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Demant introduces Philips HearLink hearing aids

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I got my Philips hearing aids (MiniRITE 312’s) yesterday, and have confirmed that their domes and wax traps are DIFFERENT than my old Oticon Agil Pros.

I’ll post a review of my new Philips after I’ve had them for a little while.

The miniRite model uses different receivers then the old Agil model, your Philips miniRite receivers would be the same ones used by Oticon OPN and any other manufactured by Demant.

The spec sheet for the Philips Hearlink 9030 MiniRITE aids almost perfectly matches the Bernafon Alpha 9 MiniRITE aids. The peak gain is lower, there is more harmonic distortion, there are less channels and the quality is less than the Oticon Opn S main line. That’s about as close of a comparison as you can get from a bird’s eye view. Personally, working with the Philips Hearlink 9030s, the streaming quality is identical to the Oticon Opn S platform I had worked with prior, but there is a slight discernable difference as a hearing aid wearer and dispenser myself in quality of sound. From an overall perspective (subjective) from inside Costco, the quality is top-notch but Oticon’s main line Opn S platform is still better (subjective).

Edited

But the Philips uses and the Bernafon does not. You could probably make a comparable match with Sonic Radiant as well, but again no AI.

The HearLink seems to have taken on a life of its own since Philips upgraded from the 9010 to the 9030. I don’t think it’s a knock off of anything else Demant makes in house.

My hunch is that with the emergence of hearing Aids and sound amplifiers that Demant turned to a recognizable brand (Philips) in consumer electronics and amplifiers to compete with a brand name like Bose which has now entered the hearing enhancement market. Buyers only have to move up a little bit in price to go from a Bose SoundControl to the more sophisticated technology and fully supported Philips HearLink 9030. I’m guessing that Demant wants the quality to be the best it can be within the constraints of the budget market.

So, I wouldn’t look in house for comparisons but to see what the competition is that they’re trying to beat and what the trend line is that they’re trying to stay ahead of. The market is changing rapidly. In addition to Oticon, Starkey, Widex, and even Audibel are out there with AI. That’s the trend that I think Demant is trying to stay ahead of. Philips has made a big splash by being the first in the Costco line of budget hearing aids to offer AI. They’re trying to grab as big a share of that market as they can and attract buyers from the OTC market who are looking at Bose.

I’ve mentioned this somewhere in this forum before, so at the risk of repeating myself, the original Philips HearLink released by Costco (the previous version of the new 9030, NOT the new 9030) was a dead ringer copy of the Sonic Enchant after I’ve been able to read the whitepapers of both. I think the Bernafon also seems very similar in core features with the original/old Philips HearLink.

But I don’t find the same similarities between the new Philips 9030 core and the new Sonic Radiant core technology (the newer version of the Enchant), at least in the area of , like @billgem said.

And in another 9030 thread, I think we also established that the core 9030 AI is different than the core More AI, although many of the auxiliary features like and feedback prevention are the same.

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