Don’t make me log in every time!
I have mild hearing loss, so I only use this every so often. Each time I go out to eat with friends, it makes me log in and fiddle with the phone for 5 or 10 minutes before I can engage in conversation. The app has gotten much worse. I shouldn’t have to log in to adjust my hearing aids.
Batter life
Using the app – How do I check my battery?
App in progress
The basic app works fine. I would like to have the ability to have a sound check that lets me know both earpieces are in sync simultaneously. Checking each individually does not replicate the stereo sound I experience when I’m outside.
Two is Generous
It may be easy to use, but it doesn’t do much for you. Once you’ve completed the setup, you can’t separately control the volume on each ear. The worst thing for me is the app will not persistently stay connected to the hearing aids. I frequently have to go back through the setup procedure to reconnect the app to the devices. I am actively looking for another product that will be more reliable. The hearing aids themselves I rate as average. They help, but not as much as they could with more robust and consistently connected controls.
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Horrifically Awful App
The Sony cre-c20 hearing aids might actually be decent for the money, but they are ruined by this atrociously designed App that you will need to fine tune them. The initial setup is straight forward and easy however it is the Fine Tuning section that is an absolute mess. First of all, you are not given any description whatsoever of what the various "solutions" are in fact doing. You're just supposed to try them and see if they help with whatever hearing challenge you have. You have to cycle through them one by one, erasing the previous one in order to try the next one. If you land on solution #4 but then decide later that maybe solution 3 was better, you have to reset to default, apply solution 1, erase solution 1, apply solution 2, erase solution 2, and then apply solution 3. Just fantastically bad design and it doesn't appear that anyone at Sony is interested in all of these negative reviews. Don't waste your money.
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App continually loses connection
I set up my CRE 20 hearing aids using the app but after a few days or weeks the app forgets that I have them and so I am forced to connect them to the app again which takes about 5 minutes.
I ask Sony for help but nobody replies.
I ask Sony for help but nobody replies.
Bad idea
What a stupid idea to have an app for your hearing aids that has to be connected to the Internet to adjust the volume! I can’t tell you how inconvenient it is to be in a working meeting in a location with no WiFi and have to leave and find a hot spot to just change the volume! Absolutely crazy! I am dumping the app and aids as soon as I find replacements.
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Absolutely a garbage app
The app makes me sign in every few weeks. I need to change my volume NOW, not fiddle when the clunky login process. Then it makes you ending the setup process, and halt it after clicking step after step. It's painfully absurd, annoying, and gets in the way of using my hearing aids.
Bad job Sony
Bad job Sony
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Most Excellent
Hardware and Firmware are excellent with the CRE-C20! What I like most: interconnectivity between iPhone and aids! It's great to iteratively try out various profiles, and adjust volume and brightness on the fly!
Hearing aids good. App is horrible.
Love the hearing aids. The app sucks. My iPhone shows the hearing aids connected reliably. But the app for whatever reason keeps coming up like I never set them up. It keeps taking me back to the start with the whole hearing adjustment. And of course when you are trying actually use the hearing aid you are not in a quiet place with 20 minutes to reestablish everything. It happens regularly. So infuriating.
One other complaint is the reliability of charging. The case contacts are super finicky. Multiple times I pill the case out of my briefcase before a meeting and after a few minutes I get the power down sound.
One other complaint is the reliability of charging. The case contacts are super finicky. Multiple times I pill the case out of my briefcase before a meeting and after a few minutes I get the power down sound.
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This app sucks
The hearing aids are okay… sort of. It’s hard to tell when you have such poor software to adjust them. And for gods sake, Sony, you’ve been in the sound business umpty-ump years and you can’t call it treble and base rather than sharp and dull? We’re not stupid, just hard of hearing. When the batteries die, I’m dumping these simply because of this app, and I’m going to Costco.
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Something changed
This app use to work pretty well months ago but now it forces me into the setup process every time even when I just want to adjust volume
Very easy to use
I liked it’s easy to use
Sony's version of Signia app with different features
Is this a five star app? I don't know, but this is a positive review. Here's why. I had the Signia click and go silk hearing aids for about 50 days and returned then within the trial period because they weren't worth $6000. They were useful but not perfect and the Signia app didn't let you do even basic things like adjust the relative loudness of left versus right.
I ordered the Sony CRE-C20 and they happened to arrive on the same day I returned the others. When I opened them, imagine my surprise that they are the exact same product for $5000 less. Sony didn't make this device, Signia did, or Siemens, I'm not sure what the relationship is between those companies at this point.
When I configured them, I found that the Sony app has features that the Signia app doesn't, and vice versa. You can adjust the relative loudness of the two sides, and you can do tweaks to the sound quality for certain specific goals, like tweaking the prominence of human voices versus other sounds. It would be ideal if we had audiologist level control, like in the desktop app they use to configure the senior device in which they can do things like bump up specific frequency bands directly.
