits than any other self-fitted OTC device tested to-date.

The Sony CRE-E10 offers wireless control with the Hearing Control app, rechargeability, noise reduction, directional microphones, and audio streaming (currently only available for iOS). With the app, you can finetune the Sony's in difficult listening situations.

If you're looking for a more discreet alternative, consider the Sony CRE-C20. While it's performance in background noise is no match for the CRE-E10, it's one of the smallest OTC hearing aids with up to 28 hours of battery life.

Best Speech-Enhancing Earbud for Noise: Sennheiser Conversation Clear Plus

Sennheiser’s Conversation Clear Plus (CCP) are advanced earbuds designed to improve speech understanding in noisy environments. They offer many useful features such as automatic adjustments, speech enhancement, beamforming microphones, wireless app control, and Bluetooth™ streaming for most devices. They are also offer Active Noise Cancellation (ANC).

Since the Conversation Clear Plus (CCP) is technically a hearable and not an FDA-registered OTC hearing aid, Sennheiser needs to be very careful about the claims it makes about the product. This means Sennheiser can't legally call the CCP a hearing aid or say anything about the product helping with hearing loss. However, the speech enhancement features are clearly intended to help people with hearing loss, and it's fair to assume that many people with hearing loss are using the CCP to accommodate for those lost decibels.

CCP is our top-pick in the earbud category as we found it to offer impressive noise reduction capabilities. It is the highest-scoring personal sound amplification product (PSAP) to date at HearAdvisor and even outperformed other prescription and OTC devices in loud, noisy environments when programmed for a common age-related hearing loss. It also offers Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), which can further reduce the annoyance of lower-tone noises. While not related to noise performance, it is worth noting that CCP also offered excellent streamed audio quality. Listen here.

Best Budget Hearing Aid: Elehear Beyond

Elehear Beyond is an affordable OTC hearing aid and HearingTracker's highest-rated product under $400.

Beyond outperforms the AirPods Pro 2 in background noise when using a self-directed fitting. However, expert fine-tuning using an audiogram puts the AirPods in the lead, as the Beyond doesn't offer on-ear testing or programming based on a hearing test. Nevertheless, its more comfortable receiver-in-canal style and longer battery life of up to 18 hours make the Beyond more suitable as a hearing aid.

Runner Up Prescription: Oticon Intent

After testing over 60 modern hearing aids in the HearAdvisor acoustic lab, Oticon Intent emerged as the top performing prescription device in background noise. Danish manufacturer Oticon claims to use Deep Neural Network (DNN) technology to help users "access the sounds" most important to them, and based on our testing, the technology seems to be working.

Intent pairs with the Oticon On App, which provides the user with numerous ways to adjust the audio and noise handling. For example, you can adjust the "Soft Speech Booster" to bring up soft speech sounds, and there's even a 3-band EQ for adjusting the tone of streaming Bluetooth audio.

Intent can also pair with Oticon's ConnectClip remote microphone, allowing you to transmit audio directly to your ears from up to 20 meters (22 yards) away. Remote mics like ConnectClip can drastically improve the signal-to-noise ratio, making speech much easier to understand.

In the HearAdvisor test lab, Intent was a top performer for speech in quiet, moderate, and loud noise when programmed for a common age-related hearing loss. When paired with the app and other wireless technologies, it offers some of the greatest speech audibility available on the market today.

As it is a prescription hearing aid, a hearing professional is involved in the fitting process to guide you through any programming and or physical adjustments needed.

Runner-Up OTC: Lucid Tala

Lucid Tala is another OTC hearing aid that offers speech benefits in noisy environments on a level similar to the Sennheiser Conversation Clear Plus (CCP) above. Like the CCP, streaming is available for both iPhone and Android (you need to specify which OS you want during purchase). Lucid Tala comes with lifetime remote support from licensed professionals, which is rare among OTC hearing aids and may justify its steeper price.

Runner-Up Earbud: Apple AirPods Pro 2

Those interested in an alternative to Clear Plus should consider Apple Airpods Pro 2. They offer a similar feature set and excellent streamed audio quality. They also allow you to take an on-ear hearing assessment or upload hearing data directly through the Apple Health app. We did not find them to provide the same noise benefits, but they are available for around $200, making them much more accessible. AirPods also pair better with iOS devices, unlocking other desirable health tracking and hearing features.

Why Background Noise Is Hard

We've all been there—out at a loud restaurant asking the server to repeat themselves. The combination of music, chatter, and poor acoustics can create the perfect storm for poor communication. Add hearing loss to the mix, and you're pretty much hopeless.

