What hearing aid is best at Costco?

Oticonian/Disposablyte

Sep 5, 2021Edited

@molarface: Thank you for your support. I know you’re an enthusiastic member who likes to help others with your insights, so I appreciate that you chose not to remain silent.

nqq98392

In reply to @molarface

It doesn’t matter which brand you choose. The key to getting the best performance out of your hearing aids is having them fit by an experienced and passionate hearing healthcare professional who has a strong educational foundation in audiology and follows industry standard best practices such as real ear measurement.

Oticonian/Disposablyte

Exactly. I’ve said so in most of my other posts.

Volusiano

Sep 5, 2021Edited

In reply to @nqq98392

@nqq98392 said:

I’m afraid you’re the one that’s been misled, especially by @Volusiano who fancies himself an expert on Demant hearing aids even though he’s never worked at Demant or associated with anyone who has. His knowledge (which consists mainly of his own opinion) comes entirely from reading and self-interpreting Demant’s various marketing white papers. He has no inside research and development or engineering expertise whatsoever.

Why would I need to work at Demant to be able to say that they own Bernafon, Sonic and Oticon? I only need to Google it up.

Of course I don’t have inside R&D experience at Demant, but who on this forum does? Or does one need to have inside R&D experience at Demant to meet your standards and be able to speak about their products here on this forum?

Of course I learn about what they reveal in their marketing and their whitepapers to determine what and how their technologies work, and also rely on my own experience with their products. How else would an outsider of Demant (like myself and yourself and all other forum posters for that matter) learn about their products? Look for an insider? Good luck with that!

@nqq98392 said:

He has no … engineering expertise whatsoever.

It’s interesting to see that you fancy to know me very well.

I actually have an MS in Electrical Engineering. It’s enough to help me understand some parts of the technical whitepapers and interpret my findings from them.

@nqq98392 said:

Demant has made great efforts to distinguish their lines of hearing aids so they appear to be very different, but in reality they’re much more similar than you can imagine.

This sounds like the Kool-aid I’ve heard many Costco like to peddle to clients. There had been a good long thread to discuss what “similarities” are between the Philips HearLink 9030 and the Oticon More, so I won’t beat that horse to death here again. Anyone interested can just do a search for it. But the bottom line is that their core technologies seem to be different. The only similarities are just on the peripheral features and the accessories and the hardware look and feel.

Oticonian/Disposablyte

@Volusiano: I want to add this: you clearly invest a great deal of effort to make your posts accurate, articulate, and helpful. I’m very grateful to you because you’ve helped me and I’ve learned a lot from your posts.

That’s way more than I can say for whatever @nqq98392 has contributed to this thread, today.

Volusiano

Thank you Jim. I guess both you and I are a little sensitive and want to clarify whenever we hear from someone who says that certain brands at Costco (mostly either Bernafon and/or Philips) are made from Oticon or just like Oticon or similar to Oticon (implying a rebrand), usually repeated as having heard from Costco as such. This has happened more often than I care to remember in the years that I’ve been on this forum.

Although I really don’t have any skin in the game to defend this, because these HAs products sold at Costco are good products and probably among the best value for the money (I used to own several pairs of Costco HAs myself), I really hate misleading claims especially if they’re peddled by the HCPs themselves, so I want to speak up.

It is true that Costco sells many rebranded products, like the KS series rebranded from Phonak (like the KS9 or KS10), or Rexton rebranded from Signia (like the M-Core SR), which adds to the confusion. But this does not mean that either the Bernafon or the Philips are rebranded from Oticon even though they’re all under the William Demant umbrella, at least not as far as I can tell.

Oticonian/Disposablyte

Sep 5, 2021Edited

@Volusiano: I’ll quote what I posted just a little little while ago to explain my motivation for wanting to set the record straight.

@SpudGunner said:

To allow the myth to propagate that “Phillips are like Oticons” is to create a bunch of misplaced expectations that do nothing but create a large number of dissatisfied users, both on the Phillips side, and on the Oticon side of the equation. That’s the spirit in which I’ve piped up to offer my rebuttal. It’s not to split hairs, or to show somebody to be wrong.

I would definitely head to Costco if I couldn’t afford to get my Oticon More1s. There’s nothing inherently inferior with what they sell.

As others have said before: if properly fitted, other makes can give excellent results. But there’s only one genuine Oticon OpenSound, and that’s the one I prefer.

It’s sort of like guitars. If you’re a Chet Atkins picker, and want the exact tonal balance, sensitivity, and clarity he gets from his instruments, there’s only one pickup design that delivers - Gretsch FilterTrons.

Gibsons sound great, and I probably play my Gibsons the most, but there’s only one brand of guitar that delivers “That Great Gretsch Sound.” My Fenders? Fantastic! My Strats? Superb! My Telecaster? Terrific! But there’s only one kind that delivers “That Great Gretsch Sound.” And that’s a Gretsch.

I feel the same way about Oticon, and I don’t like it when their hearing aids are equated with others - any more than I like it when someone says Fenders are just as good as Gretsches.

Of course they’re just as good, but you can’t do any kind of adjustment that will make them sound the same!

