Skip to content
HearingTracker
Log in

Another Oticon Intent 1 user review

8 replies6k viewsLast reply

Link to this topic
Reply

My audiologist has given me a set of Intent 1 hearing aids to demo alongside my existing More 1 aids. She set them up using the same programming which she says is tweaked slightly to take advantage of new capabilities, but I don’t know exactly what those tweaks entail.

Intent generally sounds clearer, with cleaner and louder high tones. In quiet places my understanding of speech with the More was excellent, and with Intent it continues to be excellent. Sound from the Intent seldom shows any weird modulation, while the More occasionally gives an unnatural rapid fluctuation (perhaps I’m hearing feedback management??). Intent is clearer and cleaner sounding, but More is excellent for me in quiet and slight noise, so this upgrade alone isn’t worth the cost.

In noise the Intent turns out to be notably better for me, and easily worth the cost.

I went with three others to a nearby food hall in an old industrial space (high metal ceilings, concrete floors, brick walls) crowded with people half my age talking over each other. This is a hearing in noise torture test. I talked to different people in this environment across a table, often with a parallel conversation between the other two people right next to me. When using the Intents I could hear and understand my conversation reasonably easily, and seldom asked for a repeat. I was able to concentrate on the topic of conversation rather than figuring out what the other person just said. When using the More the general sound was much the same (voices with a significant background roar), but when I’d try to focus and follow a voice it seemed distorted and difficult to figure out the words, and my understanding dropped precipitously. My focus shifted away from the topic to a deciphering exercise. There was no contest, in this situation Intent worked far better than More.

Another difficult test I was able to run with both aids was an family dinner (my wife and I, three daughters and their partners). Most of us were brought up in noisy families, and the dinner table is a sort of conversational free-for-all. There can be three separate conversations going on at once with people spaced anywhere on the table. This is number one on my list of situations where I want better hearing.

With any hearing aid in the past, as the volume goes up I start requesting an uncomfortable number of repeats, then eventually withdraw from conversation (or switch to the smile-and-nod). The More is the best I’ve tried up till now, but still the pattern of withdrawal continued. With the Intent, I rarely asked for a repeat, and had the easiest time I can recall at a large noisy table. I never felt like I was burdening my family, or making their conversation unnatural. It felt fantastic to be an equal participant in the conversation. Simply amazing.

I suspect I was on the cusp of handling these situations, and the Intent put me over the edge. I don’t expect the Intent to have this effect for everyone, or in every difficult situation. I also fear that I’ll buy these, and in a few months be wondering why I thought they worked at all. But in my 10 days of testing they are literally the first hearing aids I’ve tried that make me feel like I can hear well enough in these (and other) difficult scenes.

If it wasn’t obvious already, I’ve ordered a set, and am looking forward to having my own Intents next week.

6 people in this conversation7 min readJump to latest
@xrogers said:

With the Intent, I rarely asked for a repeat, and had the easiest time I can recall at a large noisy table. I never felt like I was burdening my family, or making their conversation unnatural. It felt fantastic to be an equal participant in the conversation. Simply amazing.

WOW that is inspiring!! I can so relate to your issues and WANT that success! I’m happy with my Phonak Lumity Life aids, but found NO solution for hearing comfortably in noisy gatherings or acoustically challenged places. I rely on an audiologist to make any refinements to my settings, so at some point one just GIVES UP and tries to make do with the upside of the aids (of which my Phonaks have many).

Understanding speech in noisy places is my Holy Grail, and that is why I’m also trying out a pair of Oticon Intent 1s. The audi didn’t set my aids up according to the manual, nor did I get even 3 min of “lesson” on how to use them. No TV Adapter to use either - do you have one?

I still need to test these out in the noisy conditions you mention: family, restaurant. But so far, the aids are much more flaky with Android phone. Sound quality is not as open and natural as Phonaks, but perhaps that’s due to frequency adjustments to make.

Keep posting on your experiences! It will give me ideas and inspiration.

Thank you for this review, I will be getting the INTENT1 aids in June. I am now wearing the Real1 aids with the More1 aids as my backup set of aids. I struggle with both sets of aids in noisy environments but more so with the More1 aids. I am hoping that the INTENT1 aids gives me the capability to enjoy family gatherings again.