Understanding what others are saying can be difficult when loud sounds in the background drown out or obscure the words we're trying to hear. Our brains have to work hard to "fill in the blanks," often relying on a combination of context clues, facial cues, and lipreading.

This extra effort can lead to listening fatigue and physical exhaustion, and you may find yourself retreating from demanding social gatherings altogether to avoid the effort and potential embarrassment.

The inability to clearly hear speech in background noise, sometimes referred to as the "cocktail party problem," is well known—and a common focus of hearing technology manufacturers. Hearing aids and other assistive devices offer various means of improving speech clarity and listening comfort in noise.

How Do Hearing Aids Help in Noise?

Hearing aids and assistive listening devices employ various technologies, like directional microphones, to improve your ability to hear in background noise. The key to any such technology is to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), i.e., how much louder is the speech you want to hear versus the noise you don't want to hear. Here are some examples of how hearing aids improve performance in noise:

Directional Microphones

Hearing aids generally have multiple microphones located either above the ear or down near the ear canal. These microphones provide slight differences in audio input and can be configured in different ways to boost all sounds or those from one direction. More advanced hearing aids even have the power to analyze different microphone combinations in real-time and use the one(s) most appropriate for your environment. One example of this is SpeechSensor in Phonak's Infinio Sphere.

Directional microphones can be found in most high-quality prescription and OTC hearing aids that are large enough to accommodate them—and even advanced earbuds like AirPods Pro and Sennheiser Conversation Clear Plus. The quality of directional microphones can vary between products, and the SNR benefits can depend on factors such as individual hearing loss, the environment, noise levels, distance, and more. Most people can likely expect 3 to 6 dB SNR improvement in real-world situations.^7,9 However, individual benefits will vary based on many factors.

Hearing aid manufacturers do not actually make directional microphones. These crucial components are developed and manufactured by large, specialized electronic suppliers (e.g., Knowles) and then employed in the aids by the manufacturers. So, their relative effectiveness compared to competing products relies less on the microphones themselves than on how and when they're used within the entire hearing aid system.

Digital Noise Reduction (DNR)

Noise reduction is another common type of signal processing offered in hearing aids. These algorithms work by splitting sound into different channels and providing less volume to those with greater noise. In doing so, the relative volume between speech and noise can be improved.

Steady-state noise, such as the constant hum of an air conditioner, fan, or car engine, is generally easier for the noise reduction algorithms in hearing aids to manage because its acoustic characteristics are stable over time. Therefore, a hearing aid should be more successful at reducing these types of noise compared to transient or fluctuating noise sources, which change rapidly over time.

By reducing steady-state sounds, hearing aids can enhance the contrast between speech and background noise. However, the actual improvement in speech recognition will depend on several factors, including the user's degree of hearing loss, the characteristics of the noise, the quality and sophistication of the noise reduction algorithm, and the individual's ability to adapt to and benefit from the technology.

It's important to note that while noise reduction can help with speech recognition, it's not a perfect solution. Noise reduction algorithms can sometimes inadvertently reduce some aspects of speech, which can make it harder for the listener to understand. Also, there are limitations in reducing non-steady state noises like those coming from multiple talkers in a crowded room. DNR can also negatively affect music listening.

Given the limited benefits in noisy situations like restaurants, DNR should not be considered a viable solution to the cocktail party problem. However, DNR can greatly improve listening comfort by reducing the annoyance of noise, including background chatter.^{1, 3, 8}

Active Noise Cancellation

Active noise cancellation (ANC) can be found in some advanced earbuds, such as Apple AirPods Pro 2 and Sennheiser Conversation Clear Plus. This newer form of noise abatement can effectively reduce constant lower-frequency noises such as hums and whirring.

When ANC is enabled, the sounds around you are "cancelled" through an acoustical technique called phase inversion. Basically, the earbud's speaker plays the same sounds that the microphone hears, but they are completely flipped or inverted. When the outside sound and inverted processed sounds are combined, they interfere, canceling the unwanted sounds around you.

The quality of ANC varies between companies. It works best with more occluding devices, such as earbuds and over-the-ear headphones. We do not currently see ANC in traditional hearing aids.

Remote Microphones

Remote microphones are highly effective accessories that can wirelessly pair with hearing devices to significantly improve speech understanding. By placing a remote microphone near a person or clipping it to your spouse's collar, you're effectively bringing their voices closer to your ears. This is much easier than trying to hear someone from across a noisy table. It also minimizes the effect a reverberant room has on what you hear.

