My Costco Jabra Resound Pro 30 Review

I’ve been using the Costco Kirkland KS10 hearing aids for 3.5 years and have generally been happy with them. However, recently they seem to be getting “old” and not working as well. I did spend several appointments at Costco fine tuning the programming and this helped. But finally I decided to buy the Resound Pro 30 based on good reviews and with the knowledge of the 6 month free return policy there was no risk. I’m retired and my usage model may be different from others. I travel a lot and thus end up in restaurants a lot where I really want to be able to hear. The Kirkland 10’s helped better than earlier models (I’ve had 4 prior models over more than 20 years or so), but still often struggled when noise gets loud. I also stream a lot on my tablet and am used to using my Kirkland 10’s as my headset for this. My phone is a Samsung S25 and my tablet is a Samsung S10 Ultra. Both are relatively new and have latest versions of Bluetooth and good hearing aid support.

Pro’s of the Resound Pro 30:

1. Everyday hearing is better. Not dramatically better, but noticeable.
2. Comfort is much better. Lighter & Smaller. I wear glasses and thus the space behind my ears is constrained and the Resound Pro 30’s are much more comfortable. Also, due to my extreme high end hearing loss, my Kirkland 10’s have a very large receiver attached to vented full domes that clog up my ears and get warm. The Resound Pro 30’s have a smaller receiver with very similar domes and are more comfortable.
3. Bluetooth range is much better. I can leave my tablet streaming in my home office and walk around my fairly large house and rarely lose the signal. Not true on my Kirklands.

Problems.

1. The bluetooth connection is frankly horrible and non-intuitive. My expectation is that they should work like bluetooth headsets (as do my Kirkland 10’s). For example, if I’m streaming on my phone in a noisy environment and have the microphones turned down (or muted) so background noises don’t overwhelm the streaming and the phone rings, I expect the hearing aids to switch to phone and turn the mic’s on. This worked seamlessly on the KS10’s. However, on the Jabra’s, it switches to the phone, but doesn’t turn on the mic’s and thus the person calling me can’t hear me.

Even worse is the switch off between two devices. If I want to stream on my tablet, I first have to switch my hearing aids to my tablet. This requires me to turn off bluetooth on my phone (disconnecting the hearing aids) and then turning it on on the tablet to connect the hearing aids. Then I can stream just fine. However, if I get a phone call, I need to reverse the process and turn off bluetooth on the tablet and turn it on on the phone before I can use my hearing aids for the phone call. It gets old very fast to always have to tell the caller to wait while I connect my hearing aids. The KS10’s connect to both devices at the same time and does a pretty good job of switching the way you expect it to between the two devices.

I could tell a lot of other stories on how badly the Jabra’s support for two devices is, but I think the message is clear. If you want a hearing aid that works well with two devices, this product isn’t it. I’d add to that is that it doesn’t work as well for streaming as the KS10’s either.

I looked hard for workarounds. Both my devices support using Auracast for broadcast so I tried disconnecting my hearing aids from my tablet and then setting up an Auracast stream from the tablet and then using the Jabra app on my phone to connect my hearing aids to the stream. This worked and even handled incoming phone calls correctly. HOWEVER, even at the lowest possible setting, the volume was way too loud to use it. So at my adjustment appointment, I asked my audiologist if he could adjust it. He frankly had never realized that newer Samsung devices could broadcast Auracast without an external device and tried a lot of things to adjust it using the configuration program. He finally gave up and called his Jabra tech support and they weren’t familiar with the issue and logged a ticked. As of two weeks after this, my audiologist had not received any response to the ticket.

I did return the Jabra’s because they were so hard for me to use for my usage model. I found myself putting in my old KS10’s without realizing it until I fired up the Jabra app and started wondering why no hearing aids were connected. That sort of sealed the fate and the hearing aids have been returned. I’m about to start a lot of travel (for most of the rest of the year) and thus won’t look again until I return. The audiologist did say that for my usage, the only one that would work are the Sennheisers which connect the same way as the KS10’s (as they are both Phonak’s and use the same app). I did talk to another customer who walked up as I was finalizing the return who was using the Sennheisers and had previously had the KS10’s who was also a heavy streamer and was very happy. He said the Sennheisers had better sound than the KS10s but obviously this is very subjective.

That’s my thoughts. Jabra Resound Pro 30. Good device with really dumb logic on the bluetooth connectivity.

I have been working to set up Auracast broadcasts and found that on my Galaxy S9 FE tablet (Samsung), you can adjust the volume specific to the device output you are using. Settings, Sound, etc. I don’t have it set up for it right now. It took a few trials to get it right.

Lucky you, must have slipped through the Pixel cracks, somehow.