Okay, an update!
I trialed both the Widex SmartRIC and the Oticon Intent for a few weeks in parallel… at crowded restaurants, in airports, on a plane, listening to music, playing piano, at a workshop, etc.
In every single instance, the Oticon sounded significantly less natural, slightly compressed / warbly, especially when compared back-to-back in the same context with the Widex.
Switching to the Music preset of the Oticon improved this a bit, but not to 100%.
The Oticon was slightly better with all speech-in-noise contexts, with the relevant voices being slightly louder / clearer.
And the Oticon does have a significant advantage with the on-device buttons that can actually perform multiple functions! (press to adjust volume, press-and-hold to change program, press-and-longhold to turn off)
But I just couldn’t take the artificial day-to-day sound (especially with any car or microwave chimes sounding particularly warbly, etc.). And my Widex integrates wonderfully with my Apple Watch, so it’s just two taps to change a program or volume.
So in the end, I decided to go with the Widex and I’ll be trading in my demo model for the real thing this coming week.
I suspect that I did not get a fair trial of the Oticon, since the person fitting me is not many years out of school and has – by her admission – never fit the Intent before and hasn’t fit many Oticon HAs.
But this is the only place within 30 miles that is in-network with my insurance, which means I get any premium HA for free (since I’ve hit my in-network OOP maximum for the year).
In contrast, it’d be thousands of dollars for me to go somewhere else to test and buy a HA :(.
All that said… I am considering paying a super-well-reviewed and very experienced local HA out-of-pocket to do another hearing test + adjustments on my upcoming Widex just to be reassured that I do have it set optimally.
And then in another year or three, depending on my insurance at that time, maybe I’ll try Oticon again.
Anyway, thank you again for the helpful and interesting commentary, and apologies that in the end, I wasn’t able to give these hearing aids a particularly fair test :\