I turned the Reals back in this morning after the 1 week trial and picked up the Lumity Lifes for a 1 week trial.
The Reals definitely had a different, more open soundstage than either my current P90s or the L90s. I could hear more of the background sounds (e.g. the intermittent creaking of one of the car seats in my car, stuff like that) with the Reals than with either of the Phonaks.
My noisy environment test was wearing them while swim coaching a few times. When I’m on the loud, echoey pool deck, besides my team there are two other swim teams and a dive team in the water, with the dive team playing music on a speaker that adds to the general din and cacophony. With my P90s, I’d often have trouble hearing a swimmer (well, more accurately, understanding them) in the water if they were off to one side or behind me given the directionality of the HAs. I didn’t have that problem with the Reals. I still had to actively listen to hear them over the general noise level, but my comprehension was definitely better for what I could hear.
Music streaming quality seemed to be a bit off compared to the P90s, but not enough for me to complain about. I didn’t bother tweaking settings in the streaming section of the app, so that might be a moot point if I’d bothered to fiddle with the settings.
All in all, Real non-streaming sound quality was in my opinion a bit of a step up from the P90s, specifically in the open soundstage and non-forced directionality. Not a life changing step up, but a noticeable step up.
I did have one fairly major pet peeve, though, and that’s how the Reals interacted with my phone while Android Auto was running. Phone calls while AA was running would default to playing the audio through the aids and I had to go in on every single call and change it to play over the car speakers. Music via AA would play over the car speakers by default, though. I poked around a bit but couldn’t find any settings to prioritize the car speakers for phone calls.
I’ve got a Pixel 7 Pro and the Reals also showed up as a different type of Bluetooth device with an ear icon (link to screenshot) and didn’t have the phone call or audio selection choices in the menu.
I’m not sure if there was a setting I could’ve changed for the Reals, but given that 90% of my phone calls are in the car, that might be a deal breaker if I can’t change the call setting.
ETA: I have the open domes on my P90s and on the trial L90s. I’d had open domes on my OPN1s, but the audi gave me the demo Reals with the bass domes. I didn’t have any open domes to compare them with, but I thought the non-streaming sound quality was fine and didn’t have any issues with occlusion or ear canal fit.