CES 2026: Three Takeaways for Hearing Healthcare

I attended the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and spent most of my time visiting manufacturers of over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids and audio glasses, as well as industry suppliers. Here are the three "major takeaways" that I left with:

1) China’s OTC Hearing Aids Are Getting Really Good—Fast

In October 2022, when the FDA’s final OTC hearing aid rules took effect and products started to flood the market, you might have been forgiven for dismissing many of the models from China. Most appeared to use the same chip and were simple pre-set amplifiers with poor sound quality and little help for hearing speech in noise. Some looked cheap and clunky enough to cause an eye roll.

Times have changed. In terms of OTC hearing aids on display at CES 2026, China's hearing aid makers were prominent. What has really gotten my attention is that, in the past year, ELEHEAR Beyond and Beyond Pro, Yeasound RIC800, and Cearvol Wave have all broken into the ranks of the top-10 best-performing OTC hearing aids in the independent HearAdvisor lab’s testing. And they all cost less than $700. (Disclosure: Elehear helped sponsor my CES 2026 travel. My observations and conclusions are my own.)

These devices could even be better than the FDA initially envisioned for OTC hearing aids when it formulated its rules. For example, ELEHEAR, with headquarters in Minneapolis and Shenzhen, China, offers its AI-powered Beyond ($399) and Beyond Pro ($599-$699, depending on the retailer/promo) with an easy-to-use app, translation and tinnitus features, and exceptional speech understanding in noise and sound quality. Granted, it’s not on the same level as a Phonak Infinio Sphere, Oticon Intent, Starkey Omega AI, etc., fit by a professional who uses best practices—but for a fraction of the cost, it’s quite effective.

The diversity in hearing aid styles from these manufacturers is also broadening from just RICs to very small in-ear form factors. Cearvol—which CEO Quilong Zhu told me has access to 200 engineers who have worked on various aspects of Sennheiser and JBL consumer electronics—offers a surprisingly wide range of open- and closed-ear OTC hearing aids and wearables. Their flagship Cearvol Wave earbud/ITE, despite being a preset aid (no personalized hearing test), delivers good sound quality and speech-in-noise performance, earning an “A” SoundGrade from HearAdvisor. ELEHEAR President David Hogan invited me to try their latest product, Delight—a compact, rechargeable, in-ear hearing aid designed for discreet, everyday wear. Delight works with ELEHEAR’s proprietary smart app and supports professional remote fitting, as well as Bluetooth audio streaming.

Also competing on the same stage were Ceretone and Jinghao Medical, the latter being a “white label” original design manufacturer (ODM). In September 2024, Jinghao purchased the hearing aid division of Minneapolis-based Intricon, a respected ODM hearing aid developer and manufacturer. My guess is that Intricon’s tech will be finding its way into the designs of Jinghao’s partners, like Ceretone, which was displaying its Core One Pro IIC rechargeable hearing aid.

The bottom line is that the hearing aid technology from China has become much more impressive—with speech-in-noise processing now good enough to rival global competitors like Sony/WSA, Lexie/LXE, and Lucid Hearing. Hopefully, this will translate into higher-quality, lower-cost amplification options for the roughly 400 million people worldwide who could benefit from hearing aids. Due to its complexities in distribution, it’s very hard for any manufacturer to enter the U.S. prescription hearing aid market (see Whisper AI or Panasonic). Still, it wouldn’t surprise me if a Chinese manufacturer, along with US-based Fortell, makes a run at it in the next few years.

2) Hearing Enhancement and Live-Captioning Glasses Will Bring Us “Back to the Future”

Eyeglass hearing aids ruled the U.S. market in the 1960s. My grandfather, a railroad man with severe hearing loss, wore them; as kids, we thought it was cool when he made them squeal (note: feedback is not cool).

Today’s OTC hearing aid glasses are likely best represented by Nuance Audio, a division of the global vision-wear giant Essilor-Luxottica. Nuance and my longtime editorial collaborator, Douglas Beck, AuD, were set up in the AARP AgeTech Collaborative, an area packed with companies and buzzing with attendees as they navigated the maze of exhibits. Nuance audio glasses work well for those with mild to moderate hearing loss and received an “A” SoundGrade from the HearAdvisor lab. Beck says they continue to gain commercial traction, supported by Essilor’s 18,000 stores and 300,000 third-party points of sale.

