I think it’s quite possible that Phonak does make the best hearing aids. I would think the best reviews would come from audiologists who have the equipment, the knowledge, and a variety of patients to test the performance of various hearing aids on. The best subjects to test on, though, might be normal hearing folks, as they can tell what all the sounds sound like to their unaided ears vs., say, solely through their HA’s with occlusive molds.
One problem that I find with reviewers like Dr. Cliff and Matthew Allsop (now the official Hearing Tracker YouTuber) is that they pull their punches. They rarely make direct comparisons between different brand aids. Perhaps because they don’t want to offend and lose followers who are enthusiastic about a particular brand that they would not rate as the very best or perhaps they don’t want to sour OEM connections from which they get equipment to test and do their YouTube shows, etc.
Dr. Cliff has serious hearing problems in one ear, but Matthew Allsop says that he has normal hearing. So possibly in his reviews, he could speak directly to what reproducible sound sounds like unaided vs. listened through the HA’s with the HA electronics set entirely to reproduce all the sound he hears in quiet vs. noisy situations.
Another concern of reviews is related to, “Do we all see the same color red?” And perhaps extending from that, do we prefer Beats audio to regular music? Or when we take digital photos, do we think the prettiest pictures have lots of saturation in them that really isn’t in the real-life scene. Almost every digital camera adds color saturation to a photo, and we like the effect - so that’s why it’s typically done. Is there that sort of thing going on in HA sound reproduction, too?
So in the absence of all of the above more diligent comparisons and knowing exactly what’s going on with reproduced sound vs. sound heard directly by normal hearing ears, I’d say the best thing that we all have to go on is trial several hearing aids and see what works best for you. Because the color of red you like best may be different that a bunch of other people prefer.
But given the general enthusiasm on the forum for Phonak HA’s, I’d say it’s likely they are close to the very best, if not the absolute best in sound reproduction, and then you have to weigh in other factors that might matter to you, such as do you like MFi hearing devices, long rechargeable battery life, the ability to control your HA’s from a smartwatch rather than having to grab your phone, etc.
I’d say for ReSound that the financial considerations that MDB has brought to light might be a bit of a worry down the line, too. Apple and the MFi OEMs really need to come up with a very good reason to prefer that sort of functionality over all Phonak has to offer in the classic BT arena. It looks like BT LE Audio currently is not going to be the cavalry riding over the hill any time soon to rescue MFi OEMs who’ve gone to the trouble of implementing BT 5.3 in their HA’s. But time will tell.