Questions about Oticon More Battery Life

@cvkemp said:

I have the More1 aids what are rechargeable, I wear them between 14 and 16 hours a da on average. I don’t do much streaming, I haven’t had issues with battery life.

@cvkemp: My experience is the same.

@darylm said:

Replacing batteries can be inconvenient, but not as inconvenient as having to recharge during the day.

It’s true especially if you’re still working that replacing depleted disposable batteries can be inconvenient, especially at an inopportune time like when you’re in a middle of a meeting or don’t have the new batteries on you.

It wouldn’t necessarily be inconvenient as having to recharge during the day, however, as long as you are in control of when to recharge. Most likely you wouldn’t deplete your rechargeable batteries in the middle of the day if they’ve been fully charge from the night before. If anything, it’d most likely occur by the time you’re home from work in the evening when/if the rechargeable batteries are depleted.

If you don’t want to see your rechargeable batteries run down to nothing even when you’re at home, a 30 minute top up (at least 6 hours after you start wearing them) will give you an additional 6 hours. This means a 15 minute top up should give you about 3 hours more.

So if you have a portable smart charger with its own built-in battery power source (a la Airpod style) that you bring with you to work, anytime you have 15 minute alone-time at your desk or during lunch or whatever, you can flop it in your smart charger and get 3 more hours for only 15 minute in the charger. And YOU can control this place and time at YOUR convenience, so it wouldn’t really be an inconvenience in the first place.

I also have the rechargeable More1. In the past couple of months or so since I bought them, in one occasion I felt like I needed an afternoon charge. I was afraid the aids could die while I was in a party later at night. Other than that, I put them on first thing after waking up and take them off at bed. I stream phone calls, podcast, music, and videos up to 4 hours/day. When I put them to recharge they still have around 30% of charge.

That said, I would have purchased the disposable battery option if I had the chance, which I did not have. I have just purchased the Oticon smartcharger and I guess things will be a bit more flexible. If you consider buying the More you may ask for the newer version of Oticon’s charger. It is worth it even if you have to add a little extra cash.

Edit: I do shower daily . So the HA stay in the dryer for about one hour, which is the time they need to go through a drying cycle and my ears to get dry. Similarly to the other forum members, I have my More1s on for up to 14-15 hours daily.

@e1405 said:

you may ask for the newer version of Oticon’s charger. It is worth it even if you have to add a little extra cash.

@e1405: Or, alternatively, you may buy an external battery pack (make sure it will stay on even with only a small current draw), and power your standard charger with that.

I live in the country, and we get fairly regular power outages. I charge my battery once a week and then power my charger for a full week while the two sit safely in my night table drawer.

It’s not as compact as the SmartCharger, but it’s $300 cheaper. The only catch is that you have to remember to turn on the battery when you put the HAs into the charger.

A couple of strips of double-sidsd tape and yer HillBilly ShineCharger®️ is good to go!

@SpudGunner: Yes, good call!

I think version 2.0 (smartcharger) will eventually replace version 1.0 (standard)… when Oticon is done with the stock of the terrible-decision-they-made-of-a-charger.

Thanks everyone for the replies. I’m still on the fence.

I think if the hearing aids with the replaceable batteries were smaller than the rechargeable batteries or if the replaceable battery was larger than the Opn S, I would go for the replaceable batteries. Neither is the case, so it’s as easy a decision.

My use-case is a lot of streaming through the day, because I work at home and use Teams to talk with colleagues. I also tend to stream on youtube or watch a movie in the evening, so I probably stream more than most people.

When I’m at home, it’s trivial to replace the battery when necessary. I tend to leave the batteries in until they go dead, because I don’t like to waste the charge. At home, it’s very easy to deal with this.

The times when it’s not convenient is when I’m not at home. If I’m on a trip, I am usually in a place where it’s not convenient to recharge. I could probably work around this by replacing the batteries before they go dead and just accept that I have to occasionally waste some charge.

Has anyone noticed the rechargeable battery capacity diminish over the time that you’ve had the hearing aids?

I was informed by the audiologist that they are only offering one “free” device now, so I would have to pick which charger I wanted. I would lean toward the battery powered charger, not the plug-in charger.

I was also informed that ConnectClips are not available, due to the “global integrated circuit shortage”. I’m currently on my second ConnectClip. The original one stopped holding a charge a few months ago, so it lasted about 2 years of daily use.

I’m happy that the Oticon More hearing aids support ASHA, but my current android mobile doesn’t. Unfortunately, as far as I know, Oticon doesn’t have a device driver for Windows, so I will still need a ConnectClip for my laptop.

You will need the connect clip for any laptop or tablet unless it is an iPad or maybe an Android that has the ASHA standard. I have had my More1 aids just over a year with no noticeable lose of battery life, I also have the OPNS1 rechargeables that are about 3 years old that aren’t showing any lost of battery life. I do switch back and forth so that my backup aids, OPNS, stay in good health.
But to be honest if I streamed a lot I would more than likely prefer the disposable batteries. But when I got my More1 aids there wasn’t a choice between Battery types.

@darylm → there are a few threads on this forum about buying replacement battery from eBay to change out the bad battery in the ConnectClip. It’s not trivial to do, but it doesn’t seem that hard either.

If I were you, I’d take the battery-powered charger over the plug-in charger as well.

If I solely work from home most of the times like you, and if I have a decent backup pair of HAs, then I’d go for the rechargeable version over the disposable battery version. You need to remember, too, that the More rechargeable batteries are fairly easy to replace, albeit you still need to source the batteries from your audi as they’re not easy to find from a third party. So the turn around time should not be like with some other brands where you need to send the HAs in for battery replacement. As long as your audi has them in stock, it should be simply a matter of getting it done in 1 office visit.