Cearvol has also developed a unique pair of hearing aid glasses with the receiver located inside a swiveling, inch-long “arm” near the endpiece to amplify speech. Not yet officially an OTC hearing aid, it’s built for situational use; the receiver can be swiveled upward to rest next to the glasses’ temples when not in use. Alango Founder Alexander Goldin also showed me a prototype of hearing glasses he has been working on that uses an AI-driven directional mic array with essentially zero latency and good battery life. Using an earbud-like transducer instead of Nuance’s open-ear system, I was easily able to hear his voice out of a very noisy crowd.

Even more intriguing is the idea of combining live-captioning glasses with this type of amplification technology—resulting in a tool that could greatly benefit people with severe or profound hearing loss, as well as those who simply want captioned conversations. I stopped by the Vuzix booth and spoke with Adam Gogalski. We discussed XanderGlasses, which uses a custom version of the Vuzix Shield platform. They're impressive, but come with a limited use-time and a high price tag of around $5,000.

In my opinion, a lot will change in this area after Meta makes its mark. As HearingTracker reported in September, Meta’s new Conversation Focus and live-captioning glasses aim to amplify the voice of the person you’re talking to while reducing surrounding noise. Conversation Focus is being delivered as a software update to existing Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) and Oakley Meta HSTN smart glasses, with price tags starting under $400. New Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses feature live captioning for about twice the price at $799. Working with Essilor-Luxottica, Meta is effectively turning stylish eyewear into situational hearables.

CES is all about big dreams for technology, and I admit there are still technical limitations with these devices, including battery life, latency, and size. But these hurdles can be overcome as the products develop.

A recent report¹ from Susannah Ludwig and her colleagues at Bernstein makes the case that the near-term “win” for this class of devices isn’t about replacing hearing aids—it’s capturing the huge mild-loss population that doesn’t self-identify as a hearing aid user, with something that feels more like consumer tech than treatment. They also make the case that transcription glasses might bypass or ease the neuroadaptation problem that can make first-time amplification uncomfortable, especially relevant in OTC, where there’s less counseling/adjustment. Finally, because glasses are already mainstream—and captions are now a preferred viewing feature for younger people—“subtitles for real life” are a big draw for the younger stigma-conscious OTC market.

It’s even possible that similar captioning eyeglasses become integrated into future accessory portfolios of prescription hearing aids—for example, a boom-type multi-mic array wirelessly connected to an RIC. In short, my grandfather’s hearing aid style may become popular again—without the feedback and with captioning.

Add in Auracast and a wallet-friendly price (e.g., $250- $400), and many older and younger people would gladly cosplay as Buddy Holly, Elvis Costello, Weezer, or Jay-Z, depending on their preferred genre.

3) CES 2026 Showcased Accessibility

My third takeaway is that hearing-related accessibility is moving quickly into the mainstream, as evidenced by takeaways #1 and #2. Technology that helps people with better hearing need not be confined to those with “clinical hearing loss”; it’s useful for everyone.

There was a lot of emphasis on this theme at CES 2026. For example, the CTA Foundation’s Accessibility Stage Powered by Verizon was a prominent feature of the Venetian Expo’s second level. During one of the sessions, Henry Wong of Bluetooth SIG, Wayne Whiteley of Listen Technologies, and Luke Westin of Williams AV presented a seminar on how Auracast will break down barriers and reshape consumer and assistive listening technologies.

As I was finishing this article, my friend and Forbes contributor Bill Schiffmiller published an excellent op-ed about how CES 2026 was the first to truly showcase accessibility and move it toward the mainstream—so Bill stole my thunder here! He wrote:

“CES 2026 marked the moment when accessibility stopped being something the industry talked about and became something the industry is now building around. The longer-term signal was not that accessibility had arrived as its own destination, but that it is beginning to dissolve into everything else.”

But when will this “dissolving” happen for Auracast? My first stop at this year’s CES was to visit with Wong and David Hollander at the Bluetooth SIG suite. Although they said they had no inside knowledge of Apple’s intentions or timelines, we all agreed that when (not if) you start seeing Auracast appear in AirPods Pro is when consumers are quickly going to realize the amazing utility of this new broadcasting technology. And, in my opinion, the timing may no longer be measured in years.

“Waiting for Auracast” may sound like a nerdier version of a Samuel Beckett play, but (spoiler alert) unlike the play, Auracast is going to show up. When it does, it will put an even greater exclamation point on how new technology is embracing accessibility—not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it makes all audio products much more attractive.