Specsavers UK Advance Elite UK Surrey

Hearing Aids
#1

I have moderate hearing loss in one ear, severe in the other, and I’ve found that only RIC aids give me a good result. (A mould makes my ear itch abominably, and a dome with tubes gives me too much feedback.)

I’ve looked at Oticon Real, which seem ideal, but will cost me £3,600+ but Specsavers are offering their Advance Elite aids for £1,995. The only thing is, they never seem to give any specifications or say what the aids really are. I wonder if anyone has any idea of how good they are likely to be, and what the aftercare service is like.

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#2

I bought the Advance Elite from Specsavers earlier this year, just after Xmas. The audiologist claimed it was a white label Phonak Lumity. Wrong. It was a Unitron Moxi Vivante. I discovered this when using the App. The Help page took me to the Unitron website and it looks exactly like the Vivante when I compared it to pictures on the Unitron website.

However, I am aware that although the Vivante and Lumity are different hearing aids, the technology is almost the same. They both use the Sword chip, for bluetooth connectivity, so the Vivante can connect to all the assistive devices sold by Phonak - the Roger Pen, TV Connector etc. This is because Unitron and Phonak are owned by the same parent company, Sonova.

With this in mind I was happy to continue with the trial, which lasted about 3 months. Everything was good, general connectivity, clarity, could hear in the car, the App wasn’t bad. However, to put it crudely, they were rubbish in loud noise. Dismal. I had a couple of really bad experiences, which were embarrassing. This was even after fine tuning and using settings on the app to achieve optimal performance.

I switched to a Phonak Naida BTE for £2800. It’s performance in noise, after about a month of fine tuning is a lot better.

So, I wouldn’t read this and take away the conclusion that the Vivante is a bad aid. I have severe/profound loss and I believe that fundamentally the problem could have been with the RIC form factor. For some reason the BTE is able to present me with voices above the noise floor, whereas with the RIC voices were swallowed and I didn’t comprehend anything. But that doesn’t mean you will have the same problem with your loss.

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#3

Go to your local Costco if at all possible, this gives you some pretty good options usiing premium models that can be a DIY project if you wanted ( some of those Specsavers are locked, so your stuck with them, Phonak and Unitron are exactly the same bar the name) Costco of course have the best prices available as well so some pretty good savings there.

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#5

I don’t qualify for Costco membership, nor is there one very near to me, so unfortunately that isn’t really an option.

I’m not sure how to do a DIY project either!

#6

This is all helpful to know. The hearing in my right ear is extremely poor, and I’ve found BTE gives me too much feedback, so I’m surprised that worked better for you. Maybe it’s because you were using a newer model.

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#7

Did you try soft silicon moulds?
I think Bte Up aids would benefit you if you could solve the itch problem.

#8

That’s a good question. I’m not sure what moulds I was given - I might ask about silicon moulds.

The only other issue is the way that moulds affect the sound. I suppose I might get used to it.