I’m new here and haven’t had a chance to upload my Audiogram . So, to give some sort of background, I have severe to profound loss in both ears, but nearly deaf in my left, but i still pick up some sounds or tones that i can use. I have had aids in both ears for the last 5 years that i got from Costco (I can’t remember the brand, could be Resound or Rexton). My hearing and aids have been progressively getting worse, therefore I have been shopping to get new updated hearing aids. I have recently been trying some Oticon S1 through my local health clinic which sound great, but as you can imagine are very expensive. $4500 for aids, about $650 dispensary fee, and $175 receiver fee (probably cause i need the bigger receiver) end cost being about $5400. While being on this trial I decided to go back to Costco to get a hearing exam to compare to my clinics and see what the latest hearing aids they had to offer. Because of my profound loss she recommended the Rexton with bigger receivers. i had mentioned to her that I was wearing Oticon OPN trials, and that i really liked them, but the price seemed very expensive. She told me that the Philips that they offer are the exact same hearing aid as the OPN, but she preferred that I tried the Rexton. She even let me take the Rexton home to try for a week. after going back and forth between the two hearing aid brands for a week it was very clear to me that the Oticon OPN sound better. So, i relayed that to her when i went back. She then suggested that I wait until spring to try the new Philips that they will be getting which she says are EXACTLY the same as the new Oticon Mores. she went on to explain that Costco has to rebrand big name hearing aids so that places like my clinic can try to sell at higher prices and can’t compete with Costco prices. but she assured me that the Philips (and she said she promises me) are the exact same as the Oticin OPN. So she suggested I wait for the new Philips, and said it would be a waste of time for me to try their current Philips because she promises me that they will sound exactly as my Oticon OPN 1 trials. She almost seemed like she was rushing me, as I was only there about 10 min. of my scheduled 45-60 min. appointment. I have looked all over the internet finding only one person who says there is a difference without giving any specifics. does anyone have any knowledge of the Oticon OPN1 vs Philips? . Any help is appreciated!
There are similarities in the architecture of the two aids in that I believe they have a similar hardware platform but the algorithms are different. @Volusiano will know more.
In terms of a low down, Oticon is a much more established hearing aid company and Phillips (largely a consumer electronics company - as you probably know) have only just returned to the scene of hearing aids after a long absence. I heard from the Costco audiologist that they were getting a lot of returns of the Phillips aid when compared to the KS9, which is a white label Phonak Marvel. Given your loss, you might be able to be fit with a KS9 with a 105 receiver, but I am unsure if that is suitable as a superpower aid alone.
By all means, try the Phillips - they may have rolled out a chip or algorithm update and smoothed out problems. For the value, it might be worth it. But also consider other aids at Costco - including the KS9, Rexton and Resound. I would actually strongly consider Resound, which has very good direct connectivity and some good anecdotal reports on here. I think Resound have good aids for severe to profound losses as well.
I only have the OPN 1 and I don’t have the current Phillips Hearlink so I can’t say with certainty whether they’re the same like the Costco dispenser claims or not. But I have reviewed a pair of Sonic Enchant 100 (you can search for it on this forum), and I must say that the Phillips Hearlink seems to be a closer cousin of the Sonic Enchant and is nothing close to the Oticon OPN at all.
Below is a snippet of the Phillips Hearlink whitepaper. You can see that it discusses 2 different compression speed systems, one called Envelop Focus and the other called Phoneme Focus. This is EXACTLY the same technology used by the Sonic Enchant. You can either read the whole revview of the Sonic Enchant I posted, or look at the second snippet below in my review where it also discusses those 2 compression systems.
So I can only conclude that the Phillips Hearlink is NOT the same technology as the Oticon OPN at all, unlike the claim made by your Costco dispenser. It’s actually the same technology as the Sonic Enchant, which I wore for a few weeks to write up my review. And in my opinion, the Sonic Enchant, although very respectable in performance, is nothing like the Oticon OPN 1 that I wear.
Note that Sonic is another sister company to Oticon, all subsidiaries of the William Demant group. In 2018, William Demant entered into a hearing aid branding partnership with Phillips. Apparently they licensed the Sonic technology to Phillips and rebrand the Enchant as the Hearlink.
But the Sonic Enchant (based on the SoundDNA platform) is now yesterday technology as it has been replaced by the Sonic Radiant (based on the new Extend platform). So I highly suspect that the new Phillips model to come out of Costco this coming spring as mentioned by the Costco dispenser is going to be the equivalent of the Sonic Radiant, and it’s very unlikely going to be the equivalent of the Oticon More. But that’s just my opinion based on comparing the core technologies between the 3 brands so far.
@myrzx3 If you decide to try out for the Oticon More, you should check out the Oticon More thread on this forum. There are some pricing comparison posts there that may be helpful to you to get an idea what kind of pricing that should be reasonable to consider.
I wouldn’t discount the new Phillips model that’s coming to Costco. While it may not be EXACTLY the same as Oticon More like they claim, you may still find it good enough for you to go for it given the much lower price. There’s nothing to lose with the long trial period from Costco. You can combine a parallel trial of both the new Phillips model and the Oticon More at the same time before you have to decide on which one you want.
You don’t post your audiogram so we don’t really know how bad your loss is, but if you’re trying things out at Costco, the KS9 is the equivalent of the Phonak Marvel and is very popular on this forum, and may very well works out for you too. I don’t think the Phillips Hearlink is as popular as the KS9 at Costco.