Wholesale Hearing - Phonak Infinio Sphere

[AlexE]

So I’m quite new to hearing loss, about 9 weeks (I think), I went to bed on the Wednesday night and woke up on the Thursday morning having lost some of the hearing in my left ear. Not a huge amount but enough to make making out speech (my kids, my colleagues, my social circles) rather… challenging.

Long story short, NHS waiting list for fitting long (good news on that later), so I went private as I needed to keep working (and wanted to hear my family). Boots had the shortest wait time.

£3k lighter (to be paid over a year) I walked out with a pair of Phonak Lumity L90’s.

Pretty good, I hear speech better with than without them, but still a challenge (I assume this is about me retraining my brain and looking at lips more).

Then Phonak announced the Infinio Spheres.

Phoned Boots who said they did not know when they would be out (later the Boots Audiologist from Didcot sent me a mail that they would be available around the end of September at £4k), so I had a look around and seeing a comment here, I had a look at Wholesale Hearing. Spheres for £2.5k pre-orderable for delivery from the start of September.

I placed an order for a black pair.

I got a call a few days later to say Phonak were only producing four colours initially, did I want to swap colours or wait till later in the year for my original choice.

I opted to switch for silver grey to match my hair (ha, ok shaved head, but salt and pepper beard).

They arrived yesterday (but I was working in Bristol so did not get home until 8pm).

A quick pair to the app and I popped them in.

Ouch!!!

Too loud in my left ear and lots of whistling, even the rub of my shirt collar set it off.

I jumped on the app and cranked the volume right down. The evening meal and then a bit of TV with my wife was unbearable (due to the hearing aids, not my fabulous wife).

I dropped an email to Ross at Wholesale hearing explaining the issue. I’d emailed the day before to say that the programming/ set up sheet they had emailed looked right but mentioned that it referenced size 2 rather than 3 receivers.

I got a call back at just after 9am this morning to say he’d arranged a call with their audiologist at 11am adjust the programming and that a set of size 3 receivers were already on their way.

I joined the call with Martin via the Phonak App from my car (I’d driven my wife to her physio appointment in Banbury).

After initial introductions, he asked me to describe my issues and the he provided an explanation of the process he was going to run through.

He proceeded to run through a hearing tone test via the aids and said that there were a couple of changes he was going to make. Increasing the low frequencies and reducing the high frequencies in my left ear, and a general boost in my right. He applied these changes and the difference was like night and day. Amazing.

We then went through a few other settings, a bit of compression in the left ear, a little more whistle block (with a bit of testing of hands over ears etc to try triggering feedback). Sorted.

I explained the issue of hearing my kids while cooking so he suggested adding a manual sphere program but warned about likely battery impact if left on all the time (when I tested when we got home at about 2:30, on automatic the app said >16h but turning sphere on dropped this to 7h, turning sphere off reset to >16h).

We also added a little compression and he set a 14 day gradual volume warm up on the settings from 90% to 100%.

When I asked about trouble pitching in band (I used to play Eb bass in a brass band) he said really this was more about getting used to my hearing and rather than adjusting the aids, to look at some noise attenuation plugs to protect my current hearing (he has a point, quite a few of my wife’s band, possibly just a little more serious than ours, has members with hearing issues who now wear noise reducing plugs).

I’m not normally one to write a positive review, but all in all, Wholesale Hearing, Martin and Ross in particular, provided very good service at a great price.

Oh and the size 3 receivers were waiting for me when we got back from Banbury.

I write this because I was a little nervous spending a couple of grand over the internet, but all good.

[AlexE]

A quick size comparison, you would not notice the difference between the two aids if they were not side by side (I was worried the Spheres would be considerably bigger, fatter, but they are not).

The Sphere do have charging connectors on the bottom end and in the charging case wells, whereas the Lumitys don’t.

The Sphere charging case is considerably smaller so is easy enough to drop into a bag or large pocket, whereas the Lumity case feels almost twice the size.

[mthomas_uk]

I went with Wholesale Hearing for the same devices as well - A great service. My only fault was that I bought a Roger ON Mic (from ebay) £500 that does not work without licences, so its useless and £500 wasted. Seller will not take it back.

[Baltazard]

@AlexE Thank you for your review.
I suppose the adjustment was remote! was it easy or challenging?
Thx

[AlexE]

Remote.

Phonak app on my iPhone over a 5G signal (I was in a car park waiting for my wife).

I had to grant the app camera and microphone access but there were controls then presented to turn them off if necessary. Martin, the Wholesale Hearing audiologist, based near Glasgow with a Scottish accent (he said if this was an issue just to shout up, it wasn’t).

It was then like a Teams/Zoom call via my phone (not via the hearing aids until we started the hearing test).

I live a fair proportion of my working life on Teams, so this was not an issue. Also very strong stable connection but the app did warn me at the start that this would use mobile data as I was not connected to WiFi.

It all went very smoothly. I was impressed.

[AlexE]

Looking at the photo, the Sphere look massive, but they are not, I think it must just be the angle of the camera.

[WhatDidYouSay]

Can you compare the 2 sets of HAs you got when using them in noisy environments? Are the Spheres the panacea they are touted to be?

[AlexE]

For a start, first set up, the Spheres were awful. Unusable as the left ear was much too loud and tinny.

After the remote session with Martin at WH, the difference was like night and day. I switched over to the Spheres for the drive home, shopping at the supermarket and dinner with the family.

The difference was so much that I’ve taken the Lumitys back to Boots (who were very good, I don’t fault their service, just the price).

I’ve just been to Tesco (large, busy supermarket on a Saturday lunchtime) with my daughter to buy ingredients. I manually switched on the Sphere mode and I can report that I could hear everything a tired teenager was saying (you can judge for yourself the benefits of that).

I’d prior to that taken then dogs for a walk in the woods with my mum and sister and could hear what they were saying.

I no longer have the Lumity aids as I’ve now taken them back to Boots.

[AlexE]

During my morning dog walk up the hill, the Bluetooth connection to my Apple Watch was rock solid, no drop outs in the areas of the hill (the part of the track leading up to the lea of the hill).

When testing with pairing with our Apple TV (watching the rather dubious film Lift) the connection was good but I did have two minor drop outs during the hour and a half of the film).

So far, very positive.