Auckland, New Zealand1. Find people with hearing loss like yours
If you have good hearing in the low frequencies and a steep drop in the highs, you may want to hear from people dealing with that too.
Our hearing peer finder uses that members have shared to find people with similar hearing patterns. Add your audiogram and select “Find users like yourself.” You can then explore their profiles, see which hearing aids they’ve shared, and read their posts.
Having a similar audiogram doesn’t mean you’ll get the same results from a hearing aid. The fitting matters, and people’s listening needs differ. But it gives you somewhere more useful to start.
2. See who has relevant experience while you’re reading
When you’re signed in, badges beside posts can flag “Similar hearing,” “Same hearing aids,” or “Same hearing-aid family,” based on the information you and other members have added to your profiles.
3. Get your question in front of people who wear the hearing aid
Before buying, you might want to ask whether a particular hearing aid is comfortable with glasses, or how well its charger holds up.
The community hearing-aid directory shows members who report wearing each hearing aid, including current and past users. You can also tag a hearing aid in your question. Current wearers who’ve enabled product-mention notifications can receive an alert, giving them a chance to weigh in even if they weren’t following the discussion.
4. Read the reviews behind the ratings
A star rating only tells you so much. Someone might love the sound of their hearing aids but be fed up with the app. You’ll learn more by reading what they actually wrote.
The community directory brings together owner ratings and written reviews, along with information about how long members have used their devices. You can look at current and past experiences and see how the ratings are distributed.
For products with enough substantive reviews, clearly labeled summaries pull together recurring themes. The full reviews remain available, so you can check the comments behind the summary and learn more about the people who wrote them.
5. See how hearing aids hold up over time
The forum’s archive goes back to 2006, with more than 250,000 posts and over 30,000 registered members.
That’s useful if you’re researching an older model or want to know what happened after someone’s first enthusiastic review. Did they keep wearing the aids? Did a software update fix the problem? Discussions that continue over months or years can cover repairs, adjustments, and problems that only show up with longer use.
6. Get into the technical details
Some members are choosing their first hearing aids. Others are comparing fitting settings or trying to get a working. We have dedicated sections (and a rich tags library) for hearing aids, self-fitting, manufacturer support discussions, assistive technology, cochlear implants, hearing loss, and research. You can browse the basics or spend an afternoon reading about fitting software, depending on what brought you there.
7. Compare owner experiences with reviews and lab results
An owner can tell you what it’s like to wear a hearing aid at work every day, or how often they’ve had to send it away for repair. Audiologist reviews and laboratory testing give you other information to work with.
Elsewhere on HearingTracker, we publish audiologist reviews, hearing-aid comparisons, and objective lab results from HearAdvisor2, which I co-founded. You can look into a product’s measured performance, then ask forum members about the parts of daily use that matter to you.
8. Know who’s running the place
I’m an audiologist, I founded HearingTracker in 2013 (we acquired the forum a few years later), and I participate in the forum. You can see my profile and posts, learn more about why I started HearingTracker, and meet the team2.
9. See where other members are based
When someone mentions what they paid for their hearing aids or recommends a clinic, it helps to know where they live. A useful recommendation in the US may not help someone in New Zealand.
HearingTracker lets members add a specific location, such as their city or region, and display a country flag beside their posts. Reddit’s country flairs cover a limited selection of countries. We support a much broader range of flags, along with location details that give you more to go on than the country alone.
10. Get help with the audiology jargon
Audiology has a lot of abbreviations. Even a helpful reply can be hard to follow if you’ve never come across or before.
We underline common audiology abbreviations and acronyms in forum posts. Hover over one to see a short explanation in a popover, without leaving the discussion to look it up elsewhere.
You’re ignoring this member’s posts.
SoCal
