Oticon does not sell their hearing aids to Online Sites.
they dealer may advertise them at a low price but will never deliver on his promise.
Oticon will shut down any retail dealer that resells them to an online site.
Also, there is no way to adjust Oticon aids by remote at home.
Apparently this Registered Provider does not know what he’s talking about. Plenty of members on this forum have purchased the Oticon OPN through online channels and there is a way to adjust the OPN remotely by the provider through the internet while the OPN is connected to a programming device at the patient’s home (the provider will send a programming device to the patient’s home and after satisfactory adjustments the patient sends back the programming device to the provider). It’s all been done before, many times for many forum members here.
I wore the KS7s today to my office for the first time. There was a noticeable difference between these and the OPNs. Not sure how to describe it. With the OPNs I hear more, like the AC running… just more sounds, but is, that necessary? I admit I am more confident when wearing the OPNs., because the sounds are more tuned, but is that worth $3300 more?? And the Ks7 has such a better warranty. Now I’m more confused than before.
Are these things that can be adjusted on my KS7s??
The difference you’re experiencing between the OPN and the KS7 is probably from the fundamental differences in the 2 platforms as explained by Um_bongo earlier. The KS7 is based on a destination specific directional platform, while the OPN is on the “open” paradigm platform. What this means is that, if you’re using the directional beam forming noise reduction program of the KS7, it’ll focus (beam form) on the sound in front of you while not picking up other surrounding sounds around you. The OPN, on the other hand, will pick up all the sounds around you, analyze, balance and apply noise reduction to speech only. That explains why you hear more with the OPN, like the AC running, etc, and less with the KS7.
Is that necessary to hear more? You be the judge. Sometime it’s good to hear more (like if you have multiple speakers around you), sometimes it’s not, depending on what you do want and don’t want to hear.
You can try to mimic the OPN more closely if you set the KS7 to music mode, or avoid the directional beam forming noise reduction mode. In the music mode, the KS7 will avoid doing special processing (like directional beam forming) and let you hear everything. But the difference if you’re in the KS7 music mode is that you’ll hear everything “unprocessed”, while with the OPN, you’ll hear everything, but all signals will be processed (analyzed, balance, then noise removed for speech) for optimal results.
I think if you’re price sensitive, the KS7 is a much better value for the money than the OPN. Sure, you may like the OPN better, but if you’re still very happy with the KS7, why spend more for the OPN, right?
I just posted my audiogram…if that helps any
Oh wow, your hearing loss is not the common ski slope loss. It’s kind of a reverse ski slope with moderate flat loss in the lows and mids.
I think with this kind of loss, you’ll probably want to make sure you try both the KS7 and the OPN in a noisy environment like a restaurant to see which one works better for you, because your challenge based on this kind of loss will probably be speech clarity in noisy places since your loss is fairly broad across the speech spectrum.
But then if you’re rarely in a noisy environment then maybe performance in a noisy environment may not be as important to you.
Not sure why you think the KS7 has a better warranty. The OPN comes with a 3 year mfg warranty. How long does Costco tell you the KS7 warranty is? I thought Costco HA warranties are usually 2-3 years as well.
Unless you meant to say the KS7 has a better (longer) trial period.
The Costco warranty is 3 yrs wth no deductible. The OPNs are 3yrs with $300/per HA deductible.
I just left a restaurant , the ks7 wasn’t very beneficial, but I actually tend to do ok without any HA in noisy places. I just struggle during business meetings and in my office.
You should get clarification from your audi on the OPN warranty deductible. There’s is no deductible on my OPN warranty and I just sent one in for repair a few weeks ago and got them back and didn’t pay a dime for the repair.
The only time the $300 deductible would apply on the OPN is for a 1 time replacement if you lose your hearing aid for some reason.
I think there’s no deductible on Costco HAs for loss or damage. That’s the difference. But it’s hard to lose or damage a hearing aid although it can happen, I guess.
Thanks so much for your help with this. I just searched online and see OPN1s for$4000. That may be worth considering 
The Opn2 set i purchased was $5000… my Audi let me use a loaner set of OPN1, they were perfect, but were $6k.
Good grief this is difficult.
I had this kind of reaction early on with my first aids. It had all sorts of fancy termed features enabled, like plate clutter and others I’ve forgotten now, but once I had these features that were supposed to protect me from certain sounds disabled, I suddenly got clarity. So in my experience there is some validity to what you were told, that it is possible to tweak the devices to improve what counts as clarity to you.
I visited Costco recently, and found that apart from their Kirkland range, which are just rebranded big name devices anyway, they sold much of the same big names as the local hearing shops, and for a fraction of the cost, so it really bothers me to read some posts here like the second one above that you should find an audiologist you are comfortable with, and then pay whatever they charge. Sorry but that is the usual self serving nonsense that gets served up over and over.
The current Kirkland range are made by Sivantos (Siemens, Audio Service and Rexton). It may be 18months behind the latest offerings, but that doesn’t make them useless. What it means to me is that 18 months ago is still 4 years ahead of what I have now, and they are far from useless, so don’t be sucked into the BS that Costco audiologists are worse than independent audiologists, or that their offerings are sub-standard. Just go back, get them tweaked to your satisfaction.
