I am confused. 
I think thought someone else said they were feathers. Are they heavy or light??
I KNOW! I am in a very good place. At 67, this is the FIRST time I actually bought a 2nd pair of identical aids. Up to now, the old pair went down the food chain and became the backups. Perspective: I still have aids going back to 2009 that were molded ITEs. I’d put them in during the pandemic when hubs was literally coloring and cutting my hair. Otherwise, there’d have been NO way to communicate with him. I totally appreciate how rare it is to have a 2nd pair of NEW aids, one being the backup.
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@jeffrey, you can rely on your old aids as backups because they aren’t rechargeable. Your current, rechargeable aids’ use as backups in a few years is doubtful.
Loaners are an option only for people who maintain an active relationship with a professional who provides that service. Lots of people can’t afford that.
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Will rechargeable aids drain and become bricks if they’re turned off and sitting in a drawer?
They will definitely drain. I saw one manual that said they should be recharged every 6 months. I know Li-Ion batteries can get damaged if totally discharged for a period of time. That is why new devices have a charge on them.
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YES! You can’t just turn them off and put them in a drawer either. I plan to swap my 2 pairs of rechargeable aids every other day so they get good use and both maintain the battery life with regular use and recharging.
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My remaining M30R (over 3 years old) loses little charge in the drawer. I stick it in the charger every 6 months or so and it charges fully in a short time. It would probably be best to store it at half charge but I can’t be bothered to check its SOC.
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well, charging every six months isn’t that big of a deal…?
Yeah, there are recommendations for optimum battery shelf life. But does anyone state how much battery capacity will assuredly remain in a few years if the recommendations are followed? And how would non-readers of this forum know that they have to do anything?
That depends an awful lot on the charging along with how high the battery is charged and how far it is discharged. Some systems only charge the battery to 80% of full capacity and discharge to 20% and maintain a majority of their capacity over 10 years or longer. I doubt hearing aids can afford the extra capacity to that though.
If you have a smart assistant device or just use the smart assistant on your phone, once you determine roughly how long it takes to charge to somewhere around 50%, you just tell the smart assistant, “Set a charging timer for xx minutes.” Even a plain old mechanical/electronic timer would do, such as one might use for cooking. And it doesn’t have to be exactly 50%. Anything in the 30% to 70% SOC range would probably help immensely vs. storing at 100% SOC, but then if you only charged to 30%, it would be that much sooner you’d need to recharge.
Tips for extending battery life don’t constitute reasons why rechargeables are just fine as-is. If the manufacturers built this intelligence into their chargers, say with an option for longer hearing on a charge vs. longer battery lifetime, and a long-term storage mode, then we’d be making progress.
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Sometimes you can’t always have what you want, and it helps to know the best way to make do with what you’ve got. One of my favorite characters in growing up was Natty Bumppo out of James Fenimore Cooper’s 5-novel series The Leatherstocking Tales. The character was brilliantly portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis in the 1992 flick The Last of the Mohicans. One of the reasons that Natty lives to be a very old man and finally dies at the edge of civilization in the MidWest in the last novel, The Prairie, is that he’s a very resourceful character and makes the best out of what life’s dealt him.
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No kidding!! rechargeable HAs won’t answer all of my potential needs in any given disaster, so they’re no good. Really?
I think a lot of the vitriol about rechargeable HAs has to do with older folks, like me, being resistant to any change in their routine. The world keeps moving on without us old folks permission, and it pisses us off!
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They will only improve charger performance if it increases their overall profit. They do not want to hurt sales on their devices that may be incompatible. For them, improving chargers would be to reduce the cost of manufacturing.
Rechargeable aids are compatible with the charger they’re sold with, and possibly an optional charger with extra features. So they’d release a new line of aids with new chargers, just like now.
Not to say that universal chargers wouldn’t be a good thing. Some people here equate rechargeable phones to rechargeable aids, but one of the differences is that a failed phone charger is no big deal since you can buy a replacement anywhere.
Re motivation to improve chargers, I agree that the manufacturers will have none whatsoever if the “suck it up” attitude expressed by a few members here prevails.
If I told you that everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it, would you ask me if I’m against sunny days?
The manufacturers have done their surveys and bean counting and made their decisions. If you could confront them with your suggestions, and even if you threw in your conclusions about their motives, they’d probably still shine you on like a politician kissing your baby. But they might use the term “barking at the moon” as soon as you’re out of earshot. A petition would have a much better chance and most likely no less than somebody in the mail department would read it. Increased chance of that if it’s written in French, German, or Danish. 
Oh, please! Somehow you took my words and twisted them into meaning that I’m against innovation in HA chargers–which I never said! look it up. Or anything like that. Now, you’re saying I’m part of the problem with why chargers don’t meet your preferred criteria–smart chargers that are programmable over six months so your back ups are automatically charged without your having to think about it.e3tc. . Well, that might be nice. I personally have no need or desire for all that. I like simplicity for my devices. I’d rather not pay for all that and do it myself, Natty Bumpo style.
P…s HA manufacturers HAVE improved their products vastly over the last decades, without any input from me or anyone on this board. So they had ‘quite a lot of that howsoever’. I fully expect the same for chargers. Phones, computers, televisions, toasters, all have taken time to become more and more sophisticated. It’s not a matter of being nasty. It’[s ow technology works.
I’d place this in the “give up, it’s hopeless” category, not the “suck it up” category.
Seeing as there are five independent hearing aid companies, there are five sets of decision makers, and, hopefully, active competition. I’m not aware of any factor that makes rechargeable aids inherently preferable for a company to produce. So the market should be able to supply both kinds of aids in the proportions desired by customers.
That said, why harp on the issue? Because current rechargeables have major deficiencies, consumers need information to make the right choice, and this forum’s total readership is (far?) bigger than the number of active posters.
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