I’m in the process of purchasing hearing aids and wonder how other members of the forum rate Starkey vs Widex hearing aids?
I don’t believe in direct ratings simply because the products are so different. It is hard to say that one brand is better than another when comparing any two brands. You will notice that they all look similar and provided that they are programmed correctly, they all make sounds louder, and the good ones make speech clearer. In my office, we just completed a large study of Starkey’s latest product line, the Z series i110 RIC. What we have found is that patients who have never worn hearing devices before tend to really like how Starkeys sound. They are rich and clear and will generally improve your ability to understand speech. As a practice we fit all major brands including Widex and Starkey and we were comparing the newest Starkeys against what we normally recommend. By a 10 to 1 margin, our experienced patients who wear the other brand all said very similar things (summarized), “The Starkeys gave me a good natural sound quality, but I did not understand speech as well as I did with the other brand.” Widex is a very similar technology to the “other brand” we were comparing against, so my best advice to you, having fit many Widex AND Starkey devices over the years is that the Starkeys will likely sound more comfortable to you right off the bat, but in the long term, the Widex devices are likely to give you better speech understanding. Thats as good as I can do without seeing your audiogram and discussing what you are wanting to get out of the devices. Hope that helps.