The Sennheiser TV Clear with transmitter improves audio clarity for watching TV. Picture: Sennheiser.

The new Sennheiser TV Clear, which provides the comfort and style of true wireless earbuds and comes with a specialised transmitter, is worth checking out if you have trouble hearing your TV, or more specifically, dialogue.

Sennheiser has recognised a gap in the market for people with hearing difficulties and found a technological solution that is easy to set up and more importantly, easy to use.

The Sennheiser TV Clear uses Bluetooth earphones to wireless link to a transmitter that connects to your TV with an optical or analogue cable. The dedicated transmitter is powered via a micro USB port and the wireless link between it and the earbuds is already established out-of-the-box, so you don’t have to do anything to connect the two.

For my installation, I used one of the USB ports on the back of my TV to power the transmitter to save the hassle of finding a USB charger and a free power socket. This way the unit is powered when I turn on the TV.

You can also pair the earbuds with your phone if you want to be able to receive calls which I found can come in rather handy.

A lot of modern TVs support connecting Bluetooth headphones directly, but the TV Clear’s dedicated transmitter ensures a low latency, which means that what you hear and see on the screen are in sync. Of course, many older TVs don’t support Bluetooth and this is where the TV Clear is ideal since the transmitter should be able to use the standard 3.5mm headphone/line-out jack.

The Sennheiser TV Clear app is available for both Android and iPhone and provides up to 20dB of high-frequency amplification and five speech clarity levels for crystal-clear dialogue. As you increase the levels the dialogue becomes increasingly clearer but at the expense of other sounds. This is particularly obvious in moves but if you can’t clearly hear the dialogue the rest of the sound is not of much use. The difference in the clarity of dialogue with the TV Clear versus standard TV speakers is night and day.

Using the app you can also upgrade the firmware of the buds to improve performance or features as they get updated by Sennheiser. Other features include the Find my earbuds which may come in handy if you happen to lose a bud in the deep crevasses of your couch.

The Ambient Awareness mode uses the external mics on the outside of the buds to amplify the sounds around you. You can increase or decrease the effectiveness of this in the app to your liking to fully immerse yourself in a movie or conversely, stay in touch with what’s happening around you.

It’s also possible to set your own preferred volume level on the earbuds themselves independently from that of the TV or the audio source that you’re listening to through the transmitter. Additionally, you can adjust the volume of the earbuds themselves to your preferred level — press the left earbud to turn the volume down or the right to turn it up. This is done independently of the TV or other audio source you're listening to through the transmitter.

Even during a long session, the earphones are comfortable to wear because they only weigh 6.9g. They also come with three different sizes of silicone ear tips with integrated wing hooks to ensure they won’t fall out.

You can also buy additional TV Clear earphones for €299 and use them with the same transmitter.

When used with the transmitter, the Sennheiser TV Clear delivers up to 15 hours of listening time on a single charge. The buds can be stored in their case which also charges them using the supplied USB-C cable. The case has its own battery and can provide an additional 22 hours of power for a total of 37 hours of viewing.

The Sennheiser TV Clear with transmitter €399. Sennheiser

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