Bernafon touts their “channel-free” technology. The Oticon Opn 1 has 64 channels. (The Opn 2 & Opn 3 each have 48 channels). I could not find any information on the Philips technical data sheets about channels. Does anyone have more information or thoughts about this? Thanks.
Anybody know how many fitting bands Opn 1, 2 and 3 have and also Zerena? The Phillips premium model has 16.
Regarding fitting bands (according to the technical data sheets):
The premium Zerena9 has 16.
The Opn1 has 16.
The Opn2 has 14.
The Opn3 has 12.
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Philips audiology confirmed the settings for complex noise reduction give those same three options (-5, -7, -9) in the Philips fitting software.
It is also 64 channels
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It’s looking like the full featured Opn S line if it has the new Opn S OpenSound Optimizer feedback prevention technology.
eta> maybe not Open technology as @Volusiano says below, maybe Sonic?
Looking at the power plus bte regular earhook, not powerful enough for those with very profound hearing losses.
Just a guess here that the HearLink 2000/3000 are the old Opn tech and the 5010/7010/9010 are actually Opn S 1/2/3 … SoundMap Feedback Canceller seems like it could be “OpenSound Optimizer”…
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The Phoneme focus and Envelope focus are dead giveaways that this is based on the Sonic Enchant 100 technology, not the OPN technology. I posted a review of the Sonic Enchant 100 a while back and these terms from the Enchant 100 stick out like a sore thumb here.
Adaptive compression is another Sonic Enchant 100 technology that I’m aware of.
Finally, the various directionality options here don’t fit the OPN directionality options. The OPN only had Open Automatic, Full directionality, or Pinna Omni.
There’s a noticeable lack of the keyword “open” here in any of the features, which is the hallmark of the OPN. Such as OpenSound Navigator, OpenSound Optimizer, OpenSound Booster, etc.
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As far as I’ve been told, OPN-S doesn’t have the “autophone” setting (whereas first-generation OPN did), In the specs posted here, there is something called “non-telephone ear control,” (similar to autophone?), so that’s different than OPN-S. The only thing that makes me wonder is that there are 4 options for noise reduction–and OPN-S has that with the new “very high” setting they added. I think @AbramBaileyAuD might be right.
Whenever a hearing aid company sells their tech cheaper at Costco, they usually change as much as they can in the naming to obscure the connection between the discounted product and the flagship product. So, I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions there.
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Some more docs for you all:
Philips HearLink BTE PP (478.9 KB)
Philips HearLink miniRITE T R (548.6 KB)
Thanks for the info.
I noticed full on gain of 66. So these aids would be good for people up to severe loss, maybe a touch profound.
They look nice.
I’m not really drawing any conclusion. And I understand that they do change the name differently so that it’s not obvious of the copies. However, like in the case of the Sonic Enchant 100 and the Bernafon Zerena, I could draw a comparison to see the equivalence of the technologies embedded in them fairly easily despite them making things with different names, to deduct that they probably share the same technologies. But in the case of the Phillips Hearlink and the Oticon OPN here, I really don’t see anything that seems to be the equivalent of the OpenSound Navigator or OpenSound Optimizer or OpenSound Booster.
Still not drawing any conclusion yet nevertheless, just saying I don’t see anything glaringly similar to the Oticon technologies, yet I saw a few glaring similarities with the Sonic Enchant 100 technologies.
As far as I can tell, the approaches to signal processing between the OPN and the Enchant are VERY different. The Sonic Enchant for some reason doesn’t seem to catch on to the hearing aid market as well as the others, even compared to the Bernafon. So I wouldn’t be surprised if William Demants is making this move to promote the Sonic Enchant technologies more effectively through the Phillips label /brand.
Clear as mud. Maybe one of us could trial the new Philips, then if it’s not locked, take it home and see which software detects the hearing aids;
- Oticon Genie 2
- Bernafon Oasis
- Sonic ExpressFit
j/k; well, halfway kidding 
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Hate to say it, but I think the inductive charger is a clue that Philips miniRITE TR hearing aids are using the updated Velox chip, as the photo of the charger is exactly the same as the charger for the OPN-S. I don’t know if that means the Philips hearing aids are fully featured in comparison to OPN-S, but I don’t think any other Oticon hearing aid (other than OPN-S) offers lithium-ion technology?–first-generation OPN doesn’t. The Philips line appears to be offered in a limited range of “two-tone” colors and has a different look than OPN, but it will be interesting to see if the features are identical to OPN-S, albeit disguised under new terminology.
We just updated our story here Costco to Sell Philips Hearing Aids - From $1,249.99 with a response from Demant:
How are Open Sound Navigator and Speech Guard different from SoundMap and SoundTie?
OpenSound Navigator and Speech Guard are features only provided in Oticon products (Opn, Opn S, Opn Play). Their respective role is to help patient understanding speech in noise and making sounds audible. This goal is addressed by Phillips HearLink in a different manner. While Oticon and Philips products both offer innovative technologies for these key patients-needs, they do it following a different approach. OpenSound Navigator has a unique three stage processing in noisy environments with an Analysis, Balance and Noise Removal. The goal is to allow for significantly improved performance in noisy situations without creating the unnaturally narrow listening window created by beam forming. SoundMap Noise Control uses a more conventional approach with a Directionality and Noise Reduction, but here using a twin-microphone to estimate noise more accurately. On the amplification side, Speech Guard uses a linear gain window to optimally preserve small changes in level (speech modulations), while, SoundMap amplification integrates a noise estimate that controls compression ratio to better preserve speech information in noisy environments. SoundTie is the name of the connectivity solution of Philips HearLink. It shares the core transmission technologies (2.4GHz Blutooth low energy, Near-Field Magnetic Induction) with other products of the Demant group, including Oticon.
Is there anything in the Philips aids that would provide something similar to the OpenSound Optimizer feature found in the Opn S?
Demant has developed and patented a core technology to detect and control feedback in a much faster way than conventional technology, and which does not make use of conventional frequency shift and gain reduction. This core technology is applied in both Philips and Oticon products to provide state of art/ market leading feedback control.
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Thank you very much! The mention of Opn Play caught my eye so I looked it up. It’s their pediatric version.
So now I don’t see any purpose for this product.
Demant now offers the Oticon Opn, and now 3 differently named but very similar 2nd tier products under “B” brands…