LouisInTexas

I purchase a pair of Jabra 2 weeks ago and I love them. Connect to BOTH my iPhone and my iPad with no problems.

janofh

In reply to @SpudGunner

Interesting to note - I was at Costco yesterday to pickup my new jabras and was talking to my about aids and such. I was commenting on the reactions here about philips being like oticon and she said that the philips rep is the one that told her that. The philips rep said how similar it is to the oticon and it uses similar hw/sw.

I am not trying to state this as fact - I know full well sales reps can be full of it just wondering if perhaps that is one of the reasons people seem to be hearing this quote a bit.

Oticonian/Disposablyte

Sep 9, 2021Edited

@janofh: Thanks for passing on this interesting tidbit. You may be right about the source.

I only react to the conflation of the two because beam forming have not given me good results - for my loss, lifestyle, and expectations. Oticon has a different approach that I’m sure results in better hearing for me, based on my own personal experience (yours may be very different)…

I’m sure Phillips are good aids when properly prescribed and fitted. I just don’t believe they are built on the same OpenSound idea as my More devices, and the research into technical/white papers that @Colusiano seems to bear this out.

Thanks again.

janofh

Oh I get it. It’s interesting that the phonak, resound and rexton/signia appear to be exact copies rebranded but not philips. I tried the oticon briefly and think they may have been slightly better but I just felt not $4k better. Also given I have a more mild loss and it’s my first time with ha I don’t have much to compare to.

Oticonian/Disposablyte

@janofh: It’s nice to be able to discuss the similarities and differences of the machines with you, Howard, without getting into a flame war! (I’m not so rabid an Oticonian that I can’t appreciate that the different makes each have their strengths, and that there’s no single “best” hearing aid.)

In reply to @janofh

@janofh said:

Oh I get it. It’s interesting that the phonak, resound and rexton/signia appear to be exact copies rebranded but not philips. I tried the oticon briefly and think they may have been slightly better but I just felt not $4k better. Also given I have a more mild loss and it’s my first time with ha I don’t have much to compare to.

The issue isn’t whether one is better than the other. It isn’t even whether they’re rebranded copies, which Philips is not. It’s whether they’re “similar” or the “same”. Only someone who thinks that beam forming and open surround sound are the same could make that statement.

In reply to @janofh

@janofh said:

Interesting to note - I was at Costco yesterday to pickup my new jabras and was talking to my HIS about aids and such. I was commenting on the reactions here about philips being like oticon and she said that the philips rep is the one that told her that. The philips rep said how similar it is to the oticon and it uses similar hw/sw.

I am not trying to state this as fact - I know full well sales reps can be full of it just wondering if perhaps that is one of the reasons people seem to be hearing this quote a bit.

Good insight. I would love to be able to ask that rep in what way they are similar.

tenkanProvider

In reply to @billgem

@billgem said:

which Philips is not. It’s whether they’re “similar

You don’t know what your talking about, they are similar!

tenkanProvider

In reply to @billgem

Nothing worse then people just repeating the dogma on this forum, breeding misinformation is if it is fact.

They are similar, no one said exact, so here’s the deal, similar chip to what’s offed by most from William Demant family, they have similar plastics housing and chassis, same receivers, same domes, oh and guess what, they use similar software (HearLink) even the App is similar, but wait there’s more, they use the same accessories (ConnectClip) and all made by the exact same company of your Oticon (William Demant family) wow so pretty dam similar in anyone’s eyes.
To think that because one uses “beam forming” and the other doesn’t, is enough for people to make up this “thing” that they are totally different.
Don’t worry about that some people can or can’t tell the difference between the two when using them, but that just proves we all hear differently.

Volusiano

Sep 9, 2021Edited

@tenkan said:

They are similar, no one said exact, so here’s the deal, similar chip to what’s offed by most from William Demant family,

Not really, Even between the Oticon OPN, OPN S and More, they use 3 different platforms/chips (the Velox, Velox S, and Polaris platform, respectively). For Sonic, another Demant subsidiary, they use the SoundDNA platform for their Enchant line, and the Extend platform for their Radiant line. It’s not obvious to me by Googling what platforms the Bernafon and Philips lines of hearing aids are based on.

@tenkan said:

oh and guess what, they use similar software (HearLink) even the App is similar

Not true. For programming software, Oticon uses Genie 2. Philips uses HearSuite. Sonic uses ExpressFit. Bernafon uses Oasis NXT. With the exception of Oasis, I’ve personally used Genie 2, HearSuite and ExpressFit myself. The look and feel and setup are all different. Yeah, some of the technologies are the same, like and such, but the programming softwares are not even “similar”.

@tenkan said:

They are similar, no one said exact

Again, you’re playing with semantics here by differentiating “similar” and “exact”. Nobody is arguing about similar vs exact. They’re only arguing about the INTENT to IMPLY that if you buy the Philips HearLink, you’re virtually getting an Oticon More (or OPN S?) rebranded, which is simply not true.

In fact, if you reread the post from poster “chrhea2”, he didn’t even say that they’re similar. He said, and I quote, “Philips are made by Oticon”. So it’s not about similar, or about exact. It’s about implying that the Philips is the same “rebrand” from Oticon, like the KS9 and KS10 are rebrands from Phonak.

In reply to @tenkan

In what way are they similar?