RightEar
Press features, founder writing, and clinical commentary from the RightEar editorial desk — a permanent home for the reporting that has shaped how America thinks about consumer hearing technology.
From the Editor's Desk
The Journal began as a place to keep our press coverage honest and permanent — somewhere a reader who saw RightEar mentioned in The Wall Street Journal or Wired could return and read the full reporting in context, alongside the clinical and founder writing that surrounds it.
Four years on, the Journal has grown into four loose lanes. Press features collects the marquee outside reporting. Founder notes carries short essays from Dr. Lena Park and our co-founders. Clinical commentary is where our nine in-house audiologists explain what the research actually says — and what it doesn't. Tinnitus management is a quieter, ongoing series for the 50 million Americans living with sound that isn't there.
We publish roughly twice a month. We do not run sponsored content. If a piece is about a RightEar product, we'll say so. If it isn't, we won't.
— The Editorial Desk, RightEar
Press Features
Four outside publications, four sustained looks at what it means to build consumer hearing technology in 2025. Read each in full below.
A 4,200-word feature examining how direct-to-consumer brands like RightEar are quietly rewriting the economics of hearing aids — and what the established clinic model stands to lose.
Read the feature excerptWired's annual hearing-technology roundup highlighted the RightEar Pulse Pro tinnitus device alongside flagship hearing aids from Sonova and Starkey, citing the CES 2025 Innovation Award.
See the roundup excerptForbes Health ranked RightEar the #2 overall hearing aid brand in its 2024 review, with particular note for the RightFit 3-minute smartphone mapping and direct-to-consumer pricing model.
Read the review excerptConsumer Reports named RightEar the top brand for first-time buyers, citing the 60-day home trial, lifetime remote audiologist tuning, and FDA clearance as decisive for new users.
Read the article excerpt
Featured Press · March 2025
"RightEar has done something the established manufacturers say cannot be done: shipped FDA-cleared, clinically validated hearing aids to 184,000 customers across all 50 states, at roughly half the national average price, without an audiologist in the middle of the sale."
The 4,200-word WSJ feature traced how a small Boulder, Colorado operation — founded in 2017 by two former Bose audio engineers and a board-certified audiologist — grew into one of the most carefully reported consumer-audio brands of the decade. Reporter Maya Eckstein spent six weeks inside the RightEar fitting lab and with four customers, tracing the full arc from a 3-minute smartphone hearing test to a delivered pair of devices.
The article foregrounded the RightEar RightFit™ smartphone audiometry test, clinically validated against in-clinic audiograms within ±3 dB across more than 1,200 fittings, and the company's lifetime remote tuning service — a tier that 91% of customers describe as better than their previous audiologist experience.
Clinical & Educational
Long-form explainers from our in-house audiologists and research desk on the hearing-health topics our readers actually search for.
Hearing Loss
A clinical walk-through of mild, moderate, moderately severe, and severe hearing loss, the HHIE-S screening, and the thresholds at which OTC vs. prescription-grade devices are appropriate.
Read the explainerTinnitus
Dr. Lena Park, AuD, walks through the latest evidence on white-noise generators, notch therapy, and the RightEar Pulse Pro — the CES 2025 Innovation Award winner in tinnitus management.
Read the explainerMusicians
Why the RightBud™ chipset's 14.2 ms total audio latency — 38% lower than the leading OTC competitor — matters on stage, and how performers can protect hearing without flattening their mix.
Read the explainerOTC vs. Prescription
A practitioner's view of the FDA's 2022 OTC rule three years on — what changed, what didn't, and how first-time buyers can match their audiogram to the right device class.
Read the explainerFrom Reading to Measuring
The RightFit™ mapping test takes three minutes on a smartphone, pairs you to one of six FDA-cleared device lines, and ships with a 60-day in-home trial — returnable for any reason, with free loss-and-damage replacement for the first year.