Philips HearLink 9030 observations (new Costco aid by Demant)

I asked Philips if their HearLink 9030’s use the hearing aid microphone or the iPhone microphone while streaming calls.

Here’s their reply:

“Thank you for reaching out to the Philips Consumer Care team. When making and receiving calls with your iPhone, even when streaming, you will need to utilize your phone itself for transmission of your own voice.”

Thanks for confirming from the source. That’s what I thought.

So I will bring my observations of the HearLink 9030 to a conclusion. Today I returned the aids to Costco for a full refund. These are fine aids that perform well enough, however, as my world opened up with more family gatherings and business meetings, I noticed the aids were only marginally better than my Oticon Opn1 which are 5 years old now.

I started wearing the OPN again and realized they gave me the same speech understanding and natural sound that the HearLink did. The biggest plus the HearLink have over the OPN is the ability to adjust the equalizer settings for streaming, but that feature alone isn’t worth $1799 to me.

I would absolutely recommend the HearLink, but for me as I got into more experiences and was able to make direct comparisons to the Oticon OPN1, they just didn’t make enough of an impact to justify the expense. Really goes to show you how fickle hearing aid reviews can be

If your OPN 1s were failing today, though, you’d go out and buy the 9030 again as their replacements though, right?

I assume that you were trying to kill 2 birds with 1 stone here, hoping for the 9030 to be better than the OPN as a replacement primarily, and secondarily, retiring your OPN as backup pairs then. And since it didn’t meet your primary objective, you couldn’t justify keeping them just for the secondary objective.

Hi, I just got a loaner. They gave me the 9030’s while my KS8’s are out being refurbished at the end of my 2 year warranty. I thought these were the KS10’s, but after trying to connect to the KS10 app, Easy Line Remote, multiple times I realized that I’ve got the 9030’s. I’m bummed because I had come to the realization that although I love the re-chargeable aspect, the sound is pretty much not worth paying another $1800. So now I’ve got to ask how do my older KS8’s compare to the KS10’s, if you have any info on that.

KS8 is made by Rexton. KS10 is made by Sonova who makes Phonak. Probably biggest difference besides rechargability is connectivity. KS8 is made for iPhone. KS10 is Classic Bluetooth. I’d suggest sticking with KS8 unless there is something specific it’s not doing for you. I’d likely still be using my KS7s if they’d had a way to directly stream sound from a TV device (without pendant)

My experience is the same. I have three months on the Oticon More 1 and two months on the Phillips 9030, and the Mores are incredible. Light years ahead. They are not the same hearing aid.

I bought the 9030s to serve as my back up pair but I’m probably going to return them to Costco because the fit is so mediocre. My Costco tech is clearly struggling and simply relying on the Phillips software. He switched me yesterday from the default Phillips fit flow to NAL-NL2 because he doesn’t know what else to do. I might ask my Audi to program the 9030s instead of returning them…she is excellent. Or I might try to download the software and DIY.

I wore the OPN previously, but only in my left ear as my right ear had normal hearing at the time. Today I need aids for both ears (sigh). I liked the OPN, but the Mores are noticeably better.

I have the 9030 hearing aids and bought a NoahLink and downloaded the HearSuite software. To me the feedback suppression and noise suppression are excellent. I can alter the sound to a degree that surprises me without concern for feedback. It took a little while to understand how the software worked (Audiology Online helped) but I am very content with my setup and recommend DIY because it saves so many trips to the audi.

My experience with Philips 3090:

It is my first time to use HA. I lost some hearing in high frequency bands as the aging effect. I went Costco for KS10. The technician selects Philips 3090 for me, He said it is better for me than KS10. I use it about one month with two adjustment in Costco. I am not complete satisfied:

1. The Bluetooth connection keeps dropping or one ear sound only. You have to unpair and repair to get it connected. it makes me frustrated back-forward several times before connected.

2. The IA noise detection and reduction feature does not do the good job automatically. I barely can hear from my wife when we set in doctor’s waiting room filling with patients conversations. I manually selected the environment programs, none of them can reduce the background noise.

The Costco tech did adjustments twices. He said “you have to used being”. As a retired engineer, I dd a lot of research for hearing aids and the current technologies. This device is not what I expected. I’ll return it and try KS10.

There are a many, many options when configuring your hearing aid. I suggest you try to get a different COSTCO fitter who knows more about the Phillips hearing aids - perhaps try a different COSTCO store.

@chrshea2 is your Philips still connecting to your Android ok? If so, what phone do you have? I’m considering the Philips aid but would have to get a newer phone for the connectivity to work. I’ve seen their compatibility list (of Android phones they’ve tested) but I’m also seeing complaints about connectivity problems anyway. If someone’s got a particular phone that’s working well in this respect, that’s where I’d like to start my phone search. Thank you.

@Abarsanti said:

The biggest plus the HearLink have over the OPN is the ability to adjust the equalizer settings for streaming, but that feature alone isn’t worth $1799 to me.

You can ask your audiologist to fine tune the sound for each of your streaming devices.

Both (Oticon and Bernafon) have the ability to adjust the sound of streaming devices (Volume, Perception, Bass, Mic volume) for each device. The settings/preferences can be applied separately for each device (Phone, TV-Adapter, Remote Mic).

Oticon has sliders for adjustments and Bernafon has these pulldown menus (see Bernafon pulldown menus below from Features/Accessories);

Tomorrow I finally get my 9030’s from Costco. My fitter is very good and with the right feedback from me I’m hopeful we can get them sounding pretty good compared to my first HA which was the Rexton BiCores. I’m wondering if anyone has experience or knowledge about the new open bass domes compared to the bass domes from Philips? I’m not sure which domes were on the the 9030’s I demo’d out recently but they did affect my own voice a bit, but will ask my fitter more about this tomorrow. Wondering about these and other domes and their effect on the sound of my own voice and the degree of occlusal effect. For me it’s one the things that are most irritating about hearing amplifiers like the Apple airpod pros along with lack of comfort for the Airpods.

The newer version of the Apple airpod pro is pretty good for an amplifier and I’ve been using mine while I wait for my 9030’s to arrive. But of course they don’t do very much to handle noise, especially sharper noises like from the kitchen unless you turn them down. If you turn transparency off (that’s where the HA mods are being done) and noise reduction on, the new Pros are pretty amazing for their ability to shut out the world. And they are incredible for streaming music and do help a lot with the clarity from with the TV. I also have the latest soundbar with HA tech from Zevox and that helps with TV as well. The newer Apple Airpod pro 2’s last about 7 hrs or so but still fall way short of something like the 9030. I’ll probably do some DIY eventually because my fitter/tech is retiring in May of 2023!

@fbacher1 I’d appreciate it if you’d share your experience with your 9030s when you have them. I just ordered them yesterday for a fitting on 10/22. It’ll be the first time in 30 years of wearing hearing aids that I’ve gone to a fitter instead of an audiologist and I’m a little nervous about that. But, Costco has a terrific trial period so that’s ultimately what made me decide to give it a shot (after reading so many Costco posts here and posts about the Philips 9030).

I’m also hoping, since follow-up fittings can be done remotely and you can go to any Costco store, that if the fitter at the store where I’m buying the aids can’t get them right maybe I can find a way to get to a fitter at some other store even if in another State or a Costco audiologist (of which there are none in my State). Have any of you done this? If so, how did you work your way through the Costco system to a fitter that was able to do what you needed?