Moderate loss, have worn them for many years, enjoy listening to music and nature, but also need help in meetings and noisy environments.
Not worried about cost and wanting to get one more good deal out of work insurance before I retire.
I also very much appreciate that they can natively connect to iPhones (this is also essentially the main reason I have an iPhone). This makes phone calls and music and podcasts very easy. (Whereas up until 2017, I used to dread phone calls.)
I actually tried Phonaks briefly in 2022 and hated them. Lots of controls to fiddle with (some with oddly unintuitive names), but that meant I was constantly trying to adjust it and was rarely able to just exist in the moment. I found them markedly worse in noisy environments - I basically couldn’t have a conversation in a restaurant.
For a while now, like the last 15 to 20 years, since hearing aids went DSP, I had not been much impressed by each new generation. At the risk of sounding like a bit of an advertisement, that changed this year.
I have the new Oticon Intent. RIC style aid. They have some of the best spatial awareness I've experienced. They're capable of quite a lot of directionality - accelerometer and three microphones in each. I had to have the intensity of the directionality turned down a bit. It was startling me when I turned my head and I wasn't hearing things behind me enough. But that's at the expense of less signal due to more environmental noise.
The machine-learning based noise reduction is an improvement over the previous generations, too.
They have a music mode. It drops all the speech remapping and noise reduction and just makes it feel loud. It's some sort of perceptual algorithm: in my case as I turn up the volume it gets more and more treble, because only at the loudest volumes would I hear those high frequencies. All while being power limited at 95 dB SPL so I know I'm not blowing my ears. I used to wear over-the-ear headphones for that but I now prefer the hearing aids. It's nice to not worry about if it's too loud.
IMHO rechargeable models are not worth the extra cost. With a typical 5 year replacement cycle the batteries will no longer hold the early levels of charge. 312 batteries are cheap and easy to carry spares.
From the other side, it’s night and day. We can have conversations. He can hear my kids. The TV volume is set to reasonable levels.
Sample size of one, but it’s been a tremendous improvement. A lot of places are closing out the second gens right now for $140. I’d give it a go. It’s a pretty low price of entry for something that could literally be life changing.
The live listening mode is very good. I can hear my kid trying to quietly walk past 10pm :) There are a lot of features however you cannot selectively choose to lower / raise certain frequencies. I wish it had an equalizer I could use.
The ANC is fantastic, sometimes I even forget fans around me are on. Only issue is that when I use live listen mode and everything is super clear, people still treat me like I’m using full noise cancellation.
In your situation they could be a low stakes way to get someone to try a hearing aid and sell them on the idea, while still being a useful thing to have around even if they do upgrade to something more purpose built.
adjective 1. having a high degree of heat or a high temperature.
Hope that helps!