Although I’m not new to this forum, I haven’t been very active lately and today I’d like to share my experience with you.
I suffer from bilateral sensorineural hearing loss and have a recent (2024), which I can share to better illustrate my situation. Until now, I used a Starkey ZSeries i70 that I acquired in 2016, but I abandoned it in recent years because it proved ineffective—especially for speech comprehension.
I’m looking for recommendations and feedback regarding hearing aids that provide better speech understanding, feature connectivity, and operate with batteries or disposable cells. Do you have any suggestions for recent models from brands such as Starkey, Resound, or Signia that stand out in this area and suit my hearing loss best?
Thank you in advance for your feedback and advice.
I’m looking for recommendations and feedback regarding hearing aids that provide better speech understanding, feature connectivity, and operate with batteries or disposable cells.
Short answer: Phonak Lumity Life 312-battery aids!
I have pretty much “mothballed” my Lumity Life rechargeable aids for these smaller, lighter and ZANY-colored aids that take a slim, small 312 battery. My 312s are in Precious Pink, but the Phonak site has many other color options9 to choose from.
When I bought these 312s last spring, I was told they would deliver about a 10% improvement in speech comprehension. What I found is that over a few months, the improvement was more like 15-20% improvement! These Lumity Life 312s definitely have more crisp speech sounds than the 2-yr-old Lumity Life rechargeables that I also have.
Over time, as I’d think I understood what was said, I got confirmation that I DID INDEED understand what was said! This could be someone talking to me from across a large room, me being upstairs, hubs being downstairs, sitting at a table with several people in a noisy restaurant, just many situations where I might have missed words with my older rechargeables, but now am actually correcting OTHERS at the table or in the room with what was actually said. WOW. That’s empowering!
On top of which, I think Phonak does a BANG-UP job with connectivity and streaming quality - whether I’m streaming a phone call, or using the Roger OniN mic either as a remote mic or seated in the cradle attached to my TV.
I’ve “leaned in” to the reality that I really am understanding what’s being said significantly better with the 312s, and that has given me a LOT of confidence and social enjoyment. I no longer avoid folks who speak with an accent or have a soft voice. I pay attention and BY GOLLY I actually do understand what they’re saying!
So in terns of size, ease of use (just batteries for travel, no worries about where to plug a clunky charging base in), color choices, BT stability, audio quality and improved speech comprehension, I stand tall by the Phonak Lumity Life 312s.
I’m signed up this summer for a photo workshop overseas, way up in the mountains at 13,000+ feet, sleeping in yurt tents. You can BET I’m glad I have the 312 battery aids. I just pinged my audi to get in for a backup pair of these 312s. What could be easier? Two small pairs of aids, a few 8-packs of 312 batteries, even if one pair fails, I’d have the other, and mainly I have noticeably better ability to comprehend speech and confidence in travel and even doing things on my own.
I don’t know my exact word recognition scores, but I’d be interested in learning more about them. Since you mentioned a notable loss, could you explain what that means for my hearing and how custom molds or double domes might help?
Check out the speech banana https://www.jtc.org/audiogram-of-familiar-sounds/14
From it you can tell that without amplification you are likely not hearing many sounds.
You have loss at lower frequencies. When trying to add gain to lower frequencies, the sound tends to leak out unless one has custom molds or double domes.
