Oticon Smart charger vs. Desk Charger

@jcisbell: This is pretty unambiguous:

This is true for OPNS aids and and the early More firmware but after I believe More firmware 1.2.0 More aids will not start up once fully charged

@cvkemp: It’s late here, Chuck. I’ll check it out tomorrow. Thanks.

Yes it is but it is not what happens in my case. I can make a video showing how it works with mine in you are interested. If so, how should I make that available?

For those of you with the smart charger, have you tested how many charges you get before the charger needs to be charged? I did decide to go with the smart charger (knowing that there could potentially be battery issues down the road). I picked it up on Thursday, charged it to ensure it was fully charged and then unplugged it. I used it every night since then (so 5 nights so far) and I still have three green LEDs. Wondering if it is going to drop rapidly from ‘full’ three green LEDs to none… Either way, five + and counting is better than I expected (granted it is brand new)

@Chirp: For how many hours a day are you wearing your hearing aids?

@SpudGunner I’ve actually been keeping track, because I am interested in the battery life. For each of those days I wore them between 14 and 17 hours, and they were between 18-35% battery remaining when I took them out and put them in the charger. And they are 100% charged in the mornings.

@Volusiano said:

This is just to see if its performance is consistent, or if the first one or two times are “honeymoon” period then eventually it settles down to 3 HA charge cycles before the Smart Battery needs to be replenished.

@Volusiano: This is a valid point: I remember my More1 rechargeable HAs were holding a charge for an insanely ling period of time just before they “went South”.

Best to run the battries in for a few full cycles, as you suggest …

An update, in case you are still interested:

I have now had the smart charger for 7 weeks and have just charged it for the 8th time. I’m getting an average of 7 nights/full charges of my HAs from every charge of the charger (has ranged from 6-8). I have been charging it fully and then unplugging it and using it until I have one light left - so it might be even possible to push it longer, but I haven’t wanted to risk totally draining the battery. It will be interesting to see how long this battery continues to function this well. I’m starting to wonder if the advertised 3 days is actually pessimistic, intended to give them room for battery degredation before people start complaining. If mine was to drop down to 3 days battery life it would be a significant change but I can’t complain or put in a warranty claim since I was only promised 3 days to start with. Either way I am happy with it.

Thanks for the update, @Chirp. Yes I’m interested to hear. That’s pretty impressive that you get 7 nights of use out of it from the advertised 3. I think you’re right that Oticon only advertise 3 to give enough buffer space to prevent people from deeply discharging the Smart Charger too much too often, then on top of that become unhappy if Oticon had advertised 7 full charge cycles before depletion and they can’t get there anymore after a period of time before the 3 year warranty is up, at which time they’d have to replace more under warranty due to their 7 cycles claim.

If they had competition in this space, then they’d be forced to make a bolder claim to compete. But without any competition (as it probably contains a proprietary communication protocol using their licensed BT LE technology from CEVA called RivieraWaves), there’s no reason for them to make any competitive claim longer than 3 days.

@Chirp: How much charge is left in your aids when you put them into the charger?

@Volusiano said:

unhappy if Oticon had advertised 7 full charge cycles before depletion and they can’t get there anymore after a period of time before the 3 year warranty is up, at which time they’d have to replace more under warranty due to their 7 cycles claim.

@Volusiano: Now this is a more plausible reason, MrV … Exactly more plausible!

@SpudGunner said:

@Volusiano: Isn’t part of the phenomenon that our hearing aids are virtually never depleted to 0% charge when they go into the SmartCharger? For instance, if we never let our aids get below a 60% charge, we’d expect the SmartCharger to last 5 days …

Yes, I think that would be part of the explanation why it would last longer than the 3 days advertised, because like you said, if you only half deplete the HAs before putting them in the Smart Charger, then the 3 days advertised should turn into 6 days.

However, based on what @Chirp said in his post above (referenced below), the 7 nights/full charges of my HAs seem to imply that @Chirp manages to almost fully discharge his HAs every night before he puts them in his Smart Charger.

So that’s why I just assumed that if that’s true, then the Smart Charger is capable of 7 to 8 cycles of charging almost fully depleted HAs before 1 light is left (out of 3 lights?), not just partially depleted HAs. But I might have assumed wrong, Perhaps @Chirp can clarify this. And if this assumption is correct, then for partially depleted HAs daily, it may even last longer than the 7 to 8 days until 1 light remains.

@Chirp said:

I’m getting an average of 7 nights/full charges of my HAs from every charge of the charger (has ranged from 6-8). I have been charging it fully and then unplugging it and using it until I have one light left - so it might be even possible to push it longer, but I haven’t wanted to risk totally draining the battery.

@Volusiano said:

7 nights/full charges of my HAs seem to imply that @Chirp manages to almost fully discharge his HAs every night before he puts them in his Smart Charger.

@Volusiano: I didn’t interpret it that way - just that he charged them fully, from wherever they were at the end of the day (but your parsing probably makes more sense than mine.) Still, I think Oticon is fibbing about their design parameters to sidestep the replacement liability to which you have already alluded.