In reply to @1Bluejay

@1Bluejay said:

Understanding speech in noisy places is my Holy Grail, and that is why I’m also trying out a pair of Oticon Intent 1s. The audi didn’t set my aids up according to the manual, nor did I get even 3 min of “lesson” on how to use them. No TV Adapter to use either - do you have one?

I still need to test these out in the noisy conditions you mention: family, restaurant. But so far, the aids are much more flaky with Android phone. Sound quality is not as open and natural as Phonaks, but perhaps that’s due to frequency adjustments to make.

In my experience setup can make or break a trial with any hearing aid. My audiologist had my fairly refined More fitting to start with, and is motivated to get me a good trial. She programmed the aids before I arrived, and we spent about 20 minutes making small adjustments, messing with domes, verifying feedback suppression and such. She provided programs with both her preferred NAL-NL1 fitting, the Oticon standard fitting, hearing in noise and music programs (I’ve only tested the NAL-NL1 and Oticon standard programs).

I use an iPhone so can’t comment on Android issues. I have had two bluetooth glitches that required a forget/re-pair to resolve (I’ve used them to stream at least a dozen times for a total of about 8 hours, and for at least 20 phone calls). This will be my fourth set of Oticon aids, and all have had similar bluetooth issues that take a while (one to six months, IIRC) to be fully fixed. I’m fine with this, YMMV.

I think that in most cases whatever hearing aid we wear for a few months becomes our reference point for natural sound. I always pick Oticons as sounding most natural! I agree that frequency adjustments can really change hearing aid sound.

I hope you get some good testing done with your trial aids, and that you find something that helps with your difficult hearing environments!

Thanks for sharing your new experience with the Intent. The fact that you also have the More gives an extra great point of reference to compare against. I think your comparison between the More and the Intent is a testament of how the 2.0 in the Intent is improved over the DNN 1.0 in the More

You have a quite unique hearing loss on your left ear, the way the loss is on the low end and high end but the mid has a sharp peak. If it were a rounder peak in the mid, it would have been a reverse cookie bite loss. Your right hearing loss is more conventional in that it’s a ski slope, but less conventional in that you do have moderately severe loss in the lows and mids, unlike a typical ski slope loss where the losses in the lows are usually only light to moderate.

Anyway, may I ask what kind of dome you use? And also if your has enable the Speech Rescue feature for you?

In reply to @Volusiano

@Volusiano said:

You have a quite unique hearing loss on your left ear, the way the loss is on the low end and high end but the mid has a sharp peak. If it were a rounder peak in the mid, it would have been a reverse cookie bite loss. Your right hearing loss is more conventional in that it’s a ski slope, but less conventional in that you do have moderately severe loss in the lows and mids, unlike a typical ski slope loss where the losses in the lows are usually only light to moderate.

Anyway, may I ask what kind of dome you use? And also if your HCP has enable the Speech Rescue feature for you?

My hearing loss is due to Meniere’s. The weird is what I was left with when the dizziness stopped. I feel lucky to have my balance, and decent aided hearing!

The left ear has a bass double vent dome (I recently tried a power dome in that ear and it worked fine for me), and the right a power dome. I’m having custom molds made by Oticon for the Intents, which I’m hoping will allow my audi a little more room to boost high frequencies. I’m uncertain about the speech rescue setting, I can ask next week when I return the demos and pick up my new aids.

Good afternoon, I have been wearing Oticon Opn3 hearing aids for the past 3 years, and I decided to try Oticon Intent1 because I was experiencing poor speech intelligibility. I have been wearing Intent1 for 3 days, but my expectations have not been met. While I can hear more sounds with Intent1, the sound quality is softer, but I have not noticed any improvement in speech intelligibility. Additionally, when I am in the office with my colleagues, I cannot hear or understand what is being said 2 meters away, but I can still hear sounds 5 meters away.

Edited

I have the INTENT1 aids now as my backup aids. But I wore them as my primary aids since they were available at the clinics. I have been wearing for 11 days the Phonak Spheres, not the Ultra version, and for me the difference has been amazing. The sound clarity for speech is so much better. But the sound is not soft like the INTENT1 and some Oticon users say the sound is harsh. But for me the sound is awesome. I understand speech so much better and I feel so much more relaxed. Music is finally enjoyable. The battery life is a lot better as long as you aren’t in an extremely noisy environment for too many hours a day. It is amazing how much background noisy the Spherical mode cancels out. But be warned the Spherical mode eats up battery life quickly.

Related discussions