Best Hearing Aids under 1200 euros (1300 USD)

Hearing Aids
#1

Hi all,

My grandma’s 91 yo and lives in a rest house. Our government will give her 1200 euros to buy Hearing Aids so I’d like to ask you suggestions based on your experiences (I mean yourselves or your old relatives) to evaluate the best for her.
First of all, here’s her last audiogram

otorino audiogramma tonale vocale
otorino audiogramma tonale vocale1200×735 180 KB

as you can see her hearing loss is severe/profund.

This is what I think she need:

  • we’re only interested in her to hear voices especially when she talks on her phone, then voices in presence and voices from TV at last, we’re not interested in music or sounds from open spaces (eg. street), only domestic environments;
  • Hearing Aids with 4 or 8 channels because more ones would be useless imho;
  • no “connectivity” need, I mean we don’t need to connect Hearing Aids to smartphone (she can’t use any!) nor TV, etc.;
  • bte or ric format because we can keep on using a common lanyard to be sure her hearing aids won’t fall down;
  • hearing aids supplied by single use batteries because 1) rechargeable batteries need a device to be charged so it’d be more expensive and 2) she’d always forget for sure to put her aids in charge!

Said that and before trying “the best” hearing aids the audiologists (merchants!) will try to sell to us, you can point us to the rightest directions :slight_smile:

#2

In the US it would be pretty hard to find hearing aids for $1300 for a pair. I don’t know what prices are like in your country. That said, any entry basic technology level hearing aid should do what you want. If she ends up with a RIC, I’d recommend size 13 batteries if possible (last longer) and custom molds. A BTE model would also work fine. A device that allows streaming from TV can really help with TV understanding.

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#3

I would advocate BTE and not RIC as the regular ongoing maintenance (clean, replace waxguards) is more difficult than the simpler washout of the BTE tube.

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#4

BTE Ultra power or super power with molds.

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#5

Handwritten audiogram again: was the Audiologist asleep when they marked the right ear symbols?

Given the living situaton, likely dexterity issues, funds, flat loss and needs: Consider monaural LHS In The Ear aid with a 13 battery, if you’ve got more cash, go for the rechargeable option.

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#6

I guess US country it’s more expensive than mine, anyway I can give you these gauges:

  • she had been using Widex Unique Passion (ric aids with “10” battery) with customed molds since 2017 and they cost 2800 euros (3000 USD) at that time;
  • an audiologist has just said to me we can get a pair of Unitron (a Sonova’s brand) by that help (1200 euros by government)
    Do you know widex or unitron/sonova?

A friend of mine told me about Vitus+ by Phonak, wich is another Sonova’s subsidiary here in UE but he didn’t remember how much they cost. Do you know this model?

I don’t know if the best solution for her will be BTE or RIC hearing aids especially for her right ear because it looses hearing more than the left one passing time. The advantage of RIC aids is you can upgrade receivers passing time but afaik thery’re more expensive than BTE, aren’t they? On the other hand Vitus+ BTE-UP’d let her right ear gain more db than RIC-UP indeed they’re supplied by 675 battery (a beast!).
Anyway I ask you please to suggest me the best Vitus+ RIC receiver (xS / xP / xUP) for her hearing loss. Here you can see its detailed datasheet with different gain graphs, one for each receiver… it’s arab for me :slight_smile: Anyway I can post here the “simpler” Vitus+ RIC xP and xUP receivers graphs (I guess xS’d be useless):

@paul.cleary.nz
I know what you mean because every month I must go to her rest house to keep her ric widex aids under maintenance, anyway this is not an issue so bte and ric are equivalent solutions for me.

#7

Here’s info on the Vitus. https://www.phonakpro.com/content/dam/phonakpro/gc_hq/en/products_solutions/hearing_aid/vitus_plus/documents/PH_Product_Information_Vitus_BTE_210x280_EN_V1.00_027-0629-02.pdf

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#8

In which country are you? Prices vary wildly depending on the country even in the EU.

#9

Hola maac, I’m from Italy :slight_smile:
I called Phonak’s customer service to see where I could get detailed informations about Vitus+ in my area, especially how much it costs, because they told me every shop/audiologist decides its selling price! My next step will be to go to these shops and ask if I can get Vitus+ for free, I mean if my 1200 euros government’s help will be enough. I’ve just seen this page and it seems its web price is about 690 euros per piece so a bit less than 1400 euros for the couple. I guess its street price’d be a bit higher so I guess I’ve to add 200-300 euros more from my grandma’s wallet.

I’ve a question for you forumers. As you can see this Vitus+ comes in different versions and I’m going to get either RIC or BTE so my question is: what are the differences in quality audio experience between RIC and BTE? I’ll ask the audiologist to let me try these different models before choose but in the case he/she won’t I’d like to listen to your opinions and experiences to make my best choice anyhow.

#10

Now I understand that you want to buy both hearings aids for 1200 €! I thought at first that you had 1200 per device
I think that’s going to be very difficult unless you manage to find a sales offer of some inventory remaining from years ago.

Probably that page would be your best option (Vitus+ is from 2018) but you’ll need to find a local audiologist to adjust the devices (Vitus+ cannot be remotely adjusted).
By the way, apparently they are giving away ReSound Keys which can be remotely adjusted!!!

BTE is usually better when you have a profound loss because the “loudspeaker” is located in the body of the device and can produce much higher power output. The RIC UP receiver is quite big and can be unconfortable to wear.

#11

What a misunderstanding, I’m sorry if I told my situation not clearly enough! Yes, my government can afford about 600 euros per device (for severe hearing loss while 700 euros in case of profound one) so it’s 1200 euros for both devices. I already asked if I could use the 1200 euros to get only one new device (I mean the right one) but they answered it’s impossible; it’d has been great because widex passion is still good for her left ear.

ReSound Key 2 aids are quite close to my budget because they cost about 690 euros/piece and I guess the “Technology Level: 1” version is ever cheaper but I couldn’t find it on the web maybe because it’s too old. Oticon’s get hearings aids are affordable devices as well though they’re about 12 years old. Definitely I can only point to old or very old hearing devices but that’s it.

A “step” above there’re Phonak’s Naida Marvel 30 that cost 790 euros/piece (1580eurs/couple) and Phonak’s Naida Paradise 30 at 990 euros/piece (1980euros/couple) but we can’t afford these differences.
Just an idea: what if I tried to sell Widex Passion RIC aids (with S receiver in left and M receiver in right) on ebay? They cost 2800 euros back in 2017, what do you think a “honest” price would be? If I could be sure someone bought them in a couple of months then I could advance that money right now to increase my budget for the new ones but it’s a hard bet, I mean I’m afraid nobody’ll ever buy them because it’s an used electronic device without any guarantee.

By the way what’s the advantage for a hearing aid to be “remotely adjusted”? As you said Vitus+ can’t but ReSound Keys can.

#12

An eBay search shows those for about 200 € each… so you could get 400 €

They can be linked to a phone and then the audiologist can perform adjustments remotely through videoconference, so:

  1. You can buy them online and have them remotely adjusted (obviously no REM will be performed). That mysecondear page proposes that precisely (they have their offices in Germany, btw they have local versions of the page, i.e. https://www.mysecondear.it/products/resound-key)
  2. You don’t need to travel to the audiologist shop to make any minor adjustments even if you bought them to a local audiologist