The Bose Lexie B2 behind-the-ear hearing aid is a great value in the hearing aid world, but Lexie discontinued the B2 Plus earlier this year. The B2 Plus is a direct successor and we have to say it’s not enough of an upgrade to justify the new name.
There’s a reason why the Lexie B2 Plus hearing aids aren’t advertised as B3s – it’s because the amplification technology inside the aids hasn’t changed. We’ll explain this in more detail later, but first let’s talk about the two upgrades.
Photo: Christopher Null
The first is the biggest change: the improved case actually has a battery in it. One of the most common complaints about the original B2 was that the case wouldn’t charge. To charge your hearing aids, you had to plug the case into a USB-C charger. If you were on the go and the battery ran out, you were out of luck, since the B2 case was only good for storage when not plugged into a power source. The charge time for your hearing aids was 18 hours, good for more than a day, but it wasn’t the best solution for a weekend away from electricity.
The new B2 Plus case doesn’t look all that different from the B2 case and is still quite thick, but it does add an extra charge and gives you 36 hours of use without needing to plug it in. That’s less than most competitors but a big improvement over its predecessor.
Photo: Christopher Null
The second upgrade is the hearing test in the Lexie app. The test works a lot like other over-the-counter hearing aids, where you hear beeps of different pitches and volumes in each ear and are asked to tap a button when you hear a sound. Most hearing aids use the results to adjust the frequencies amplified in the hearing aid, like an equalizer. The Lexie hearing test doesn’t go that far. The hearing aid only has two real adjustment mechanisms: world volume (which can be balanced between both ears), and a “bass/treble” slider that lets you increase the volume in one ear and decrease the volume in the other.
