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Philips HearLink 9030 observations (new Costco aid by Demant)

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Edited

Figured I’d start documenting my experience with the new Philips Hearlink 9030 minirite T R. These came out recently at Costco and cost me $1800+$259 for the AudioClip. I purchased these yesterday so my experience is very limited with them and I’ve not been out in any challenging environments yet. Please excuse me for the randomness, but I’d like to document the experiences I’ve had so far. I work from home and am on many conference calls and essentially streaming audio about 4-5 hours per day. I have a noisy house with kids and dogs. I have a low frequency loss and have worn Oticon Opn 1 for the past 5 years.

The Philips sound very familiar to me and in the general program, I’m hearing pretty much everything I’d expect to hear with my OPNs. The Philips have been terrific for streaming and the app albeit simplistic provides some much needed tuning while streaming (can adjust low/mid/high up to 6 or down 12 dB. I have my highs up 6 dB and am hearing great on calls.) Music sounds good as well to me, but consider that I don’t hear bass well.

I went to a local store earlier for a quick package delivery. I turned on the noise program which was set noticeably more aggressive than the OPN. I really heard well and had no issues talking to the masked clerk while other customers next to me had their own conversations with other clerks.

At almost 6pm after 11 hours of use, batteries are at 53%.

I so I connected the Hearlink to my computer yesterday just to check out the software using my Noahlink Wireless and the Hearsuite software. I am not making any changes for now until I determine how I feel after my two week follow up appt at Costco.

The AudioClip is essentially the same thing as the a Oticon ConnectClip. I need this clip in order to connect my aids to the my work laptop via Bluetooth for calls. The connections was flawless as was the ConnectClip I had before. Also of note, the domes and seems to be the same I used for OPN.

The Philips Hearlink app has the same IFTT functionality that the Oticon app had. Really nothing I find useful although getting an alert to take your meds in your aids each day might benefit some.

The noise reduction and speech enhancer functions of the aids are very appealing to me and I plan to try them out in the wild sooner than later. Last thing I’ll mention is that I initially thought I’d not like rechargeable feature , but honestly I am liking it so far.

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@Abarsanti said:

I went to a local store earlier for a quick package delivery. I turned on the noise program which was set noticeably more aggressive than the OPN. I really heard well and had no issues talking to the masked clerk while other customers next to me had their own conversations with other clerks.

This is impressive.
Thanks for sharing and good luck with your new aids.

@Abarsanti said:

The AudioClip is essentially the same thing as the a Oticon ConnectClip. I need this clip in order to connect my aids to the my work laptop via Bluetooth for calls. The connections was flawless as was the ConnectClip I had before.

The Philips AudioClip looks just like the Oticon ConnectClip. So does the TV Adapter. After all, they’re all from the William Demant family.

Have you tried to pair the HearLink to the ConnectClip and the OPN to the AudioClip. I just wonder if they’re cross compatible since they may use the same pairing protocol and all.

I don’t know if you have the TV Adapter or not, but if you do for the Oticon, I wonder if you can try to pair the HearLink to it.

Just wondering if these are the same as Oticon MORE9. Setup program appears very similar to Oticon Genie. The Phillips 9030 is similar to the MORE9.
Anyone with some info on this ?

I’ve looked at the whitepapers for both the More and the HearLink 9030 and my impression is that they’re clearly not the same based on the descriptions in the whitepapers on how they operate.

They may share the same Oticon VAC+ fitting rationale though, but that is just a logical guess.

In reply to @polaris

Possibly like Bernafon Alpha 9 or even Sonic Radiant, these brands share similar features, as in same features different names?
The waters are getting pretty cloudy when one company owns so many different brands.

When I read the whitepaper for the previous Philips HearLink model (the one before the 9030), its features were dead-ringers for the Sonic Enchant 100 that I had a chance to research, trial and wrote a review on. So it’s possible that the new Philips HearLink 9030 takes after the new Sonic Radiant, although I have not yet done any research on the Sonic Radiant to be able to compare them together to know for sure.

Day 2 Observations
-Had trouble hearing my oldest daughter while I had the kitchen faucet turned on. This is typically a difficult situation for me, but I think my OPN actually handled this better than the Philips. I think this maybe due to the gain in the high frequencies being turned up too high compared to how I had programmed the OPN.
-Cooking dinner last night, the sizzle of the frying pan and sound of the exhaust fan made it so I could not hear my wife. I normally would not try to have a conversation with her through all that noise, but I’m trying to test these aids out as best I can knowing that my overall environment is less complex than it was pre-COVID (not working in the office or going out to eat frequently).
-I heard my dog crying from the living room through the wall into the upstairs hallway. She got her nail caught in the dog bed and couldn’t escape. My wife couldn’t hear this so this was quite interesting.
-I hear the attic exhaust fan that I’ve never noticed previously. I also never heard of the hum of the basement refrigerator until today…
-The observations I have today are likely due to the Costco fitter’s programming rather than due to the actual technology in the aids. I was having trouble hearing her clearly in the test booth with her mask on so she kept increasing the gain for me. I probably need to have her turn down the gain at my follow up appointment in a couple weeks. From there, I will likely manage the aids on my own as to be able to make adjustments on the fly and compare situations which worked very well for me with the OPN.

