That is a compact charger.
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No, I haven’t contacted any HA manufacturers. What would be the point? If they don’t sell enough conventional aids they won’t keep making them.
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As a disclaimer, I really only skimmed though most of the posts on this thread because at this point, this topic becomes a tiresome circle of debate, so some of your questions, if not all, may have been addressed and answered to help you either make a decision or alleviate concern, but I’ll provide my thoughts anyway.
What are we talking about here; a weekend camping trip, or a prolonged week(s) journey? Most travel chargers hold up to 3 full charges and would suffice for a weekend. For longer trips, I would just use a portable battery pack (the same ones you would use for phones/headphones) to charge the travel charger itself. And what are the frequency of these trips? If you’re someone who makes a high number of extended trips like this, then I would completely understand why you would want to remain on the disposable battery train. But if you’re a weekender with camping/hiking, I don’t see why rechargeables would really cause any issues.
Yes, if you leave town and completely forget your charger, it would be a hassle. I suppose your best bet would be to find a local audiologist office and see if they would be kind enough to loan you a charger for the duration of your stay, or unfortunately, they might make you purchase it outright (the latter being the more likely outcome). For me, at this point, when it comes to travel, my HA charger is at the top of my priority list to double check before I head out the door, same as wallet/keys/ID. It’s more or less ingrained into my habit now, so it hasn’t been an issue (yet).
HAs charges should easily last a full day. I pop mine in shortly after I wake up, and don’t think much of it at all throughout the day, and when I go to sleep, I place them in the charger. I stream anywhere from 2-4 hours a day on average, take and make calls with them, for work and personal, and generally have anywhere between 20-35% left by the end of my days. If you have a somewhat regular schedule, and you sleep an average of anywhere between 5-8 hours a day, I don’t see if being a problem. (I have Oticon Mores, for reference) ***I will say, from having seen a few other threads, that the Phonak Luminity does seems to toe the ‘last the whole day’ line a bit, and some people have issues with those aids making it through a full day, so you may have to keep that in consideration. But this seems to be a nonissue for most other brands.
And honestly, if for whatever reasons, you find yourself enamored with those Phonaks, your workaround is simply popping them in the charger for a short period of time, for example, when you take a shower, or when you, erm… use the bathroom… but I would completely understand people choosing to avoid it altogether.
For the most part, my answer for #3 covers this. But if you were to forget to charge your aids overnight, or fall asleep with your aids in, then yes, you’d be stuck trying to intermittently charge your aids throughout a day, which quite frankly, would suck. It hasn’t happened to me yet though, as it’s simply a built in habit to pull my aids out and put it in the charger when I go to bed. I suspect for most rechargeable wearers, that is also the case. You may have to learn that habit the hard way once, but it quickly becomes an automatic function given how important the aids are for your day-to-day function.
As for home power loss, my solution is the same as an extended backcountry trip. I always have a charged up portable battery that I have for my phone anyway, it can also charge my hearing aid charger. If your power loss were to be incredibly extended, then yes, I suppose in that particular scenario, you could be SOL.
I only started wearing HAs a couple years ago, so don’t have as many reference points as some users here, but I have had zero issues with rechargeables, at least from a day to day use (I have had issues with the aids not functioning and needing repairs, but the issues have had nothing to do with the batteries). I travel a bit, have had multiple ER trips (when they happen, and family or friends comes to see me, they grab my HA and phone chargers from home, and bring them to me). On one of the occasions that my HAs were sent in for repair, the loaner my audi provided were the disposable battery version, and I absolutely hated the two+ weeks of random time battery changeouts, and having to have spares on me or accessible nearby. A lot of the firm stances here one way or another are really resistances to change (like my 2 and half weeks with disposables) rather than true issues of capability and function. There are most definitely cases where one is absolutely better than the other for certain people though – I’m not trying to discount that at all, like if you have frequently changing work shifts and don’t keep a regular wake/sleep schedule, or if you’re in a non power-reliable place, etc.
Hope this is somewhat informative and helpful, sorry for the novel. And I’m not looking to get into any drawn out back and forths with any of my points with other people other than the person who posted the original questions, so you can all take it for what it’s worth, or not. Cheers.
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This is where you may be disappointed.
Maybe. Time will tell.
One of the disappointments we’ve been seeing more recently is that when rechargeables originally came out an end-of-warranty repair typically meant a new battery. That is not necessarily the case anymore. Manufacturers are deciding that there’s nothing inherantly broken with you having an “old” battery in your “old” hearing aid. If it’s malfunctioning, they may replace it with a within-spec similarly aged battery. Sometimes you do get a new battery, but this is more variable than it was initially. I’ve certainly seen a 6 year battery life now with some decline in day towards the end, but I don’t know that I’ve seen an 8 year old rechargeable battery that has been consistently used.
