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Costco and Starkey?

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Yeah but only Phonak/ Sennheiser, all the rest not long behind, I think this will change in the near future, Costco will literally dominate the market.

Yes I’d seen that, the omega or something, Starkey rebranded model, but I see a future where Costco will get their hands on latest version instead of having to wait 6 months or so, brick and mortar stores will not be able to survive anywhere near Costco, I like the business model they offer, now they just need to open more stores!

So that confirms it’s definitely Starkey Edge , so the latest technology, all the premium brands at Costco.. fantastic!

I just re-read Starkey’s Omega product announcement. It doesn’t sound like the Omega contains any substantive improvements over the Edge.

Most notably no improvements to the Edge’s AI model. By comparison, Phonak just improved their model for free with a firmware upgrade.

I would classify the other new features as mostly marketing fluff. based directionality seems to be the highlight, but I doubt anybody can really tell the difference in a complex real world listening scenario. Compared to well done AI speech enhancement, directionality just doesn’t deliver the same gains with regards to speech comprehension.

In other words, I don’t think it’s a big loss that Costco won’t get the very latest Starkey model.

@wtolkien said:

I just re-read Starkey’s Omega AI product announcement. It doesn’t sound like the Omega contains any substantive improvements over the Edge.

This why I said, Costco got the latest model even tho they changed the name, yeah the marketing department blurb is always a bit of bellybutton fluff, so I don’t think anyone outside of the lab is gonna notice any difference as well.

In reply to @rosetribal

First thing the app does is ask you to create an account or sign in with an existing account. Bet they shared a login or something. (Also I note the initial pages of the SoundGear app are identical to the Starkey app except the branding and app name.)

In reply to @AbramBaileyAuD

Just came back from having my Philips 9050 upgraded from Costco and was told that they are now carrying the Starkey . Didn’t ask her if any sales yet. But she did say that I was the first person to make an appt to specifically upgrade the 9050’s.

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