The new trend seems to be Costco gets the latest technology from hearing aid manufacturers almost immediately. Gone are the days of Costco getting the last generation or stripped down tech (although I hear tinnitus features are often disabled for Costco). HearLink 50 looks to be getting the latest motion detectors and Bluetooth LE audio from Demant… similar to what was announced for Oticon Intent earlier this week. This is an exciting time. Costco is truly changing the market bringing high tech to consumers for less.
I don’t have exact timing on when this will hit Costco (and to be clear, I’m only speculating that it will hit Costco based on Costco getting the previous two generations of Philips aids), but my hypothesis is that Costco will offer only the “90” version of the “50” series (9050), like the 9040 they offer currently from the 40 series.
Powered by AI technology, HearLink 50 removes distracting background noise and prioritizes speech, so you can connect with confidence. HearLink 50 also features LE Audio for wider connectivity options and hands-free calls on more smart devices. - Source
Seriously, I hate Demant. You can buy a Jabra at Costco that’s exactly equivalent to Resound’s premium aids. Not Demant. “We’re reserving our best tech for our special customers. The rest of you can sift through the dumpster bin out the back.”
Anyway, I’ll be lining up to try the Philips. My fitter had a preference for the Philips over the Jabra even before this new model. We will see.
“Philips HearSuite 2024.1 supports this new speaker. This … Sound Guide will be on as default and available for Philips Hearlink 9050 and Philips Hearlink 7050.”
By coincidence, I had an appointment with my hearing aid specialist at Costco today, and based on her previous recommendation and my own research was planning to order the Philips 9040. Yesterday I read about Philips’ announcement of the 9050, so when I saw the HAS (or should that be HIS?) this afternoon I asked her if she knew when the 9050 was likely to be available at Costco. She was completely unaware of the 9050, but said this was typical, they normally only hear about new products a few days before Costco announces they are carrying them. She also said there could be up to a month delay after Costco announces new products before they actually become available in the stores, depending how quickly the hearing aid company makes training available, prints product literature, ships the product, etc. That’s worst case, she said new products normally ship somewhat faster than that.
FWIW, we agreed that she’d hold off ordering the 9040 for a few weeks to see if the 9050 becomes available…
Completely agree with your comment that Costco is bringing high tech to consumers for less, Abram.
However, they are NOT getting it almost immediately - at least not in all cases. Rexton is undoubtedly a duplicate of the Signia technology, BUT we have yet to see a Rexton version of the latest Signia IX platform which was released early last September. Rexton recently announced that they are finally rolling out the “Reach”, their version of the Signia IX, but when I contacted WSA, they told me that they do not expect the Rexton Reach to be available in the US until mid-March. Does that mean that it will be available at Costco at that time? We’ll have to wait and see. Regardless, we’re talking about a delay of more than 6 months for WSA to get its latest tech from its premium brand to its budget label.
So far this has been limited to Rexton. Resound has released the Jabra version of their lineup very quickly. Looks like Philips is about to do the same.
Exactly my point. The Rexton delay proves that Costco is not able to consistently do this.
I don’t know why anyone thinks that the Philips upgrade is coming very soon. In the same Q4 report in which the Demant CEO said that Bernafon and Philips would be introducing new premium products, he also said that Oticon would be going first. This doesn’t imply to me that a secondary brand like Philips will be rolling out their new product right on the heels of Iticon, but that Oticon will be given time to establish its new flagship product and that the others will introduce theirs later this year - probably late summer or fall. I expect this to look to be closer than the Signia/Rexton process than to the GN Resound/Jabra model.
Rexton just recently announced the IX version of their signia line, like 5 months later. Meanwhile Resound and Oticon are announcing their costco branded models either at the same time or very soon after. This seems to be entirely a Rexton issue
Yes, but it wasn’t announced by Oticon and it’s not “Costco branded”.
Philips hearing aids are not sold only at Costco. They are sold world wide and their lineup includes hearing aids which are not carried by Costco. As for a “HearLink 9050”, can you provide a link to an announcement of a hearing aid announced with this name?
The title of this thread is followed by a question mark. Everyone seems to be ignoring that.
There is no Costco in my country. The nearest one is 1000 km away. If Costco allowed it to sell online, it would sell a lot more hearing aids. I would like them to make it possible because they give more for less money and besides, if I’m not mistaken, the warranty is 3 years.
Unless something has already happened, talk of it happening is speculation, even talk of the sun rising tomorrow. People are often sloppy with their terminology which doesn’t help. At least in the US, it does look like Costco is the only distributor of Phillips hearing aids (from Phillips US website)