One of the benefits of the oticon rechargeables specifically in this case is that while you do need to expect to replace the rechargeable battery every 10-18 months, at least it is replaceable without a full repair. It also makes it a better rechargeable back-up hearing aid compared to other rechargeables, which you need to basically set a calendar alert to charge up monthly and turn off again and I still wouldn’t expect the longevity of a traditional battery device that is just sitting on a shelf.
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Even if you manage to get to 6-8 years of life.
The battery will probably behave like this. At 40–50% battery level and suddenly zeroed in and shut down. You will be puzzled as to why it suddenly lost all power in one swoop from 50% to 0% instantly.
Unlike Oticon which gives more flexibility and a longer life span by buying a new rechargeable battery, you can replace them yourself every 2 years. While other brands. Offer no such option.
These days some conventional battery aids have a battery gauge and an app. Here’s a screen on the app for my Oticon Real 312’s:
The battery gauge isn’t linear, so an indication of 50% doesn’t mean half the battery life remains. But the fact is there are indications of the battery expiring long before you get the warning beeps. For conventional batteries, I think the choices on this screen ought to be more like 80%, 60%, 50%, because in my experience 80% means the batteries will be gone in a few hours. Other brands or models may be diffferent, so you have to get familiar with your aids if you want to get the most out of the batteries. Even with these IMO too-low warning thresholds, you can check the battery level before a round of meetings, and change them if it’s below 80% or 70% or whatever level you think is appropriate.
So there is a middle ground between squeezing out every last drop, at the cost of being caught short, and being conservative, at the cost of throwing away maybe a dime’s worth or less of battery power.
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As the old curmudgeon used to say:
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Hmmm., first I’ve heard of any of this. “similarly aged battery”. Are you suggesting manufacturers are just swapping out old batteries that have been sent in for replacement? That seems really unlikely. A wearer would know instantly if the new battery was performing poorly-exactly like the one they just sent in for replacement. And honestly, the cost of installing a new battery as opposed to an old one is tiny. Not worth the grief. In any case I’m guarenteed two battery replacements under warranty if I need that, but I may just need one. Then I should get another three years after that (6 years total). Meanwhile I spend zero dollars on replaceable batteries over six years. The cost is a wash.
Funny, while you were posting that dig, I was thinking “A post about warranty battery replacements, a post about charge gauge going non-linear as a rechargeable battery wears out, and (mine) a post about interpreting conventional battery charge level…all new and useful information that I’ve never seen on this forum before. Isn’t it good that this thread is still open?”.
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If you’re Oticon you’re fine, their batteries are considered replaceable consumables rather than part of the device.
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I’m Signia. I’ve been told all goes well.
The battery itself is relatively inexpensive. Seems like the bulk of the cost of a warranty repair would be the shipping and handling. To save a few bucks they’d be asking the poor audis to take the heat for a cheap move on an expensive product. And in Phonak’s case it’s hard to imagine them digging a semi-tired battery out of the potting on one aid and gluing it into another. They could give out refurbished units. But wouldn’t the most likely supply of refurbs be units that had been trialed, and therefore essentially new? Happens with other products - return a broken unit and get back a refurbed newer model. I’m guessing that long term all the companies will need to build the aids with relatively easily replaceable batteries.
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Yeah, I can’t imagine anyone putting an aged battery in: you just risk another failure mode on the repair, which would render that effort pointless.
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The more likely scenario is that they decided to swap the aid turned in for a battery issue with a refurbished aid that has an original functioning battery already built-in, but is not a brand new battery replacement.
The scenario here may be that the refurbished aid is not a barely used demo aid, but a used aid turned in for repair on something else, like maybe a bad microphone, or a bad internal chip that requires more time to be replaced (or more time waiting for parts), so they had to send a replacement out so that they’d have more time to repair/refurbish this one at their own convenient time. It may not always be the case that a refurbished aid is guaranteed to be a barely used demo aid.
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I had the feeling at one time that aids sent back for “refurbishment” were just tossed and replaced with new. Does anybody actually know what happens when an aid is sent back to the factory?
Of course I don’t know. But I think it probably depends on how much stock they have at hand on brand new aids. If they don’t sell well and there’s a big surplus they want to get rid of, then it’s probably cheaper to replace than repair. If their new batch is running low and those aids are not selling well, then they may be forced to do the easier repairs and refurbish.
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Same here. Relatively expensive way to handle it but they must have known up front. Easy to imagine though that if people keep rechargeable aids for longer on average than the maker predicted, that the companies would change to spending more initially to prevent dissatisfaction. Especially likely for business models like Costco’s where there was a lot less fat to begin with.
Can you make a guess about the percentage of sales that end up back in the maker’s inventory? Based on posts here where buyers trial multiple aids before choosing, I’d expect more of those back in inventory than units repaired and kept. Why would makers repair aids and then keep them rather than returning to customer?