Which Bluetooth hearing aids support multiple devices?

Phonak makes the claim their Marvels work for iPhone as well as other phones. Having had Phonak before Bluetooth, I tried them when it was time for new HAs but was very disappointed using them with an iPhone. I returned them and got MFI HAs (Oticon S 1 in my case) and found them to be far better for connectivity. I liked them better in other ways too but if you’re an iPhone user I would highly recommend Apple MFI for connectivity.

While the Oticon app is far from the best in many respects, it does allow you to adjust your HAs with an Apple Watch. The Phonak Marvels and the Watch were constantly fighting each other during my trial period. For example, I had to turn off the watch to get the Marvels to connect to my HAs at all. And if I got a phone call while streaming media it would require starting over again after the call ended.

I got a new iphone and my Rexton’s won’t pair…my other phone is not shut down yet…How do I unpair it on old phone if that is what is necessary.

If you want the ability to pair with multiple devices, you want made for iPhone as others have said. Phonak doesn’t do that. (Marvels will work with iPhone, but they are not Made for iPhone) The term “high-quality audio experience” concerns me as I don’t think any hearing aids do that, but I may be reading too much into it. Do your Phonaks provide that experience? I have 3 separate thoughts. If you like the Phonak sound, I find that Signia comes closes to it. If you want to hear all sounds, Oticon OPN is very good, and for music, many people like the Widex Evoke. All are Made for iPhone. And a fourth thought! If you need further help in Speech in Noise, Resound’s MultiMic is a cool device and the Resound Quattros are also good aids.

I don’t agree with most of the MFI posts above. I’m not saying MFI isn’t a good thing, just that because you have an iPhone you should not get the Marvels is not correct. My guess is those who are indicating the Marvels are difficult to pair with multiple devices haven’t used them since the recent 2.0 firmware update and the new greatly improved MyPhonak app. It used to be cumbersome to connect with multiple devices but now it couldn’t be much simpler. I quickly connect to my laptop, my iPhone, and my Apple Watch without any connection problems. Example: To connect to my laptop with my Marvels already connected to my iPhone, all I have to do is go into my iPhone settings under Bluetooth, find the Marvel Left Hearing Aid (my dominant aid) and click on “Disconnect” (not Forget This Device). Then I go to my laptop and click on the Bluetooth connection, find my left hearing aid and click on “Connect”. Other than the very first time you don’t have to turn your aids on/off at all since they remain “paired” even though they aren’t “connected”. When I’m done with the laptop I just click on disconnect, open my phone and click on connect. the whole process takes about 10 seconds. Couldn’t be much simpler. I also use the TV Connect and when I want to use it I don’t have to disconnect from the phone, it just connects automatically. Further, with the new MyPhonak app, you have the ability to customize multiple programs exactly as you want them and then save them as a new separate program. I believe most of the negative comments above were related to the situation before the new updates.

To be clear, there are two issues with pairing. One is pairing the phone to the hearing aids and other devices. On this issue the iPhone in my experience works really well. I use the Costco KS8 which is MFi and an iPhone 7. I pair the phone with my hearing aids as well as with my blood glucose meter, and two vehicles with Bluetooth. It seems to be able to handle pair with my BG meter at the same time as the iPhone is paired with my hearing aids. They do not interfere with each other. I can also pair with my vehicles and in auto mode it switches from alerts and voice audio going direct to my ears to a hands free mode where the alerts and audio goes to my vehicle sound system. I can easily override this and send audio direct to the phone or back to my ears. That all works well. The advantage of the iPhone MFi system over some of the other solutions out there especially with Android phones, is that the MFi system uses BLE not Classic Bluetooth. That means the iPhone streams directly to each ear because in BLE mode it can connect to more than one device. The Android solutions seem to use Classic Bluetooth to stream to one ear, and then Classic Bluetooth to stream from that ear to the other ear. And the issue is that Classic Bluetooth does not go through body parts well and depends on reflections, so it works better indoors. BLE has that issue too, but it does not have to go through your head, and is more likely to have a straighter shot going from the phone to both ears depending on where your phone is located.

The other issue is if you want to pair your hearing aids to other devices than the iPhone. I have no experience with that, and that is where you can getting into unpairing and pairing issues. Perhaps others can help you with that.

Hope that helps some.

This is a pretty old thread, you could probably post your own, but most HAs today support BLE and devices.