I started using HA’s early last year. I have mild to moderately severe hearing loss, that starts out a couple db down, and drops like a ski slope from 1K down into the moderately severe loss range. My audi suggested some Oticon Intent 1’s at a pretty exorbitant price.
I wound up with a fresh pair of factory refurbed Signia Pure Charge&Go 2X at no cost, and no other thought went into that decision. I read up, and self programmed them. I’ve had pretty decent results, and been able to have conversations in noisy places for the first time in a very long time. Not perfect, but possible! For years I always just did the smile & nod thing, because there’s zero chance I can hear in that environment. I also found that most of the time, the HA’s made my tinnitus much less pronounced.
Some weeks after starting to wear the Signia’s, my audi offered to let me audit the Oticon Intent 1’s for several weeks, including having her set them up, do a REM, and a couple tweaking appointments. This was at a nominal fee that I thought was reasonable, and I accepted. I figured if nothing else, I would at least get a baseline on what I could expect from professionally set up HA’s.
Wound having to get the RIGHT HA replaced due to it being defective. She didn’t believe what I was telling her at first, until she listened to the HA. After that, I wore the Oticon’s for about 6 weeks.
They were decent in noisy environments. Better then the Signia, but not amazingly so. The audi tweaked the recovery features, gain and made several profiles for me.
I found the bluetooth functionality ranged from poor to useless. I use a iPhone 15 pro max, and use the bluetooth for phone calls, and to hear navigational directions. That function works satisfactorily with the Signia’s. On the Oticon, people constantly said they couldn’t understand me, and frequently the bluetooth would be so flaky as to be completely useless.
The Oticon HA’s are a bit chunkier then the Signia’s, which has a slightly more organic shape. Even after six weeks, I found the Oticon size / shape to be uncomfortable, to the point of becoming quite irritating after a few hours.
To be fair, this occasionally happens with the Signia’s as well, but I find them to be much more tolerable / comfortable the majority of the time.
In the end, I decided to stick with the Signia HA’s. I felt that the Oticon Intents and their massive price tag just weren’t justifiable for my level of hearing loss. I thought they performed better in some situations, but the bluetooth issues, and the uncomfortable size/shape were just not going to work for me.
Now however, my right Signia unit has developed a propensity to make loud crackle and pop sounds from time to time. My audi won’t touch these since they don’t sell Signia, and unfortunately they are out of warranty now. So I might be headed out to Costco before too long.