Hearing aids are most effective at processing sounds within roughly 3 to 6 feet. As noted previously, the best directional microphone systems can provide about a 3-6 dB SNR improvement in optimal situations. In contrast, remote microphones can extend the useful range of hearing devices and have been found to offer SNR improvements of 15 dB or more!^{5, 6} This makes them the most effective speech-in-noise remedy available, and it's why most prescription hearing aid manufacturers offer remote microphones as an accessory.

Artificial Intelligence

Several companies are now using artificial intelligence (AI) in hearing aids, including machine learning and Deep Neural Networks (DNN), to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of their noise reduction systems. Starkey Genesis AI and Oticon Intent are two good examples, and while the benefits of these systems are not fully understood, we expect AI will continue to push the boundaries of hearing aid speech-in-noise performance.

Case in point: the more recent introduction of Phonak's dual-chip hearing aid, Audéo Sphere Infinio, which has one powerful chip dedicated solely to real-time AI-driven speech processing and denoising. This new hearing aid claims to provide a signal-to-noise (SNR) improvement of 10 dB—which has not been previously achievable except with the use of a remote microphone. It's also the top-performing hearing aid in the lab when it comes to background noise.

Given what we've seen, the opportunity to use AI for separating speech from noise—or, in the future, even recognizing your companions' voices in a din of competing speech sounds—is extremely promising in the decades-old quest for better hearing in noise.

Benefits of Fine-Tuning with a Hearing Care Provider

Hearing devices are marvels of modern science and they work best when programmed specifically for an individual's hearing needs. Real-ear measurements, or REMs, are the gold standard for doing this and it involves a hearing professional using prob microphones to analyze hearing aid output within the ear. REMs ultimately optimize speech audibility by verifying that your devices provide appropriate amplification for your hearing loss.

While REMs are not embraced by all providers⁴, it remains the best means of optimizing hearing aid performance and has been shown to improve speech understanding over other manufacturer instant-fit methods². This is one reason why HearingTracker always recommends you visit a hearing provider who adheres to best practices.

Over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids are also available, for those with a perceived mild-to-moderate hearing loss, and promise to offer similar benefits without the need to visit a doctor's office. HearAdvisor™, an independent hearing devices test lab, is working to verify such claims. While performance varies greatly between companies, it is clear that OTC hearing aids can benefit from similar fine-tuning as traditional devices.

How We Tested

A key part of HearAdvisor's hearing aid evaluation process involves testing devices in realistic spatial sound fields. These are generated using widely-favored ambisonic recordings and the statistical properties of an extensive variety of authentic spaces. This allows us to replicate the sound environments that users will encounter in their daily lives.

In order to offer a more thorough analysis, we perform tests across multiple talkers from a variety of spatial locations. This helps us understand how a hearing device might perform in a number of real-world environments.

For testing, all hearing aids were setup for a mild to moderate hearing loss. So all test results are strictly limited to mild to moderate hearing loss. We have not evaluated any device's performance for more severe hearing loss levels, yet. And remember, the OTC hearing aids and earbuds that we tested are not intended for those with greater than mild to moderate loss, so we'd expect them to score poorly for severe hearing loss.

We used the Hearing Aid Speech Perception Index v2 (HASPIv2) to quantify the expected improvement in speech intelligibility for each hearing aid. We chose this metric because it models the impaired auditory system and predicts intelligibility for a wide range of acoustic environments. For those looking to dive deeper, please check out our vetting process and HearAdvisor's whitepaper.

All "Hearing Aids" Not Created Equal

Hearing aids continue to advance and offer better tools for solving the noise problem. However, it is not always clear which device is most appropriate for your individual hearing needs. There are many choices available and companies offer similar marketing claims. But beware—not all hearing aids are created equal.

To that second point, our experience shows that some of these claims are either unfounded or completely false. Take for example our deep dive on Amazon’s Top 4 Hearing Aids or this critical review of 24 Walmart hearing aids. All devices offered some claim of speech clarity yet we observed little to no speech intelligibility improvements—one device even made speech worse than normal listening.

There are fortunately numerous technologies that can improve hearing in background noise and hopefully this list offers some viable solutions for you. Speak with a hearing care provider for more specialized care, practice good communication strategies, and do not overlook the benefits of remote microphones if available for your hearing technology.