The Signia app has features the Sony app doesn't. You can switch between profiles designed for things like listening to music in the car or watching TV versus talking to someone in a crowded, noisy bar. Those profiles can only be tweaked by an audiologist using the desktop app and frankly I found them not to be super useful, but I would still rather have that feature in the Sony app and it's absent. I doubt that's out of laziness on Sony's part, it's probably a function of the business arrangement between them and the device manufacturer. This is a professional level device being sold to consumers at a massively lower price so we can expect some features to be excluded, although of course I would rather also have those features.
People complaining about the app having trouble connecting with the hearing aids might not realize that they don't use Bluetooth at all, they use ultrasonic noises to communicate with your phone. So if your phone's volume is not set loud enough it doesn't work and if you have other noises in the background they might prevent these tiny little hearing aids from getting their orders from the app. Some people talked about the devices losing their configuration. That happens to an even greater degree with the Signia app. I don't actually understand why they don't remember the last configuration but again that's apparently not a Sony thing.
I also had some charging issues with the Signia version of these, one of them liked to not get properly charged. I assumed that was because it was not seated in the charger perfectly but I bothered to troubleshoot that since I returned them for other reasons anyway. Maybe that will happen with these devices too, although the Sony charger is different and more compact. But we're not rating the device here, we're rating the app.
These hearing aids are very advanced for their ridiculously tiny size but from what I'm told there are much better ones out there. There just aren't any better ones out there that are anywhere near this small and invisible. And I'm one of those people who will not wear a hearing aid if it's not totally invisible. These are useful to me in some situations because I have mild hearing loss on one side and moderate on the other in certain frequencies. I'm considering also getting something like a high end phonak that's significantly more visible but also significantly more capable. I could use that situationally but I doubt I'd be wearing anything but these tiny ones out, for example, on a date.
I ordered the Sony CRE-C20 and they happened to arrive on the same day I returned the others. When I opened them, imagine my surprise that they are the exact same product for $5000 less. Sony didn't make this device, Signia did, or Siemens, I'm not sure what the relationship is between those companies at this point.
When I configured them, I found that the Sony app has features that the Signia app doesn't, and vice versa. You can adjust the relative loudness of the two sides, and you can do tweaks to the sound quality for certain specific goals, like tweaking the prominence of human voices versus other sounds. It would be ideal if we had audiologist level control, like in the desktop app they use to configure the senior device in which they can do things like bump up specific frequency bands directly.
The Signia app has features the Sony app doesn't. You can switch between profiles designed for things like listening to music in the car or watching TV versus talking to someone in a crowded, noisy bar. Those profiles can only be tweaked by an audiologist using the desktop app and frankly I found them not to be super useful, but I would still rather have that feature in the Sony app and it's absent. I doubt that's out of laziness on Sony's part, it's probably a function of the business arrangement between them and the device manufacturer. This is a professional level device being sold to consumers at a massively lower price so we can expect some features to be excluded, although of course I would rather also have those features.
People complaining about the app having trouble connecting with the hearing aids might not realize that they don't use Bluetooth at all, they use ultrasonic noises to communicate with your phone. So if your phone's volume is not set loud enough it doesn't work and if you have other noises in the background they might prevent these tiny little hearing aids from getting their orders from the app. Some people talked about the devices losing their configuration. That happens to an even greater degree with the Signia app. I don't actually understand why they don't remember the last configuration but again that's apparently not a Sony thing.
I also had some charging issues with the Signia version of these, one of them liked to not get properly charged. I assumed that was because it was not seated in the charger perfectly but I bothered to troubleshoot that since I returned them for other reasons anyway. Maybe that will happen with these devices too, although the Sony charger is different and more compact. But we're not rating the device here, we're rating the app.
These hearing aids are very advanced for their ridiculously tiny size but from what I'm told there are much better ones out there. There just aren't any better ones out there that are anywhere near this small and invisible. And I'm one of those people who will not wear a hearing aid if it's not totally invisible. These are useful to me in some situations because I have mild hearing loss on one side and moderate on the other in certain frequencies. I'm considering also getting something like a high end phonak that's significantly more visible but also significantly more capable. I could use that situationally but I doubt I'd be wearing anything but these tiny ones out, for example, on a date.
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Bad app
App is really bad, please improve it
App locks user out
the Hearing Control app locks the user out after 14 days of inactivity- this is frustrating to have to recall username and password to log back in as a new user and go through the hearing aid initialization process - it’s unlikely that the user will need to readjust settings regularly within 14 days… I hope Sony addresses this simple but annoying issue
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Software is raw, unreliable.
As others have said, settings inexplicably have to be reset, functions such as battery check stop working, etc. I trust that future firmware and software development will improve the product.
If only they cared about their product.
The app works decent at fine tuning and adjusting sound to one’s needs. If only I didn’t have to receeate an account every week when the app crashes and looses all my settings! Too much to ask I guess.
Setup not needed
Should not have to do setup every time. Just let me connect and control volume, battery check, and balance.
Hard to adjust volume on the fly.
When I try to make changes to volume it will not accept new position lof the slide bar. Very annoying.