Just FYI the main difference between the OPN1 and OPN2 will be in the area of speech understanding. As I mentioned before, the processing core of the OPN goes from analyzing the sounds to balancing it (to take out noise sources that have more precise locations) in preference of speech, then finally use the noise removal as a secondary noise cleaner on more diffused noises that still taint the speech. The OPN2 and 3 uses only 50% power of the balancing module (OPN1 uses the full power), and in the noise removal, the OPN1 can be set to reduce noise by -9dB, while the OPN2 is limited to only -5dB, and the OPN3 is crippled to only -3dB. So the bottom line is the OPN1 should give you a bit better speech understanding in noise compared to the OPN2 and 3.
Even if you can get the OPN1 for $4K online, I still think the KS7 is a better value for the money at $1700.
Another option to consider is the Sonic Enchant 100 also available online for only $3,200. There is a forum member who wore the OPN1 first then tried out the Sonic Enchant 100 and reported back that it’s just as good. But only you can decide for yourself as these things are so subjective. But it’s worth checking out. Sonic is a sister company of Oticon who makes the OPN, so they share a lot of similarity in the hardware and specs, although it doesn’t look to me like they share the same core processing platform.
It’s a difficult decision to make but at least you’re now aware of more options.
Thank you. Yes i will go back. I loved the OPNs but simply cannot afford them. I would like to know which brand, at Costco, closest favors the OPN 1.
I may need to create a new topic to find that answer 
Costco carries the Bernafon brand, and like Sonic and Oticon (mfg of OPN), they’re all subsidiaries of William-Demant, the parent company.
There’s been rumors of a new Bernafon model release to Costco, although it’s not sure when or whether it’ll even have the OPN technology waterfalled down to it yet or not.
So basically, the OPN is the superior product, and you really get what you pay for in this case?
It’s a different product. If you like, it may be worth it to you. Some people hate the OPN1. It depends on your preferences.
Hearing aids are VERY subjective depending on individuals that you can’t just say one is superior to another. I know of people who still prefer old fashion analog HAs over digital HAs even to this day.
So nobody can make this conclusion for you except yourself. You already know how both sound like, although you haven’t lived with both long enough to form a long term impression. And you already know how much they cost.
If I were you, I’d use the OPN2 most of the time between now and when its trial period is up so I can form a longer term impression of it, then I’d return it, because you obviously don’t want to pay $5K for the OPN2 anyway.
Then I’d wear the KS7 next for the 180-day trial period. If toward the end of the 180-day period, you’re still happy with it, then keep it. If after 180 days, which is plenty of time to mull it over, you still think you’d rather pay $4K for the OPN1 online (or a little less for the OPN2 or whatever), then you still have the option of doing that.
My guess is that after wearing the KS7 for 180 days, you’ll most likely be happy with it enough to decide to keep it.
I’ll just add my 2 cents here too.
I am quite new to HA’s. Recent exposure was via my mother who got a pair of Phonaks for something like $4k (CDN$). I thought that was ridiculous until I started looking around. Then I found this forum and learned about the KS7’s for vastly cheaper ($2k CDN$). I had some extended health benefits available to me for more than that but I couldn’t justify the extra cost for my first foray with HA’s even though it was all covered.
Having no other experience to compare with they seem to be working fine. They’re not perfect. I still struggle with a very few kinds of voices. But the tv is quieter and that works for the spousal unit. I don’t have terrible hearing but it certainly can use the boost.
In the next short while I will be getting the self-programming stuff and have at it.
So tl;dr…first HA’s and cheaper than anything else for real, dispensed HA’s (not PSAP’s)…is how I chose.
I just called Oticon corporate office.
They do not sell Opn online. Some dealers are buying aids from Oticon and reselling them to online sales companies.
Oticon is monitoring their sales and when the dealers are caught reselling Opn aids, Oticon closes the dealer account.
Also, Oticon will not honor the warranty on these hearing aids.
They also tell me there is no way to program the hearing aid by remote.
Software and programing devices are set to the customer and they program their own hearing aids with guidence on the phone from the seller.
Oticon monitors their hearing aids sales and the public needs to know they will not have any factory warrenty.
Official corporate policy and what the company actually does don’t necessarily jive because companies are more interested in making money although they may try to appease the audiologist channel by saying things audis want to hear. The fact of the matter is that online channels exist, they are doing very well, people are flocking to boost their business thanks to the reasonable pricing, and apparently, no matter what official policy you get from the mfg, they’re allowing it to happen even though if you ask them, they say they don’t.
There is a forum user here who sent back his OPNs to the online seller for warranty repair and he got his OPNs back repaired just fine. He even had a pair of OPN loaner from them while his is out for repair. I bought my OPNs from an audi and a few weeks ago when I sent mine in for repair, I didn’t get any loaner OPN from my audi and had to revert to my old back up pair of HAs.
Whether the seller remotely programs the software online or walks the user through what to click, it’s irrelevant because the job still gets done either way remotely. The fact of the matter is that the buyer can do it in the convenience of his own home without having to travel to an audi’s office to get it done.