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Jabra Pro 20 vs Philip 9040 From Costco

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I’m seeking advice from this online group. I’ve used KS10 hearing aids for three years, but I struggle to understand speech in noisy places like restaurants and large halls, especially when multiple people are talking at once.

I’m considering two hearing aid options from Costco: Philips 9040 and Jabra Pro 20.

I’m also thinking about additional accessories like Philips AudioClip or Jabra Multi Mic.

Can anyone advise me on how to properly test these two hearing aids to make the best choice for my needs?

P.S. I recently discovered HearingTracker and have learned a significant amount about hearing aids. It’s been a valuable resource!

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If it was me i would definitely get the phone/Bluetooth device, if you have any devices beyond the phone (tablet, laptop, other Bluetooth transmitters).

@Hearinghelp1 said:

Can anyone advise me on how to properly test these two hearing aids to make the best choice for my needs?

Welcome to the forum, unfortunately you’ll need to trial them yourself to know which is “best” for you, but in saying that there’s really only two things to compare that seem to matter most to people, one is to check them out in noisy environments(which you already know is challenging!)next check the sound quality of the streamed media. Remember the KS10 are Phonak MFA ( made for all, classic Bluetooth) so some connections are not all same.

They might have loaner aids that they let your walk around the store with. Other than that, make a decision based on all the information that’s available to you (including what the fitter recommends) and hope for the best. Not much else you can do.

I wore the KS10 and now have the Philips 9040. The Philips have been a nice step up for me in speech in noise w/o my auxiliary Roger device (which I could never remember to bring to the party anyway, lol). I have no experience with Jabra. I don’t see any alternative to you trialing both.

One thing that I would note about the Philips versus the KS10, which is that the Philips philosophy is to give you all of the sounds and sharpen objects of attention such as speech in noise. The KS10 approach is more along the lines of turning down ambient sounds that interfere with speech in noise.

One of my main interests in the Philips was in hearing all of the sounds, just like when my hearing was good, and letting my mind focus my attention on the sounds that I want to hear. I specifically wanted to try out the open hearing landscape, and it took some getting used to, and now I really like being able to hear all of the sounds rather than having some of them suppressed. You may not like this. Jabra philosophy may be somewhat more along the lines of the KS10 - don’t know because I know nothing about Jabra. This might be something that you want to discuss with the technician at Costco, as it may steer you toward one or the other…?

I recommend trying both as well. My partner switched from the KS10s to the Jabra Enhance Pro 20s and prefers the sound of the Jabras. Significantly. But your mileage may vary

It depends on which compromise you are comfortable with. For example, with my KS10’s I can bring up a movie or Youtube on my laptop and watch it without doing or connecting anything. The Bluetooth connection had been set up weeks ago. The cost? Battery drain. However, the KS10 battery doesn’t last the day, anyway. When I tried out an earlier version of the 9040, I had to set up a wired connection to the laptop each time in order to prevent audio delay.
How is it now? I’m curious.

True connection to ones laptop (and tv for that matter) has been hit or miss for many a year, the usual way around was the TV streamer or , both windows11 and Mac OS have tried to fix this with latest models.

Following my research on this website and consultation with a Costco representative, I have decided to purchase the Philips HearLink Hearing Aids 9040 rechargeable model. Additionally, I will be acquiring the Audio Clip, TV Adapter, and Ear Mold accessories. During the appointment, I also had my existing KS10 hearing aids adjusted, resulting in a noticeable improvement in speech recognition. These will serve as my backup devices once I receive the Philips 9040. I would like to express my gratitude to this website for providing me with a comprehensive understanding of hearing aid technology.

That’s fantastic news, I’m really glad the community was able to offer information that was useful for your decision to purchase, a review of your new Phillips models would be interesting to read coming from Phonak, a difference for sure.

I recently switched from phonaks to Philips 9040. I brought both to a noisy restaurant and asked my wife to read the menu to me while I switched between hearing aids. Overall I could hear better with the 9040s using the speech in noise setting followed by just the general setting. The only negative was that the 9040s do not have a user setting for preferred directionality, which in the case of just my wife in front of me I would select front focus. During my visit to that restaurant a young woman “cackled” occasionally and the 9040s picked up on her sound and drowned out my wife’s voice.

Of course your experience may vary.

In my experience with the Philips 9040 - unlike all of the other I’ve ever owned - they do not seem to turn down sounds that they think I might not want to hear. Rather, they sharpen voices that they think that I do want to hear. In either case the HAs seem to be making an educated guess and applying sound processing. But in the case of Philips the overall sound is more like what I experienced when my hearing was normal, which is to say when my auditory sense took in all of the sound landscape and presented it to my mind, and my mind determined what to focus on and what not to focus on. I love that the Philips works this way. It’s more natural, more like my previous world - Philips can guess what I want sharpened, but I get to hear it everything. I get to hear the bird singing while I walk, even though a train’s horn is blasting in the distance or people across the street are yelling. An occasional situation where a cackling voice disturbs my wife’s voice is just what would have happened in a natural sound setting and I’ll happily put up with the disturbance.

An interesting video of the ReSound Nexia (I.e. Jabra Enhance Pro 20) in loud background noise situations that was just posted:

All of this brings up an interesting question for us users of hearing aids; namely, are we looking to achieve our ‘old’ normal hearing–which many never had and most can’t recall–or are we looking for a kind of “curated” hearing experience, where sounds and voices are filtered and processed to meet our current hard of hearing needs?

I hope this makes sense. Again, for example, we all want to hear speech well in noisy environments. But folks with normal hearing have problems hearing voices in noisy environments. Do we want our aids to out-perform our old, normal hearing, assuming we ever had normal hearing? It may well be that a well programmed aid can make many of us hear better than we ever did, in a limited range (voice spectrum.)

I’m a musician, and so this is even a more puzzling issue. For example, I recently bought a new guitar. there’s no question that it’s an upgrade. BUT: how much of what I’m hearing when I play is a result how my hearing aids are set up? And how much of what I think I hear is likewise heard by an audience? I may never know.

Edited
@jeffrey said:

And how much of what I think I hear is likewise heard by an audience?

May reverberating applauses tell you so! :grinning:

But your point is taken. I think I may hear better in some situations then early years but as you say, we may never know.

I guess I’m okay getting better some of the time. I certainly don’t think hearing aids are to the point where you hear better most of the time then say my grandson does. So I guess I’m saying I will take what good hearing or better hearing comes my way.

In reply to @jeffrey

@jeffrey said:

are we looking to achieve our ‘old’ normal hearing–which many never had and most can’t recall–or are we looking for a kind of “curated” hearing experience, where sounds and voices are filtered and processed to meet our current hard of hearing needs?

The latter. Comparison to ‘normal’ hearing achieves nothing (imo) except make us sad. I want aids that will allow me to understand more conversation than I did yesterday. I want aids that make music sound good enough that I actually want to listen to it. That covers it for me.

@d_Wooluf said:

I want aids that make music sound good enough that I actually want to listen to it.

I was very disappointed at first, but have found that my Jabras on the Music setting set to around the 2 or 3 level has been a pretty good solution. I’m listening to music and not feeling like I’m missing too much or hearing too much “screech”. I still need to have the volume up on a good system though. Forget trying to hear everything in low volume music.

I’ve said this before, but last time I looked, Jabra had the far superior app for customization and adjustment. Maybe that’s changed recently and Philips has a good app now.

You’d have to take that survey with a pinch of salt, they have Rexton and Bernafon in the top 5, look at Starkey right down at the bottom as well!

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