Review: Olive Union Olive Max

You don’t have to be nearly deaf to use a hearing aid. Many doctors urge patients to get started with the devices early, before hearing loss becomes critical. Olive Union’s Olive Max is the first hearing aid I’ve encountered designed for this specific purpose, built for users with “mild to moderate” hearing loss, which the company defines as 26 to 55 decibels of loss. That’s right in line with my diagnosis, so I figured I’d be a perfect candidate for these new devices.

Out of the box, you’re likely to say what I—and everyone I’ve been around—immediately said when I first laid eyes on the Olive Max: They sure are big. Like, really big. Each looks like a Bluetooth headset from the early 2000s, except you have to wear two. At least the units, in a two-tone white and gray design, look sporty, including a wrap-around ear hook that helps keep them in place. They also carry an IPX7 water-resistance rating. But at more than 12 grams each, they’re a solid four or five times the weight of a typical over-the-counter hearing aid. A total of eight different ear tips, in three different styles, are included in the kit to ensure you get a good fit.

As hearing aids, the Olive Max units work roughly as advertised, and casual users can pop them out of the box and into their ears to get started with minimal fuss, though getting them hooked over your ear properly can be tricky, especially if you wear glasses. Controls on the back of each aid handle volume (independently for each ear) and let you select one of four environmental modes (TV, Meeting Room, Outdoor, or Restaurant). You can also use the buttons to toggle “Hear-Thru mode,” which lets you turn off environmental audio processing altogether if you simply want to use the Olive Max as Bluetooth earbuds.

You can fine-tune your listening experience in the My Olive app—though, bizarrely, the hearing aid manual does not mention that an app exists, or even that you can use the hearing aids as Bluetooth earbuds. (You want the My Olive app (Android, iOS), not the incompatible Olive Smart Ear app.) The app allows you to make the same adjustments as the physical controls, but it also offers a noise-reduction and feedback-cancellation feature (pro tip: max out both of these), and it includes a more detailed graphic equalizer that lets you fine-tune frequency response further.

You can’t test your hearing directly within the app, although a short questionnaire will hook you up with various “AI-recommended presets” based on your age and a few other basic inputs. If you want anything more refined, you’ll need to delve into the equalizer by hand, but this is mostly a trial-and-error situation. It’s also worth noting that the My Olive app includes an audio therapy system designed to help people with tinnitus. I don’t suffer from tinnitus so I wasn’t qualified to test this feature.

Overall I found hearing aid performance to be mixed. In a quiet environment—like watching TV at home—the units provided modest support that boosted volume unilaterally, making dialog easier to understand but also making everything else louder. The usual issues of booming keyboard taps, squeaky chairs, and the echoing sound of my voice were initially problematic here, but with significant fine-tuning, I was able to at least play them down significantly. Throughout my testing, however, I was never able to eliminate a steady, buzzing background hum. At low volume, it was at least manageable.

The situation was much different in louder environments. In a bowling alley test, I couldn’t hear anything except the crashing of pins with the Olive Max headphones in—at any listening volume. Conversation in this environment was completely impossible. The various operational modes and even the “focus” setting—which targets sound coming from directly in front of you—were of no real help. I got my best results by keeping the amplification volume at a near minimum, but in loud environments, I was better off not wearing the aids at all.

Conversely, I liked the Olive Max devices when I used them as standard wireless earbuds. The units do a good job of filtering out noise, and they reproduce music and other entertainment audio quite well. You can choose to filter out all external sounds by selecting “Off” in the My Olive app, or you can listen to entertainment while boosting the ambient sounds of the external world. The latter experience is naturally quite a bit more cacophonic.

The Olive Max hearing aids are good for about 10 hours per charge. They include a case—quite sizable, to accommodate the large devices—which is good for about two top-ups, though I found the case didn’t like being disconnected from its USB-C tethering cable. Even when the case’s battery still had plenty of juice, it invariably disconnected from the app until I plugged the case back in.

While their performance probably won’t change your life, the good news is that, at an MSRP of $398 ($199 with current discounts), the Olive Max devices are a fairly low-risk way to tiptoe into the hearing aid market—and they’re a lot more effective than other ultracheap aids, like the Audien Hearing Atom One. I wouldn’t hesitate to give them a try if your hearing loss is mild … and if you don’t mind looking like the kind of guy that “really can’t miss this call.”