Edited

One week observations. Today I finally had a chance to try these out in noise. My kids take a group gymnastics class and while a group of 6 girls were yelling and laughing, I conversed win three other parents in the room adjacent to the gymnasium that is divided by a door which was opened. The acoustics of this room were terrible and the parents were all masked.

I heard about as well as I would have with my Oticon OPN that preceded the HearLink. If I heard better it’s be so minute I wouldn’t be able to quantify how much so.

I have a general program, speech in noise program and a mask program. I flipped between all three. As usual I heard the women well, but the one other dad there is a struggle in that masked environment with poor acoustics. Because I I have verified all the settings on my aids, the noise blocking is at max and the speech enhancer function is also at max. Not a lot of adjustments to be made there aside from fine tuning.

On the positive side, the HearLink continue to performs well on the phone and with MS Teams calls.

Apologies for the grammar, very hard to type on a phone with this platform.

Edit:

Had another crack at a noisy situation today. Mother’s Day dinner with 6 adults and 4 kids. The men’s voices are not loud enough so I need to bring us the lows and mids a bit. Otherwise these did perform well In noise with tv on, iPads going and overlapping chatter. I’d say they performed 7/10 in noise for dinner today. Slightly sharper than the OPN.

New forum member here, primarily looking at either these or the KS10’s for my first set of hearing aids to assist with a cookie bite loss. Mind if I ask what lead you to these over the KS10’s?

Edited

I chose the HearLink bc the Phonak fitting rationale in the KS10 sounds terrible to me having a low frequency hearing loss. Philips is just a name, but the hearing aid technology in the HearLink is by Demant the same company who owns Oticon and has a good grasp on how to fit low frequency hearing loss in their proprietary fitting rationale. I don’t know how either aid handles cookie bite so I’d say try both and see how they sound. Chances are the Costco fitter will plug in your and click auto fit, do and make some adjustments so you’ll have a good idea for how each aid would handle your loss to start with.

Welcome to the Forum!

If you use the Search bar at the top of the page and enter “Phillips cs Oticon technology”, you’ll get 2 hits. The second one is what you’re looking for, I believe.

In reply to @Abarsanti

Thanks! This is all pretty overwhelming honestly, and it seems like I have a LOT to learn before making a decision. Like many others, I have zero insurance coverage for hearing aids and I’ve only recently discovered that my wife wasn’t crazy about needing to get my hearing checked, so thanks for sharing your experience with me.

Not a problem. Now that you’ve discovered the Search function, you have instant access to a ton of invaluable info.

[Maybe even dig around for one of the many threads about Costco or even spousal attitudes towards hearing loss. One of us will pitch in to help you, if you get stuck!]

In reply to @mbsalty

@mbsalty said:

At one time, I saw a link to an article from demant about the difference between Phillips and oticon in how they process sound. But I can’t find it anymore. Would you happen to have that link? Thanks

What @SpudGunner shows is the post (not an article) I wrote about how the first Philips HearLink model is similar to the Sonic Enchant 100 in a thread titled “OPN S1 vs Costco Phillips”. There are 2 clarifications I want to make about this post and this thread:

  1. I believe that at the time, the Costco was telling the OP to wait until the new HearLink 9030 to come out, and implied that it would be the same as the More. Obviously the HearLink 9030 hadn’t come out yet at the time, so there was no whitepaper on the 9030 at the time yet.

  2. So I looked up the whitepaper of the first generation HearLink (not the 9030) and saw that it has the same functionalities as the Sonic Enchant 100, and that’s what I pointed out in my post on that thread, that the first generation HearLink (not the 9030) was a copycat of the Sonic Enchant 100.

Since then, the Philips HearLink 9030 has come out, and its whitepaper finally made available, and it seems like a brand new model, very different than the original Philips HearLink. So it does NOT seem to be an extension of the original HearLink based on the 2 whitepapers. Nevertheless, this new HearLink 9030 also does NOT show any similarity to the Oticon More nor the Oticon OPN whitepapers that I can tell either. So my conclusion is that neither the first gen HearLink, nor the second gen HearLink 9030, are copycats of either the Oticon OPN or the Oticon More.

Since then, Sonic also has come out with its new model called the Radiant. I have not tried to look for a whitepaper on the Radiant so see if the new Philips HearLink 9030 is a copycat of the Radiant or not. But since the first gen HearLink was a copycat of the Sonic Enchant, there’s a possibility that the second gen HearLink 9030 may be a copycat of the Sonic Radiant. However, I don’t think anybody has confirmed this yet through whitepapers.

Finally, there’s no “article” per se from William Demant about the difference between Philips and Oticon in how they process sound that I know of. I would be very interested to see such an article, too, if you have a link. I doubt that William Demant would want to write such an article in the first place, since I don’t see what they would gain by comparing the 2 brands officially.

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