Well show me a pretty aid that uses a 675 battery. There’s only so much you can do with the big ones.
Well said… I wish we could had microscopic batteries with unlimited power for us consumers with severe losses. Unfortunately, it seems every improvement in HA’s requires better batteries so nothing really gets smaller. I wonder if rechargeable HA’s with nightly docking stations will end up being the answer of the future?
That would be a pretty good idea since every hearing aid user would take off their hearing aids before going to sleep. If it’s able to last for at least 24 hours (maybe some people are crazy and like to party all night :P) then we wouldn’t have to worry about our batteries dying down at the worst possible time
I think the Starkey one is far uglier than the Naida! I like the Naida as far as a power aid goes. It is at least rounded and ‘sleek’! It is definitely one of the prettier power aids I have seen.
Okay, well I decided to do a completely unbiased side by side comparison. Here’s what I came up with:
This is not a fair comparison. I’m a little dissapointed in ZCT for a misleading picture. I’m an engineer and pay attention to scale and detail.
The picture is set up for the starkey to appear smaller. The Naida couldn’t be any smaller because it is only as big as the battery at the end and reduces in size to the front. I just opened mine up and checked it out. There is no way for the battery end to be any smaller.
The starkey also takes a 675 but appears smaller for the entire length. The battery would not fit in the starkey if it is drawn to scale. You can also tell by the end of the hear hook that the Naida picture has been enlarged (or the starkey picture has been shrunk).
So the pictures obviously are not to scale. “unbiased”??? Nice try ZCT!
ZCT was responding to Jenny’s statement that the Starkeys are uglier, not smaller! Obviously he didn’t take a picture, but took two manufacturer pictures taken from different angles and put them side by side. There’s no way to get them to scale. For future reference this forum is not exact and based mostly on informed opinions.
“Objects may be closer than they appear”
Yes maybe I’m being a little picky, but if they were placed side by side with a realistic scale, I think the Naida would win hands down. But with it appearing bigger, it doesn’t have the affect it would have if the scale was a little more realistic. He called my hearing aid ugly, and I’m merely asking for a fair comparison. That is all.
The starkey is lumpy! It also looks like there are random holes in it for no reason…
First off, where is your sense of humor? I posted the image clearly as a joke. Notice the smiling face (wink in the topic line). The fact that I placed patriotic imagery next to the Starkey aid. It was an obvious play on the bias I have admitted to with the Starkey product.
As for your comments on size, I took both images directly from the respective manufacturers web site. The Starkey image is unaltered. I had to shrink the Phonak to be the same size as the Starkey (roughly). But I promise you I did not alter the Starkey image at all.
I have no clue what the size difference is between the aids in real life. And this joke image was not an attempt to show a size comparison.
Again, Starkey image exactly as it appears on the Starkey site. Naida shrunk to be roughly the same number of pixels from top to bottom, maintaining aspect ratio. I can provide the links to the images if you’d like to verify.
Again, an attempt a humor. Sorry for trying to be funny on this board. :eek:
All joking aside, I agree with you. The Starkey is pretty ordinary looking. They seem to have spent their time, money and efforts in making the smaller aids look ‘cooler’ but have obviously not done much to make their large 675 aid look cool.
I think ugly is a little unfair, but sure, it’s not going to win any beauty awards.
I have not met too many people that need to go to this aid, since the regular BTE which is a smaller 13 battery unit has 70dB of usable gain, which is enough for the average user. But of those I’ve fitted with the larger power plus aid, it is actually reasonably discrete for that type of aid.
Keep up your sense of humor. I’ll try to lighten up 
For what’s it’s worth I thought it was funny.
And the Starkey is ugly.
To all who are agonizing over the beauty of their HA’s I say 'bunk"
First of all if you need to hear & your hearing is 90dB or worse who cares how they look if they allow you to hear!!
Secondly most BTE’s can’t be seen in a woman with their hairdos any way-especially the behind the ear part.
Next if you need super or ultra power you need a 657 battery!
I had a Unitron Moxi -(supposedly power) with a 312 battery which lasted only 4-5 days & even then the insideous part is that starting in day 3 they begin to lose power & you don’t even recognize this except that things sound more distorted!
My current Naida “ugly” with the 675 battery has lasted 18 days & is still going strong. Beautiful- unless you like having the aids die in the middle of the day & carry spares around to change–“Ugly”
For men --unless your ears are flapping in the breeze-- no one will notice them either. My ears are close to my head & the Naida’s do not push on them or feel noticeable!
So if you want to hear, don’t worry about cosmetics!
Also Naida UP’s handle 135dB --Moxi’s only 95dB max output–not enough for profound loss.
Regards, Sylvester
I agree, I don’t really care how ‘pretty’ my hearing aid is. I am young so I could very easily get away with crazy colours and other things when it comes to my aids but I have boring beige ones mostly because it isn’t always practical to have red, purple, blue etc aids.
I do decorate mine to go with my outfit that day or to be colour corrdinated with a sports team, or holiday or something. There are some pictures of this on my blog.
Today I have blue and green beads on the tubing, and blue and green rhinestones on the BTE. Same shades blue and green as my shirt. I have short hair so my ears are always exposed, can’t hide my aids at all. I figure I might as well make them fun and ‘pretty’! I find other peoples attitudes are different when I have the decorated too. They aren’t as worried about talking to me and seem to feel more at ease with conversing or being with a Deaf person, whether I am using an interpreter and siging or if I am speaking/speech reading. If you try to hide it, others will too. If you are proud and make them stand out others will be less shy and awkard. Just my experiences.
Here are some pictures of my decorated hearing aids, Naidas to be exact. This is what they looked like today.
Here are some other things I have done with them…
Do you have different cases or do you decorate, then remove the beads and re-decorate?
Take it all off, and then redecorate. The ones that have the rhinestones are just sticky backed rinestones that I stick on. The ones that look solid coloured are stickers that I printed off my computer. I take full sheet sticker paper, print out a pattern, trace my aid onto the paper, cut it out, and stick it on. The beads are just pony beads tread onto the tubing.
When I was younger I used to do that sort of stuff everyday. My mom would match it to my outfits and stuff. Now I only do it if I am working with kids or going out with friends or something.
I was at a formal awards dinner, black-tie event, and I put “diamonds” on them. I got a lot of compliments for it!
That’s neat and it sounds as though you could re-decorate in just a few minutes. I like the diamond theme for the formal event.
Jenny et al.
I must apologize when I said who could see BTE’s anyway in my original post!
After seeing your pics, I realize that I must have large ears (although flat) because my Naida’s are completely hidden!
Or you have tiny ears!
Any way Hearing is the most important as you also said, cosmetics come way down the list!
In your case however you have both! Very innovative!!
Sylvester