It’s on Jabra’s web site: “Exclusively available at Costco”
Has anybody seen these in the wild already?
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ReSound Vivia, well that didn’t take long to release!
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It will be months before we see it in Australia. It’s a strange beast, the Vivia. Auracast, AI de-noising yet not much love from what I can tell.
Checked with my local Costco in Central California. They haven’t heard anything yet. Said they only get 48 hrs notice though. They also had no news on Sennheiser.
I’m still in my six month trial period for my Jabra Enhanced Pro 20s, I wonder if Costco will let me upgrade to the 30s?
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I don’t see why not.
To be clear, one doesn’t trade in a hearing aid at Costco on a new one. One returns an aid within the 180 day trial period and gets a refund. Then one can purchase another aid.
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This statement is exactly correct with the exception of “trial period”. Costco does not grant a trial period but rather a six month return policy.
Returning a hearing aid just to “flip” to a newer model is financially damaging to both the merchant (Costco) and to the manufacturer, and these costs are passed to other consumers.
The merchant loses the credit card fee on both the sale(s) and the refund, as well as their time to sell and fit the hearing aid(s).
The manufacturer loses out on the used returned aids which can no longer be sold as new and are often discarded.
Finally, there are reports that Costco will block future sales of hearing aids to members after a certain number of returns, although I have yet to see confirmed information on the exact number of returns or dollar amounts.
Yeah do it, why hold on to old technology, who cares what the manufacturers or Costco think about it, your the customer and your within your rights to return for a refund and then upgrade to the latest version, to think that the manufacturer “losers out” is a oxymoron.
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I’m unaware of what the manufacture does with returned hearing aids. Do you have some inside information?
We can guess, but do you actually know what they do with returned hearing aids?
My best guess is that they replace the plastic enclosure, check and reset them, and then use them for warranty repair replacements for other customers.
They probably throw away the receivers.
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Wow. I bought the Jabra 20 Pros a few weeks ago after my audi quoted ~$6,400 for the top end Vivia. Worst case was the 20s would be a back-up set. They are working pretty well, btw.
I cant wait to see the reviews.
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With the latest model coming out so soon after, I wouldn’t think Costco would have any problem with you returning them and buying the 30s.
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This page now says “This product is not available in your country,” but I will definitely be keeping an eye on it. I just bought my EP20s a couple of months ago and would also like to take advantage of the newer tech.
In the end, I will probably keep the ones I have. My hearing loss is primarily high frequency loss and I can hear fairly well without them, except when talking with my wife. And, that’s the important part. I’m not sure that A/I technology will be a big enough improvement to return the current Jabra for the next upgrade.
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The initial Vivia review by HT said it was a step backward. I can’t find the follow-up. Maybe the 30 will be better than the 20 for you, but … no guarantees. I emphasize the ‘for you’ part of that last sentence.
My understanding is that Costco will tell a customer before they get to the end of their rope. When I returned my rechargeable EP10s for disposable battery EP 10, I was told I may have a problem in the future, but I’ve stuck with the EP10s, and I expect they’ll be happy to sell me new aids when I’m ready.
I would take any testing done by HT as interesting, but may not be relevant to the individual experience.
From my perspective, if one can afford to buy a second hearing aid for a short test period, I would just buy the 30 and keep the one that’s works out better and return the other one for a refund with in the 180 day refund period.
I’ve had the Jabra 20s for about a year. I’m not going to simply assume the 30s/Vivia are a significant breakthrough technology without some actual hands-on usage/experience from the HA community. In general, improvements seem to be marginal at best when comparing recent appliances with the new upgrade models(much like golf clubs). We shall see.
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I agree 100% that year-over-year improvements are typically marginal. I’m also generally very skeptical regarding all things AI.
However: separating speech and noise should actually be one of those things that - in theory - AI could be very good at. And unlike self-driving cars, where the AI needs to be near 100% accurate to avoid accidents, we don’t need that kind of accuracy in HAs.
So what’s holding it back?
- It’s new. Manufacturers are still learning how to use it. They still need to learn how to effectively train their AI models. They might need more input data to train their models. They need to hire people who understand AI.
- HAs have extremely limited battery power available. The current generation of AI chips that are integrated into HAs may not be powerful enough to run better or more complicated models.
I don’t know enough about AI to gauge whether the former or the latter is a bigger barrier right now…
And it’s confirmed that that EP 30s are now available at Costco in Canada.
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