Curious if anybody has compared to see what difference there might be. According to stuff I’ve seen the only difference is that the I70 lacks Soft Speech Enhancer, but I wonder if the level of noise reduction ability varies. Thanks. For me there would be an $1800 price difference for a pair.
As you stated, the only difference according to the the Phonak web site is the absence of the Speech Enhancer in the 70. BTW, the difference in the price if you use a ZipHearing audiologist is only $600, $4,598 for the 90 vs $3,998 for the 70.
Edit: I checked Target and did not see any differences in adjustment controls other than the absence of the Speech Enhancer in the 70
The I70 also has limited spheric noise reduction compared to the I90.
3 Likes
Yeah, I didn’t see that. The 90 has a Spheric clarity range from weak to strong. The 70 shows the same range in Target but will only actually move from weak to moderate.
3 Likes
As a retired guy who is seldom in loud places, I have also wondered about the slight differences and how the soft speech enhancer works. Does it have to detect that my wife is talking to me from another room to kick in? How long does it take to kick in? I think that the 90 have an upgraded version of Autosense, but I don’t know what the improvement provides. My audiologist is checking. I am trying the 90’s right now. Phonak sent the wrong color, so I have some time to decide if I want to stay with the 90 or save $600. When I decide we will order the silver.
I will confirm that the Bluetooth has much better range. My old aids are Phonak/Costco KS10s. The KS10s Bluetooth was excellent but with the Spheres I can go outside and still hear streaming from a phone in the kitchen. Likewise for the TV Streamer!!
My audiologist told me that their proportion of sales at the highest technology level is much higher with the Sphere compared to other models. I’m not sure if other models comprised just Phonak or also other brands. They sell all of them.
Audéo Sphere™: Advancing speech understanding with AI | Audiology Blog (phonakpro.com)
Perhaps the graph in the article explains the difference between 70 and 90.
+1 dB SNR is said to be about ~10% improvement in speech understanding (roughly).
EDIT:
1 Like
That seems like a pretty reasonable guess! Thanks!
1 Like