Advise for my next pair of hearing aids

I’m long winded, and for that I apologize. I’ll try to make this as brief as I can.

My journey of HA’s started in 2020 at the age of 44, I noticed ringing in my ears during covid lockdowns, went to an ENT and discovered I had hearing loss. The audioliogist at the ENT had me try a pair of Phonak Marvels, they seemed great but when the price came out, like most people in the US I was shocked. I then made a few consecutive mistakes in my eyes. I decided to shop around, went to Connect hearing, got a better deal and decided to get disposable battery in the 70 tech level, not the top.
The first audi at connect was good - ok but she retired and it kind of went down hill. I also thought I never quite got them dialed in as well as they could be, they never did real ear measures. I could tell I should have gotten the top tech level, the noise in a car for example was enough to make it hard to hear. Noise in a restaurant was impossible. I learned very early on I couldn’t work out in them as my sweat would short out the battery 1/2 in my workout. I dealt with them, they weren’t perfect but I did hear better 90% of the time.

Two years later, I saw that the Jabra EP20’s came out at Costco. I saw tons of people saying how great of an experience they had at Costco. The specs of the EP20’s seemed great, auracast seemed like a good step in the future and I had high hopes for MI&RE. Excitedly, I ordered them and a few days later they were in. They did REM’s so I thought I was off to a good start. They really did seem pretty well dialed in. I could hear way better in the car and moderately better in a noisy restaurant. It was also nice throwing them in a charger at night, wearing them all the next day with almost half my battery left at the end of the night and not worrying about carrying around extra batteries and dealing with battery swaps during the day.

All was well for a few months, then it felt like I was going deaf. Like a dumbass I walked around for a few days thinking my hearing got worse, then I finally figured out that something was wrong with the hearing aid, most likely the microphone. They were sent in, a week later came back and all was fine… for a few months, then it happened again. At that point I should have given up, I was still in the return window, but I’m hard headed.
The mics went out a few more times over the first year + a few months until resound finally redesigned the shell to put a mic filter. That seemed to fix my issue for awhile. Over time though my left hearing aid just felt more and more like it wasn’t pumping out as much sound, like 10% lower than it should be. Went to Costco a few times and they said everything was fine. One of the fitters pushed back last time and really pissed me off. He said something to the effect of “maybe it’s in your head, the hearing aids are fine, we just listened to them, it seems you come in every few weeks with problems and since they replaced the shell we have found nothing” I don’t know, it rubbed me the wrong way. I’m not making things up, I feel like I say “what” 100 times a day. I feel like I should be hearing better. My expectation isn’t to have my hearing like it was before loss, I know that’s not possible.

Anyways, even though they are just over two years old, I’ve decided to move on, I think. My wife’s job (which may actually end sooner than later) has great insurance, will pay 3k towards hearing aids. I can afford them but before the job ends I want to do something. I figure they were less that 1/2 the cost of a fully loaded pair of HA’s outside of costco, so I got enough use out of them. I researched Audiologists and found one with hundreds of 5 star ratings on google reviews.

I have an appointment later this week. My questions are mainly, what should my realistic expectations be for a hearing aid. Is it realistic to feel like I should be able to go into a moderately loud venue and be able to carry on a conversation with someone in front of or next to me? Should I be able to not miss many if any words in a quiet environment? If so, am I best off with the newest AI models out like Phonak Sphere, Oticon Intent, Starkey Genesis etc? Would I be giving up a ton if I went with an ITE model that had bluetooth vs a RIC. One annoyance I have is that I’m bald and in the winter I wear a beanie / cap and when I do the mic’s get covered. An ITE seems like I would be able to keep my head warm and hear at the same time.

@TonyF said:

then went big boy and bought Phonak I90 Sphere Ultras. You just need to get a programmer that is good at programing the manual spheric speech in loud noise program that is good at setting up the automatic base Soundsense program and you will be GOLDE

The Oticons you tested were Intents? Yea most people say the same thing about the Spheres. I just wish they weren’t as chunky. I guess I’ll just have to test them to see if they dont push my ears out too much. Are you using activevent on those as well?