I think this is an area where there is a great deal of uncertainty to be honest. In the old days there was a clear demarcation - well - a demarcation in my mind anyway, between custom hearing aids and BTE hearing aids, the latter which would normally serve either a mild up to severe loss, or a power variant - usually with the letter P for more severe loss, or a superpower/ultrapower serving severe to profound losses.
Now, with the advent of RIC - well - in the last 5 years, the receiver can be swapped out to fit losses from mild up to profound. However for severe to profound losses, the Paradise or OPN is not recommended, but the Naida and Chilli or other make, with their larger or twin receivers, and other features I would imagine, such as less prescriptive compression and more linear gain. The confusion for me is at what point in the fitting range does an audiologist start recommending superpower aids and not the one size fits all RIC. I wear both a BTE Superpower Oticon Dynamo (NHS) and KS10 - white label Phonak Paradise and I can confirm that the Oticon has a smoother and more rounder sound. I do however wear the KS10s more because of their bluetooth connectivity. However I am kicking the can down the road to a certain extent and delaying the inevitable - I will eventually get a Phonak Naida or Oticon Xceed BTE SP As @hass5744 alludes , when your loss is severe/profound you start to pay attention to the aids in that segment.
The confusion/uncertainty to me anyway is rooted of course in the fact that we are not audiologists and we tend to do a lot of self classification. I have seen some people on here declare that they have a severe loss, whereas, in fact, they have a mild to moderate loss. I have seen people declare they have a profound loss - with only their high frequencies above 4hz being lower than 90db. They then believe they need a superpower or ultrapower aid. I don’t know what the exact answer is, as a lot of manufacturers will publicise fitting ranges for an aid that turn out to be inappropriate. I have yet to see any resources on here or elsewhere that try to accurately assess whether an aids fitting range is a true reflection of what is claimed, or how to properly match a fitting range to an audiogram. Perhaps it’s common knowledge and I haven’t noticed! I know Phonak Target matches aids based on ones audiogram, so perhaps it’s always done in the fitting software.
) . The aids I wear and look at is RICs.