Trial results for Oticon Xceed BTE

I have benefited from this forum and want to try to give back a bit with an evaluation (long) of my recently trialed pair of Oticon Xceed HAs. I began a 60 day trial at the beginning of December 2023. I had previously been using Oticon OPN1 BTE PP. My hearing loss is severe in my right ear and severe to profound in my left.
Generally, I have been happy with the OPN1s. I have word recognition issues and of course, trouble hearing in noisy settings, but in all, these HAs work well for me and are very good with phone, music and TV streaming. I don’t have any reliable backup HAs and with the age of these (four years) and some moderate Medicare Advantage subsidy, I thought I’d see what is currently available.
So, visiting my audi and getting a new hearing test (little change), she suggested I trial the Xceeds (apparently the only Ultra Power HA currently offered by Oticon) and replace my existing ear molds. My first couple of weeks were ok, but I was getting lots of static, especially when streaming music (one of my favorite pastimes). On my first tune up visit, an adjustment was made to improve the music clarity (it was well below the OPN1 quality). Well, no success. I began attempting adjustments using the Oticon iPhone app. I found I could reduce high and medium frequencies and get improved music quality, but still below my OPN1s. It was about this time that I began having problems with the app itself. It would disconnect from the Xceeds and an HA reboot would be needed to reconnect. Annoying. On a return audi visit within a week, another adjustment was made. By now, I’m a month into my evaluation.
After this adjustment, music (and TV) streaming improved somewhat. At the same time, the ability to manually adjust volume levels using the HA toggles had reduced to a very narrow range and was too loud even at the lowest setting (even trying to bring the volume down with the phone app). The app also decided to become more flaky and was disconnecting often enough to be aggravating. Then the app decided to freeze completely and I could only recover it by deleting it with a new reinstall. If this app underwent thorough testing, they missed lots of bugs with these Xceeds paired to my shiny new iPhone 15.
But, you ask, how was hearing and understanding the spoken word. Well, pretty decent. With a car program, my speech recognition improved while driving with passengers. I was even able to understand much of what was being spoken on radio broadcasts – a marked improvement. In my at home environment where the most important thing, obviously, is hearing what my lovely wife is telling me; word recognition may have marginally improved, but not really noticeably. My concern remained music quality as I am a heavy music listener due to the fact that I have never been able to understand much of what is be said in radio broadcasts or streaming podcasts (and no, I’d don’t understand many song lyrics). I tried to improve music quality by changing the settings I had access to in the iPhone app (when it would work). I also spent lots of time and switching back and forth between the Xceeds and the OPN1s to compare sound quality. This always had the OPN1s coming out well ahead with music quality. Music quality became a deal breaker, so a few days ago, I revisited my audi and returned the Xceeds and requested a trial of the Phonak Lumity Naida 90 UP BTE. I expect that trial to start within two weeks and will post my experiences.
From reading within this forum, I have learned that many believe the Ultra Power category of HAs is be de-emphasized by the manufacturers. For me, this is disappointing and I suspect my challenges with the Xceeds may stem from lack of focus on the part of Oticon. A few on this forum have suggested that with my loss, that I consider CI. I spoke with my audi about this. Even though her office isn’t involved with CI, she was very positive as she had prior experience in a CI clinic. If the Phonaks don’t fly, maybe I’ll think more about CI.
Hope this is helpful. Let me know if anyone has questions or comments.