I’ve had a pair of the new Bose hearing aids on trial for a little over a month now. I’ve only been wearing them intermittently, so I might not be able to give the most thorough review, but I’ll give it a shot.
First of all, I’ll be clear that these are not hearing aids in the sense that we understand hearing aids because they are not prescriptive. I consider them sound amplifiers. You can adjust them yourself but not to match your hearing test profile. Your adjustments are pretty similar to how you can adjust a Bose speaker - volume and bass/treble. You can also adjust them to favor one ear over the other, something which I found helpful since my left ear is distinctly weaker than my right.
Overall I like this product. At $850 you’re getting a lot for your money including a 90 day trial period, which is tough to beat. Customer support is superb. They are programmable by the user with up to 14 separate programs. They fit very nicely in my ears. This is a big deal to me because I’ve had an ongoing problem with speakers backing out of my left ear whether with domes or custom molds. The sound with a few exceptions is reasonably normal sounding. If this were all I could afford, they would definitely improve my hearing. They state in their manual that “The Bose Sound Contol hearing aids are intended to amplify sound for individuals . . . with perceived mild to moderate hearing impairment.” This is an apt description and I would say “Mission Accomplished” although with more emphasis on mild than moderate. This device can be very helpful for people in the early stages of hearing loss. (You can check my profile to see where I’m coming from.)
Despite the attractive price, I will not keep these hearing aids even as backups for several reasons:
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Right off the bat, their feedback suppression program doesn’t work for me. I have high frequency loss, so I need to pump up the treble. Even keeping the treble at what seems to me to be a modest boost, when combined with the level of amplification that I need there is still too much squeaking for me to want to keep them. This is a deal breaker for me.
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After adjusting them multiple times, I still find myself misunderstanding words more than I do with my regular hearing aids even in situations without background noise. Therefore I have to ask to have words repeated and communication is less effective.
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Little things also make them less desirable. While the casing seems to be reasonably well built, the door locks with a double click and requires force to press down on it to accomplish the task. I’m not old enough to have weakness or tremors in my hands or fingers, but if I did, this would be impossible. The doors are also hard to open. I don’t understand why they couldn’t get this right. It’s nothing high tech and there are plenty of other products on the market to be copied which open/close smoothly and easily and which stay firmly locked.
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Programming is done from your smart phone and is done easily with my android. That’s the good news. The bad news is that you can’t change programs with the button on the hearing aid itself. You have to pull out your phone, turn it on, open the Bose sight, go to the page with programs, and then click on the one you want. That is both cumbersome and not inconspicuous, so I don’t do it. I just live with whatever’s there. On my current HAs, I can change programs simply by holding down the little rocker switch on the HA for a second.
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The little volume button on the hearing aid is not a good fit for my fingers. I’ve not had this complaint with any other hearing aid I’ve owned or trialed. Not good ergonomics IMO.
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This same little volume control is not accompanied by any auditory feedback that an adjustment has been made - in the case of my current HAs it’s a beep with individual volume increments and a jingle when I hit, max, minimum, or program pre-set. I really need that confirmation that the adjustment has been made.
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When I turn the HAs on, there is similarly no auditory confirmation that they are on (e.g. a jingle). In a normal environment I can tell because I’m suddenly hearing more, but if I were in a very quiet environment, I don’t know that I could tell.
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The domes are small relative to what I’ve used before, so even the large dome does not fully occlude my ear canal. I believe that this contributes to the feedback which I’ve been experiencing.
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I said that a positive for these instruments is that they are reasonably normal sounding but with a few exceptions. At my settings, the exceptions are all with high pitched sounds like the beeper on a car’s directional. Sounds like this are very sharp, piercing, and distorted. Not pleasant.
In sum, not a bad device for its intended target audience although it could be improved with a few tweaks. But it is no substitute for real hearing aids for people with real hearing loss.