Skip to content
HearingTracker
Log in

How to compare Costco Philips Hearlink with Oticon More and Jabra Pro with Resound Omnia

This topic is closed.

71 replies10.2k viewsLast reply

Jump
Link to this topic

Interesting, the only time I’ve noticed any issues and when I accidentally switch to the music program.

Assuming you bought the Philips at Costco, have you tried a different fitter?

Edited

In reply to @billgem

@billgem said:

I joust finished a 5 week trial with Philips 9040. I made this decision based on raves I’ve read here. I had them adjusted after 3 weeks by a very experienced audiologist (not an HIS) who has previously fitted and adjusted hearing aids for my ears very effectively.

In contrast to my high expectations, these were the worst hearing aids for my ears that I’ve worn or trialed in the past 8 years - including a pair of Oticon Opn 1’s, which I wore for 5 years. I can’t explain why my experience was so different from others’. My complaint is that speech was often garbled and asking people to repeat didn’t enable me to understand any better. I can’t imagine that these are anything like the Real or the Mire.

The bold part above makes me confused and curious, Bill. Is this audi that you had adjusting the Philips 9040 for you a Costco employee who did the actual dispensing of these aids for you, or is it an outside (of Costco) audi whom you brought your Philips 9040 to and paid him separately to make adjustments for you?

One would assume that it’d be a Costco audi, but then you had the OPN before, then the Whisper, and I don’t recall if you wore any Costco aids before that, so that’s why I want to get clarification from you who this audi that did the Philips for you is.

Or did you not like how the Costco set up the 9040 for you, so instead of coming back to Costco for more adjustment after 3 weeks, you decided to take them to this audi instead? Does this audi (if it’s an outside audi) have a lot of experience fitting the Philips 9040, given that they’re probably mostly sold and fitted by Costco HCPs in the US. I just can’t imagine anybody buying the Philips 9040 outside of Costco here in the US unless the outside HCP can price match against Costco.

If speech often sounds garbled to you with the 9040, what specifically did the Costco HCP and/or the outside audi do to try to alleviate that? Did they tell you? I can’t help but think that perhaps they set some kind of parameters like the Noise Reduction Mode or the Speech Clarifier or the SoundMap Noise Control Transition way too strong, and I wonder if they tried to back them off?

I’m more inclined to think that either the audi or the Costco HCP didn’t set things up right for you than to think that the Philips 9040 is a bad performing hearing aid to begin with.

Sorry to be confusing, Volusiano, but to answer your questions:

  1. The Philips 9040 hearing aids were bought from Costco and and fitted by an audiologist at Costco.

  2. I had previously trialed a pair of Rexton hearing aids which were fitted and adjusted by this same Costco audiologist with excellent results.

  3. I have had in the past with other hearing aids the experience where I would miss a word here or there. My audiologists has assured me that this is not of concern and happens to even normal hearing people, but I believe that it happens to me more frequently than I would like. With the Philips hearing aids, I was not just missing individual words but I was missing whole sentences and would still not be able to understand the sentences even after asking the speaker to repeat the sentence. And this was not in the presence of any excessive background noise. For example, I was in Panera Bread midafternoon when it was not crowded. When I was placing, my order, I could not understand a single word that the person taking my order said. When I asked him to repeat, I still did not understand him.

  4. Another example of not being able to hear is when walking the local rail trail, which is dirt covered with cinders, I could not understand my wife when the sound of my feet crunching in the cinders interfered. If we stopped, I could understand her fine. The Audi adjusted the hearing aids in an effort to correct this problem. The adjustment hasn’t helped.

  5. My Whisper hearin aids continue to work very well, but missing words here and there nags at me, so I decided that I’d try out the Costco hearing aids at a reasonable cost to have a second pair but only if they were excellent. I really likely the Rexton hearing aids, but they are scheduled for an upgrade, consistent with the new IX platform which Signia, whi makes Rextons, has introduced. When I learned of the pending upgrade, I decided to trial the HearLinks because I had heard so many good things about them, feeling that I would have a thorough look at what Costco is offering. (They make it so easy.) Hiwever, I was only going to stick wit the Philips if I was blown away by them. I haven’t been blown away and I simply am not willing to invest any more time in trialing them when I have a perfectly good pair of Whispers to use every day.

Thanks for the clarification, @billgem . Not being wowed by the Philips 9040 is one thing, but to have it make what you hear unacceptably worse, and not just simply being a “blaah” experience, is quite baffling.

It would be quite interesting if it could be figured out why it doesn’t work for you but works well for others. I guess we’ll never know. That’s why with hearing aids, you can never rely on other people’s testimonies about their experiences with the aids → you really ought to try it out for yourself to be sure.

@user990 said:

the trial period is too short unless you go to Costco.

I got 60 day trial at a private clinic in the US, and they’ll squeeze you into the schedule if you need a quick adjustment. Costco trial is 3X longer, but long waits for an adjustment could waste some of that time.

In reply to @Volusiano

I agree. I’ve gone from a quality - KS10 - to Philips 9040 and the difference is pretty striking. And a good friend who has the KS10 recently trialed the 9040 and found that the difference is night and day for him. So Billgem’s report is surprising. But ya can’t argue w/experience, it is what it is.

In reply to @x475aws

I’ve never had a problem with getting an appointment at Costco, usually the next week. However, I’ve never needed a particular date and time either.

Washington state law does allow up to 30 days, and a return charge of up to $150. However, you need an acceptable reason to return them. Plus, you must communicate your desire in writing.

In reply to @Torbill

@Torbill said:

the difference is pretty striking

Sorry but I’m missing something - which is day and which is night? And which is better - day or night?
I’m interested because I recently went in to Costco to buy a new hearing aid but ended up having my KS9s reprogrammed to my new hearing tests results and so far I feel like I have new hearing aids. Should I have bought one of this year’s offerings instead?

If the Rextons were working for you, why did you switch to the Philips 9040s?

@user990 said:

The trouble with trial and error is that the trial period is too short unless you go to Costco.

Costco does not offer a 6 month trial. Rather, you buy a pair of aids, and they promise to give your money-back if you return the aids on or before the last day of the 6 month period. The return process is pretty easy the first time. My understanding is that they frown on multiple returns. I started with rechargeable Jabras and switched to Jabras that use the 13 batteries. I might have trouble if I wanted to switch to, say, Philips 9040s.

Sometimes I think you can get a loaner pair of aids for 2 weeks, especially if your aids are in for a warranty repair or refurbishment.

Phil, I had all but ruled out the Jabra from Costco because I saw in one of the reviews that its software was “somewhat less” than the 100 and the two hundred. (and I want disposable batteries). Sounds like you are happy with them, any thoughts. Thanks

@Taildragger said:

I had all but ruled out the Jabra from Costco because I saw in one of the reviews that its software was “somewhat less” than the 100 and the two hundred.

Could you elaborate on what your saying here?

Related discussions