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Phonak P30 vs P70 for a profound hearing loss

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I have a profound hearing loss and have been wearing the Phonak Naida P70 UP for around a year, maybe a bit more.

I have never been completely happy with Phonak since I stopped wearing my Phonak Naida S III UP.

An opportunity came up to buy some Phonak Naida P30 UP so I went ahead and bought them.

  • P30 sounds seem louder despite importing settings from my P70.

  • AutoSense behaves much better only having two programs within it. No Comfort in Noise or Music unlike the P70.

  • I like having OmniDirectional over Real Ear Sound as I feel I’m more aware of my surroundings.

  • I’m not missing any of the P70 features within the P30 as I had them turned off on the P70 anyway.

*I feel I’m hearing much better with these P30 over the P70.

*I’m using 2.0 Fitting Formula.

I guess this experiment tells me, you can hear well with the lowest technology level.

I am in lots of noise throughout my day but the P30 still work for me.

9 people in this conversation7 min readJump to latest

Yeah so it just goes to show what some have said, it’s interesting in the noisy environments situation that your not noticing any difference as well as the manufacturer pushing better noise reduction settings in their premium models.

I’m unsure why I don’t find things too noisy.

I was standing next to a road drill in my City and I could hear (but not understand due to my loss) what my sister was saying over the road drill.

That was with NoiseBlock and other features turned off.

I have spent a long time adjusting the G numbers tho.

I was going to buy some L90 off eBay soon but I think I’ll save my money especially as I’m now happy with AutoSense with the 30 tech.

@Zebras said:

I was going to buy some L90 off eBay soon but I think I’ll save my money especially as I’m now happy with AutoSense with the 30 tech.

Yeah very good idea, so just having 2 programs to switch between has made that work, makes sense instead of trying to switch between 6 or more!

@tenkan said:

so just having 2 programs to switch between has made that work

I feel the Aid can only accurately change between Calm and Speech in Noise. Any more and it gets confused. I also think that I don’t need anymore AutoSense programs.

I wanted the 90 tech for the Comfort in Echo but only as a manual program but not worth the money to get one extra program.

I’ll be interested to know how the P30 perform in an echoing place.

I’m also finding Bluetooth louder on the P30 than the P70. Volume is identical and hasn’t change.

Will report back……

I’m in a meeting on Monday, and it’s an echoey room (wooden floor, high ceiling). I’ll compare Speech in noise and Comfort in echo with P90s and report back. I’ve already reduced the noise reduction elements in both. One thing I noticed, in the Echo programme, is that the beamforming won’t go higher than “8”. In the main, in the meeting, I’ll be using the RogerOn with the Sky aids.
Peter

@PeterH said:

I’ll compare Speech in noise and Comfort in echo with P90s and report back.

I’ll be interested.

For me when in a large room with high ceiling, I tend to loose sound/speech rather then finding it echoey.

Have you considered a cochlear implant? I went from my current to being able to hear at 25-30db across the board within a month of switching from my Naida Up hearing aid to an advanced bionics cochlear implant and it was an insanely great decision. The Naida UP hearing aids left me unable to understand speech but everything was just noise.
Within a month after my first surgery I was able to understand speech. I stopped wearing my contralaterak hearing aid and made lots of progress with my CI.

Edited

In reply to @Zebras

@Zebras said:

I was going to buy some L90 off eBay soon but I think I’ll save my money especially as I’m now happy with AutoSense with the 30 tech.

Bilateral L90 would be better for you, not because of better noise reduction, but because of better directionality (StereoZoom 2.0 or Speech Sensor).

According to scientific papers (independent of manufacturers), improved directionality is the feature that improves speech understanding.

Any noise-canceling feature ( not assessed in that literature) works only to improve comfort in noise, not speech understanding.

In reply to @deafstudent

@deafstudent said:

Have you considered a cochlear implant?

The decision about cochlear implants depends on many factors, particularly word recognition scores in quiet.

