Report on Specsavers Advance Elite hearing aid trial (UK)

Hi,

Long post incoming!

If you read some part and want to respond, I am happy to get your thoughts. This is also a log for me to look back on in future.

I have been on the look-out for new hearing aids since my existing Signia Pure C&G 2AX have stopped charging.

I spoke to a non-high-street audi first and was quoted 4400 GBP for a top-of-the line phonak. With my loss I was finding it a bit difficult to justify the cost (he was pushing me towards infinio virto R with custom molds).

Anyway, I decided to try Specsavers and have tried two different HAs in their “advance elite” range.

Fitting

Before getting to the impression of the HAs, let me talk about the fitting:

• They did do REM after I requested it. However, I am not totally sure if it was done to the best standard (e.g. the speaker was a bit offset to one side in front of me). They did run the calibration step at first though so hopefully the result is valid (there was a decent amount of aircon noise in the room too).
• When I tried to ask about more complex features such as frequency shifting I got the impression the audi was not too confident to change these settings and preferred to preload programs and adjust amplification levels only.
• Most of the specsavers customers don’t ask questions and accept what they are given.

Vivia 9

The first hearing aid I trialled appears to be a “white-label” version of GN resound vivia 9 (RIC with tulip tip). I have read mixed reviews on this device but let me try to be as objective as I can.

Positive points:

• The size of the device is very impressive. It is small and comfortable to wear.
• The music program gave me a decent result when listening to music through speakers (not talking about streaming here).
• The “all around” mode seems to work acceptably well most of the time.
• I did survive in a very noisy conference hall (300 people talking in groups). For this I used the “hear in noise” setting. It wasn’t exactly comfortable to follow conversations but it did perform better than I expected and I could participate. I have read reviews suggesting this would be the weak point of these HAs.

Negative points:

• Noise reduction is too strong in most modes. I am not sure if this is something that one gets used to over time, but the “dolby noise reduction” effect just makes it hard to understand what is being said. Luckily this can be dialed down to be much less annoying via the app. The downside is that the adjusted settings cannot be saved in the app - I need to readjust this each time the HAs are restarted.
• Streaming music and calls lack bass completely. This is to be expected with tulip tips, but it is notably worse than the other HAs I tried which also did not have fully closed domes.
• The charger is the “desktop” style that isn’t much good for carrying the HAs and they don’t hold a charge themselves. This can be upgraded though later so I don’t consider it a deal breaker.

Overall I can see myself keeping these if I upgrade the charger.

Unitron moxi smile

The second HA I trialled appears to be a “white-label” Unitron Moxi Smile S-R 9. Most posts suggest that specsavers were using phonaks for the advance elite, but these HAs look exactly like the unitrons. I guess that means there is no “sphere” mode. For these HAs I have a small double-vented dome rather than a tulip tip. If anyone has experience of this HA I am happy to hear about it.

I’ve only been using these for a few days so my review is not totally complete.

Positive points:

• The streaming music quality is much more rounded (more bass) than the vivia 9s. I am not sure if this is due to differences in fitting or a feature of the HAs themselves.
• Seems to have more lower frequency amplification which helps with speech understanding and I pick up more random conversation in the street.
• Charger is a something you can use to carry the HAs around and holds a charge.

Negative points:

• This is not really an “AI-tech” hearing aid, despite being the top technology level in the advance range. I honestly thought I was going to get a phonak sphere equivalent but I am 95% sure this is a unitron device (so maybe similar to the non-sphere infinio).
• Hard to use properly for streaming calls. The sound is good for me to listen to the call, but using the HA as a microphone has caused a lot of complaints from the person I’m speaking with (on the vivia I could switch to using the phone mic to address complaints while still streaming sound to the HA but I can’t seem to do that with this HA).
• Listening to music through speakers is not as good as the vivia. It seems the HA is still doing too much processing even when I reduce it to a minimum in the app. I would say that pop/rock music was “acceptable”, but hearing a violin sounded pretty bad.
• In the auto-mode, the noise cancelling can come and go quickly creating a “phase shift” sort of effect. I also feel that noise cancelling makes it harder to understand speech (this is a similar complaint to the vivia).
• At first seemed so much larger than the vivia, but I don’t find them overly uncomfortable. I think they can be more visible from the side because the lower part of the aid bulges out more.

Note: I have not yet tried a noisy environment to properly gauge “speech in noise”.

Overall

I can’t decide between these two! The trouble is that both are “quite good but with limitations”, and I know full well there is no perfect HA.

Maybe I should try the “real” phonaks. I am concerned that the sphere-enabled devices may just be too big for me if I do decide to try them (I already thought the unitrons are quite big, and tbh I am not in noisy environments so often).

It is interesting that the sound from both HAs is quite a bit different despite starting from the same audiogram. I feel the unitron device has much more low frequency amplification (the audi did boost that quite a bit as part of the REM test).

Maybe I can ask for vented domes with the vivias to see if they give a better overall sound (not sure if specsavers will entertain this kind of request). Would welcome any thoughts on the difference between the two options here.

Thanks for reading.