I got my ReSound Quattros through TruHearing.com. Back around September when I was within a month or two of the end of my 3-year warranty, I got an official, very nice letter from TruHearing that reminded me that my 3-year warranty was about to expire and the letter suggested that it would be a good idea to visit the local audiologist they had fixed me up with originally to have the hearing aids inspected and refurbished under warranty if needed. Originally, three years ago when I expressed concern to the audiologist as to how the rechargeable hearing aids would hold up over time, she reassured me not to worry as she could send them back to ReSound just before the expiration of the warranty and they would probably replace the rechargeable batteries (an approach that’s been suggested also many times on the forum). Well, here’s how it worked out for me.
My right hearing aid was the original from three years ago but because I had been treating it like a pricey EV (electric car), I had neither been fully charging nor discharging the battery (keeping it between 30% charged and 70% charged). It could go at least 5.5 hours on 20% charge (27.5 hrs estimated per full charge). The left was a 6-month old replacement and seemed to have the promised 30 hours on a full charge based on tracking partial rundowns. I think because I’d been vacuuming the microphone openings with my Jodi-Vac at least once, sometimes twice a day, both had problems with external sound reception but streaming worked great (subject of another future post - a smartphone decibel meter app says the air rushing into a Jodi-Vac needle is up to 106 dB and is distributed over a very broad frequency range going up to 20 kHz (where ultrasound begins) as judged via a spectrum frequency analyzer app.
Anyway, I got back two new or refurbished HA’s. The left one had a battery life estimated to be 20 to 22 hours per full charge, the right 25 to 27 hours per full charge-the sound reproduction on both HA’s was fantastic, though. I complained to the audi that the HA’s I got back, at least the left one, had worse batteries than the HA’s sent in to be refurbished. She said no problema. We’ll just send the HA’s back to ReSound and ask them to be checked again. (Unfortunately, I didn’t keep a record of the serial numbers of the supplied sets). I got back presumably another set of HA’s based on battery life with the left having a battery life of about 25-26 hours per charge and the right having 28 to 29 hours estimated per full charge. For the 2nd set of aids, I’d basically charge them to 100% for at least three hours, then run each until they dinged the warning sound that they had reached 10% remaining charge. I divided the elapsed time by 0.9 to get the estimated full charge run time. I did this with Bluetooth turned off and with Audio Routing in Accessibility Settings for Phone and Media set to Never Hearing Devices so Bluetooth usage presumably wouldn’t come into play during the battery rundown test (even so certain alerts like hazardous weather notifications from Dark Sky (owned now by Apple) still came through to my HA’s through some sort of Apple magic).
I haven’t complained to the audi about the latest “refurbished” HA’s. I think she said that the refurbished HA’s were warrantied for one additional year. Since I’ve been bother to her with trashing a number of Quattros through my Jodi-Vac usage or whatever and since I hope to get new HA’s within the next year running BT LE Audio or a competitive offering from Phonak, I thought I’d just wait and see how these replacements, now out-of-the-original-warranty, hold up. Perhaps ReSound provides end-of-warranty refurbishments with HA’s that got made with less than the brand-new 30 hours per full charge as a way of making use of HA’s that have perfectly good batteries but just not up to the spec charge level? So I’ll see what happens.
At any rate, just wanted to note that my experience has been now 2x over that when you send your rechargeable HA’s in for refurbishment under warranty, you don’t get back refurbished HA’s that have “like new” batteries. I’d invite anyone else to relate their end-of-warranty rechargeable battery refurbishment/replacement experience and see if it turned out better than mine.
If someone wants to suggest that, well, my left ear probably just uses more battery than the right, my previous experience with 4 or 5 left Quattros is that all but one got the equivalent of about 30 hours on a full charge with little or no BT streaming, going the same length as the right before needing recharging.
And, as I’ll detail in a future post on Jodi-Vac needle noise, I just brush the microphone openings on the HA bodies these days. I do still use the Jodi-Vac on my silicone molds and the receiver openings. My MP receivers have a Maximum Power Output of almost 120 dB (116, I think) so they’re presumably immune to any loud noise from air rushing into a Jodi-Vac needle. (and I have only a suspicion, no proof, that’s been the cause of my external mic problems).