If @Zebras has a fairly high word recognition score (>60% in quiet), that score probably means that it is still possible to get benefits from hearing aid technology.

However, this is a rule of thumb, only one factor to consider…

@Zebras said:

The current Stereozoom on my P70 is not something I like as it makes sounds way too quiet. I don’t currently use it so likely won’t use it, if I did get the L90.

I recently tested unilateral (only right ) directionality with occluded earmolds and I agree with you in the “too quiet” issue, but it was overcome by increasing the volume… However, this is my case, I am not sure if this can work in yours…

@Zebras said:

I haven’t even thought about a cochlear implant due to having a terminal illness. :slight_smile:

Sorry to hear that. I had a suspected illness in 2019 - NET, carcinoid syndrome when I was 29yo, but luckily it ended with just fear…

In reply to @Bimodal_user

I choose to get the P70 than the P50 -UP aids for more fitting options. I’m happy with the P70-UP aids. I did have a P30-UP was an spare aid and sold it as l didn’t like the P30 which was too basic for me. My next aids will be the L90-UPs.

In reply to @Zebras

I’m sorry about your terminal illness! I’m a medical student and the first Deaf medical student most people have ever met so it’s pretty. Great to be able to talk to patients in their hospital room BUT despite being a “great” user, I’m basically back to being Deaf in the Operating room. Luckily I have an Interpreter who has so many more friends than I do in the OR.
Before medical school so many people told me “nobody wants a Deaf doctor” but once I got in, I ended up winning the clinical medicine award (which pissed off the gunner (person who tries too hard) in my class which is the highest award given by my school. I wasn’t on The Deans list so the gunners didn’t expect that professors would notice that I’m pretty darn good with patients and putting together symptoms and exposure.
Now I’m more than halfway through my core rotations and I can’t wait to get to my 4th year when I can do rotations in specialties that I find interesting.

In reply to @Zebras

@Zebras you don’t have to reveal which illness you have but zebras are associated with EDS (which I was diagnosed with at age 13) but I don’t disclose that to my physicians unless they really ask, my most recent had me do the Beighton tests and I “passed/failed” all of them. Aka the doc wrote in my file that she was sure I had EDS.

Well done you @deafstudent… Ruth aka Zebras, is off on a working holiday to Sri Lanka, so she is incommunicado at present, most probably, some where out in the sticks, with no internet connection… Ruth won’t be back in the UK for approximately another 4 or 5 weeks… Cheers Kev :wink:

I wear Phonak P30 UPs and I am relatively happy with my aids.
I didn’t buy the more expensive 50,70 and 90 series since the fancy add ons wouldnt work for me in most situations. I have poor speech perception and cannot benefit much from advanced processings and noise supressing. I had worn a sky V 70 sp aids before and I didn’t feel much of a difference in noise reduction features although the 70 was more advanced. More automatic programs don’t always mean more benefit.

I had some P30s and Autosense is basic, as in just Calm Situation and Speech in Noise. Having also having some P90s, with a load more elements, I found no real difference. However, in Target, there are a lot less fine tuning frequencies in the P30s

I got fitted with P30’s, I’m happy with them so far. One thing I I do like is the noise reduction, particularly since I live in an apartment with a window A/C. It’s much quieter now with the noise reduction. The noise reduction was the first thing I noticed when I got home from my first fitting.

Dr. Cliff Olson, who has a YouTube channel is not a fan of the different levels of technology that manufacturers are pushing out (going from “basic” to “premium”). The biggest trade off between a basic HA and a premium level HA is there are less fine tuning frequencies. He said it’s like the difference between a 3 band equalizer and a 24 band equalizer.

I’ve never fiddled with the different sound profiles in the Phonak app, and just leave both of my HA on “Automatic”. Having worn HA since 1976, I’m accustomed to being in a noisy environment without the need to switch programs to reduce background noise.

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