When the US Food and Drug Administration opened the door for hearing aids to be sold over the counter in 2022, I was all in. Prescription hearing aids are criminally expensive, and several OTC models have proven that you don’t need to visit a hearing aid shop in a mall to get a product that gets the job done. I’ve tested 38 hearing aids to date, and 29 have been available over the counter. All of my favorite hearing aid products have been OTC models. Until now.

Starkey is a major name in the hearing aid business, and it’s not some white-label company that slaps a logo on someone else’s product (an epidemic in this industry). Starkey has been around since 1967, and while it no longer designs or manufactures its own digital signal processing chips, it is intimately involved with hearing aid development—and famously brags that it has outfitted everyone from Ronald Reagan to Mother Teresa with its hearing aids.

Now, with its new Edge AI RIC RT hearing aids, Starkey takes a position at the very top of the heap in product quality and performance thanks in large part to a new audio processor that includes an integrated neural processing unit—just like our laptops and phoness. Starkey says this is the only NPU-powered hearing aid line on the market.

Receiver in Canal

There’s nothing particularly inventive about the way the Edge AI RIC RT (which stands for “receiver in canal, rechargeable with telecoil”) looks, built on the classic, teardrop-shaped behind-the-ear design, though it is available in your choice of seven colors. Each aid weighs 2.62 grams, which is competitive for a behind-the-ear hearing aid. (To compare, the Jabra Enhance Select 500 weighs 2.56 grams.) A single button on the back of each aid controls volume: down on the left aid, up on the right aid.

As these are prescription aids, you’ll need an audiologist to fit and tune them. Rather than sending me to a local doctor, Starkey took the unusual step of flying its chief hearing health officer, Dave Fabry, to my home to complete this task. Fabry brought a suitcase full of equipment to re-create what the doctor’s office experience would normally be like, only at my dining table. Afterward, he gave me a training session on the aids and walked me through the My Starkey app, just like a standard audiologist.

Fabry also outfitted me with custom eartips molded to fit the exact shape of my ear canals. (This type of service would be at the discretion of your audiologist.) This is a simple process that involves jamming putty into your ears and waiting for it to harden. This putty can then be used to create a bespoke eartip that fits perfectly—although the usual collection of open and closed eartips in various sizes are also included in the box.

Your audiologist will then configure the My Starkey app and create environmental programs designed to fit your particular lifestyle. In addition to an all-around Personal program, my app was loaded with Restaurant, Crowd, and Music environmental modes, though Fabry said the Personal mode would probably be sufficient for the vast majority of my usage.

There’s also a new AI-powered mode called Edge Mode+, designed to further improve overall sound quality, enhance speech, or reduce ambient noise (at the wearer’s choice)—all based on an acoustic analysis of your environment. Fabry was right: The impact of switching among these modes was extremely subtle in my testing. Listening blind, I couldn’t guess which of the various modes I was in at any given time—though I did have a slight preference for the “Enhance speech” mode when watching recorded content like a movie.

All of that is to say that the Edge AI aids work phenomenally well. Tuned to my audiogram, the aids provided the perfect amount of volume and clarity support I needed, and I could set them to a very low volume and still easily see the benefit they were providing. My voice felt just a little loud with the aids in, even after some tweaking by Fabry, and if I was wearing these aids for the long term, I’d probably revisit my audiologist to continue the fine-tuning process. But even typically problematic sounds—like keyboard clacks and loud footsteps—were easily managed by the Edge AI aids, which prevented them from “blowing out” in volume. I did get a little feedback after a loud cough on a few occasions, but that is an exceptionally minor complaint.

Best of all, I experienced no hiss while wearing the aids. This staticky background noise is commonplace with inexpensive hearing aids and, for this user, is more responsible for making them unusable than any other single problem. The one time I thought I heard hiss while wearing the Edge AI aids? It turned out to be a nearby air purifier that had turned on without my knowledge, droning in the background.

While the standard silicone eartips are fine, with the custom eartips, the Edge AI hearing aids are incredibly comfortable. The perfect fit prevents you from experiencing any “hot spots” in the ear canal, and it goes a long way toward making the hearing aids feel better for longer stretches at a time. The combination of effective hearing improvement and comfortable fit did something I can’t say about any other hearing aid I’ve tested: Sometimes I forgot I had them in.

Starkey also claims the Edge AI RIC RT has a monumental battery life of 51 hours on a full charge. A chunky carrying case provides up to three additional charges, which is altogether exceptional.

High Price

The My Starkey app is filled with extra features if you dig around a bit, including the ability to change the volume on the aids individually instead of together, a “find my hearing aids” mode that plots their locations on a map, and a self-check diagnostic system that ensures everything is working properly. Additional features are designed to provide extra tools that aren’t specifically related to hearing but may be handy if you’re already in the app, including a step counter, balance assessment system, language translator, and audio-to-text transcription service. There’s also a fall-detection mode that can text a trusted contact if you’ve fallen and, you know, can’t get up.

You don’t have to be a world leader or celebrity to get Starkey’s hearing aids, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to have some coin in your pocket. As with all prescription aids, Starkey doesn’t set pricing: Audiologists do. Online, telehealth-driven prices range from $3,500 to $5,750 based on my research, and Fabry estimates that $4,000 would be average for a pair, give or take. That’s about double the price of some of the best OTC hearing aids on the market and remains, to be sure, a tough calculus I probably can’t solve for you.

So, some food for thought: Do you want the best hearing support available, access to a professional who can tune them for you, and (potentially) a custom-fit eartip—but for double the price? If you’re of the mindset that you only have one set of ears, there’s an argument to be made that the extra investment is worthwhile.