Backup pair - Sony E10 or JLab HEAR - or any other recommendations

Hearing Aids
#1

I’m new to a degree of hearing loss (about 6 weeks) and hearing aids (about 3 weeks) but I’m already finding them somewhat (if not absolutely) indispensable for day to day life at home with my kids and at work.

To this end I’m considering an emergency back up pair but I’m understandably reluctant to spend £3,000 on something equivalent to the Lumity L90’s I’ve currently got on trial as my main aids.

I’ve (well, up until writing the above sentence) been considering some OTC aids from the States (I’ve a helpful uncle in law in Connecticut), some $99 JLabs, some $999 Sony E10 or equivalent.

Has anyone here tried either of these and how did you get on day to day?

An alternative could just be a single lower spec Phonak aid programmed for my left ear.

What would you advise?

#2

Some folks here buy older Rx HAs off eBay and go that way. The aids are typically one or two generations older, quite a bit less expensive, but nearly as effective as current stuff. Some even use them as their primary aids.

WH

2 Likes
#4

Buy Hearing Aids Online UK | Shop Our Range Of Hearing Aids — HearingDirect UK Or NHS

#5

I’ve got the Sony E10 and the sound , for me, is as good as the best high priced Rx aids I’ve tried. But they are expensive for emergency backups. Also, for emergency use I would consider something with a disposable battery.

1 Like
#6

Why do you need 2 HAs? Looking at your audiogram I see normal hearing in one ear.

#7

@deafstudent I don’t know. This is all very new to me (my hearing loss happened overnight about 6-7 weeks ago).

Boots say I need two to get the speech discrimination and using a pair does seem to give me a degree of that.

However, as you see, my right ear is pretty fine, it is my left that is the issue.

When I test with just one earbud in that left ear, sounds are quite distorted and any speech I can hear, opposite to what I would expect with high frequency loss, sounds like people are speaking through helium.

Ideally I would just use one aid (a lot cheaper!), so to see if this will work, I was planning to test with one while I’m still on holiday in Tenby, Southwest Wales (so outside with crowds and wind noise, busy pubs and restaurants) to see how I get on.

I’ve got a hearing aid fitting with the NHS audiologist in about a month’s time, so I was going to ask there if I really needed two.

#8

I’m not an audiologist but I am a medical student who had progressive hearing loss that was diagnosed in my teens and progressed to profound deafness by my 20’s. I was most likely born with some degree of hearing loss but I was born befor newborn hearing screening exams.
I’d definitely recommend trying out the hearing aid just in your bad ear in all sorts of conditions. Your right ear is normal audiologiically. Two ears are better than one for directional hearing, understanding and whatnot.
My hearing was about the same as your left ear in both ears when I was diagnosed as a teen. Before then I needed shock therapy and slowly became isolated from everyone around me because I couldn’t hear them.
Weirdly going to a school with a deaf/HoH program kept me from being diagnosed earlier because I kept up in class by knowing ASL, I did so well that my school told my parents I should skip grade 6 and possibly grade 7 or get a scholarship to a private school. I was already one of the younger kids in my class so going from being a few months younger than others to being a few years younger would not have been good for my mental health.
So I got a scholarship to a parochial school that is known for being very academically challenging.
I didn’t fit in at the new school because I was so far behind and nobody knew I had hearing loss. As time went on I became more isolated and was eventually diagnosed with moderate to moderately severe hearing loss.
No wonder I was exhausted at the end of the day (after football (soccer) practice and track practice). I’d get home and pass out on the couch until my parents woke me up to do my homework (often 200pages of reading Dostoyevsky).

Now I’m an adult and lost all remaining hearing in both ears and got bilateral cochlear implants (Advanced Bionics ftw!). I’m in my 3rd year of medical school and generally crushing it.

2 Likes
#9

Perhaps you have Cros or Bicros hearing aids which are for one sided hearing loss. By the way, ask to try the very newly released Phonak Infinio Sphere. It is reportedly a big leap forward for hearing in noise.

1 Like