Oticon Real vs. Oticon More

As you may already know, the main differences are the Sudden Sound Stabilizer and the Wind & Handling Stabilizer features. I don’t have any personal experience with them myself, but I’ve heard reactions from “not a whole lot different if you don’t have sudden sound and wind/handling issues”, to a few people who said that their Reals sound better than their Mores. One person said that his Real 2 sounds better than his More 1 (note the Tier difference here), not by a whole lot, but there’s a perceptible difference to him.

I suspect that for folks who are able to tell that the Real sounds better than the More, they probably were in noisy situations with a myriad of sudden sounds, so the Real subdues the sudden sounds better than the More, therefore giving them a better listening experience. But the sudden sound stabilizing done by the Real is probably subtle enough that the user doesn’t even notice that “Ah ha! That was a sudden sound that just happened which I didn’t have to endure and caused me discomfort”. It was probably subtle enough that the user was blissfully unaware that there were sudden sounds occurring; they only noticed that the Real gave them a “je ne sais quoi” better listening experience than the More overall.

On the other hand, folks who don’t frequent noisy places with sudden sounds have a less likely occurrence of sudden sounds in their simpler environments, so they probably can’t tell much difference between the Real and the More.

But if wind is a big issue for you, the Real would obviously be better hands-down.

So I think it really depends.

Below are the 2 result charts that @billgem mentioned for comparison. I think a 4.6 vs 4.5 for the More and Real, respectively, implies that they’re pretty much the same for those metrics. But for folks who can benefit from the Real’s 2 new features (sudden sounds and wind), which are not considered in the HearAdvisor tests, of course the Real is going to shine more.

In terms of the My Own Voice score, I’m not sure what metrics they use for it, other than a description that says “Own Voice Not Boomy”. I’m not sure whether “Own Voice Not Boomy” is better or “Own Voice Not Tinny” would be better. I personally would rather have “Own Voice Not Tinny”, so to me, “Own Voice Not Boomy” is not necessarily worse or better. It’s just a matter of personal preference. If it had said “Own Voice Sounds Most Natural”, then there’d be less debate about whether this is better than Boomy or Tinny. So I wouldn’t put too much weight on their My Own Voice score, unless the scores between the 2 are drastically different, which they’re not.

As for the No Feedback score, it’s possible that the Real’s sudden sounds handling helps mitigate the risk of feedbacks better due to being able to suppress sudden sounds better, hence the slightly better score for the Real there. But as far as I can tell, they use the exact same Sound Optimizer feedback technology.

I’m just now seeing this post. I trialed the Mores for about a month but bought Reals. Mostly because of the new features others have mentioned. I thought the wind and sudden noise management was super helpful and the difference was very obvious.

I also switched audiologists between trying the devices. I don’t think the Mores were configured very well by the first guy. So that might have something to do with my experience as well.

If I already had the Mores I probably wouldn’t feel the need to go out and replace them. But if I was trying to choose between them I think the Reals are a decent upgrade.