Quick poll: Importance of hearing aid dimensions like build quality

@AbramBaileyAuD
Battery dimensions:
If I was new to hearing aids, I’d be self conscious, but I’ve learned that nobody really sees them, or cares. Everyone has something in their ears these days

Having said that, I’m a 60+ male. It will be different for younger people, more fashion conscious or vain, although I feel the stigma is nowhere near as bad now. Still, for marketing, these are important issues.

312 are lovely and keep my Bolero Marvel M70s thin. 4 days is ok, and a strip takes up little room in my wallet.

13 are bigger, so make my Audeo P90s wider, but (being RIC), the aids are really small. I get a decent 6 days out of these.

675 are substantial, as are the Naida P30s. I wear these with full molds. They’ve a much bigger hearing aid, but no bigger than a Venture with shoes and RogerXs. I’ve had these about 10 days and still on 1st batteries.

I can only comment on Phonak, but I see the majority of rechargeable aids are bigger than the disposable equivalent.

Another major issue I read, is that Phonak aren’t the leaders in rechargeable daily battery life, compared to companies like Starkey.

I hope this helps.

Peter

I stand corrected and comforted.

@PeterH said:

I’ve learned that nobody really sees them, or cares

Agree with you! Mostly about the latter. No one cares, and if anything, it’s nice to have people aware enough to use good communication skills when addressing you.

Thanks for the other info Peter

@PeterH said:

I took a Roger On into an Audiologist and got “What’s that?”

DISCOURAGING! What about the cell phone? Did that ring a bell?

@AbramBaileyAuD said:

rate the battery dimension for disposables?

Size matters!..but not how you would think…My last hearing aids had size 312 batteries that I had to change every other day. My “new” (1 1/2 year old) hearing aid has 675 batteries that last about 12 days. It is part of why my hearing aids are so large, but I don’t care at all!
I’ve been wearing hearing aids over 40 years…in the old days they were all larger than now. The worse your hearing was, the bigger your hearing aids were. I couldn’t care less if I tried. Larger is ok if it is bringing long battery life!
my 2 cents,
Dan

T-coil is something we catalog already, so those who want it can easily filter by hearing aids with tcoils. Sadly, when we’ve looked at data from our hearing aid recommendation system, tcoils are a very low priority technology, and I think this has everything to do with education and local availability. I hate to admit, but I think broad adoption of auracast will be here before broad adoption of hearing loop technology. We will continue to recommend buying hearing aids with tcoils in every article and review we write

I think an interesting question here could have been something like
“if only rechargeable aids were available, would you still buy this model?”

This is a question that keeps coming up, with very little middle ground

@KingsPoint said:

You want quality data, not double barreled questions, poor wording and misspelled words or misused terms. You have received great feedback from a free survey.

I fixed the one double barreled question that needed addressing. Poor wording and misspelled words? Want to provide some specifics?

I am a big fan of disposables. I think it should be easy nowadays to use the #13 battery instead of the 312 to increase longevity since the electronics is being reduced in size so much. The width is not very important because the aid shells have become thinner due to better plastics and the space required for the electronics. Aids are becoming smaller so this gives opportunities to use the new found space for other improvements.

Specifics in double barrelled questions

How about
Battery – my answer would be slightly different for battery and rechargeable
Sound Performance – could be 3 questions also misspelling imporance
Professional support could be 2 questions Visit or Remote?
Design. Description only covers appearance, not design function like buttons

Sorry if appears picky – but you did ask!

I agree w all you say!

Thanks for catching that mispelling. Thankfully, it was clear enough that I don’t expect “garbage” data as suggested by KC. It was also the only mispelling I could find.

On the double barreled questions…

@wiclifmcc said:

Battery – my answer would be slightly different for battery and rechargeable
Sound Performance – could be 3 questions also misspelling imporance
Professional support could be 2 questions Visit or Remote?
Design. Description only covers appearance, not design function like buttons

Battery - could be improved … still a bit at a loss on what else people care about on disposable batteries if not battery life… (size handled by comfort and design/invisibility questions)

Sound performance - We actually already did a survey of the independent components of sound performance. Some of you helped with that. This survey is to find out the relative importance of sound performance vs everything else we’re rating.

Pro support - Honestly could be a whole 'nother survey, just like sound performance, but again trying to get a gross understanding of weightings and no plans to break out multiple dimensions of pro support in this rating scheme

Design - controls are in handling.

Interesting data from the poll on invisibility and design… Unfortunately small number of participants so far, especially the new user group, but data suggests new users care more about both invisibility and design (broadly speaking they rate all dimensions more important though). Also, seems like design matters a bit more than invisibility to both groups. But neither is super important when compared to dimensions like sound performance or comfort (more on that later).

Personally, I think that’s normal. New users will be more self conscious, as they will feel everyone can see them, and judge them. I’ve found, over the years, that no-one really notices them. Added to that, these days, loads of people walk around with things stuck in their ears
Peter