So I went to the Audiologist to pick up my new Widex Moment 440 CIC Micro hearing aids this week.
According to the Widex website, “We’ve expanded the Widex Moment family to include three new formats, including the practically invisible ‘completely in canal’ CIC-M.” and “It is one of the smallest hearing aids on the market and up to 30 percent smaller than our traditional CIC (Completely-in-canal) hearing aids.”
Well, the audiologist takes the hearing aid out of the box and I almost had a heart attack. It was the same size if not bigger than my regular CIC from Oticon from 15 years ago. It was much bigger than my IIC from Oticon. In length, the hearing aid came right up to the edge of my ear lobe. How is that 30% less than a traditional CIC?
My audiologist said he is going to send it back to Widex and ask them if they can make it smaller (That sounds very strange to me; if they could make it smaller why wouldn’t they have done that in the first place?). Otherwise, he said we can return them and go with an IIC from another company.
There are 3 possibilities that make sense here to me.
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Widex greatly exaggerated that their CIC Micro is 30% smaller than a traditional CIC.
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Widex mistakenly made a regular CIC instead of a CIC Micro
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The audiologist mistakenly ordered a regular CIC instead of a CIC Micro.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
if you are most concerned about invisibility, go to an audiologist who sells Phonak hearing aids. And looking for Phonal Lyric. … To be honest, you should first worry about how effective the hearing aid is, how well you understand speech, whether the hearing aid can be good for listening to music, for example small hearing aids do not have bluetooth because there is no room for additional electronics. People love bluetooth because they can listen to cleaner music, which is better quality. It is also more comfortable and better to understand speech when making a phone call.
The Lyric is not for everyone. Its very expensive, and has to be inserted deep in the canal. Many people find it uncomfortable . I think it only fits up to a moderate loss and runs linear if I remember correctly. Other issues also that have been documented in this forum. Not the least of which they tend to crap out before the end of their expected lifespan----rather inconvenient if your in the middle of an important business meeting.
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I am sorry, but I would never pay another penny to Phonak again. I bought a pair of Phonak Ambra Nano hearing aids back in 2011 for $5,800 and they broke down 8 times within the first year. I literally got so disgusted with them that I threw them in the garbage and went back to Oticon. So yes, I am not going to ever buy anything from Phonak again.
I wonder if the audiologist could have ordered HAs with a certain power setting to suit your loss and, in order to achieve that that setting, the aid turned out to be bigger than the invisibles could cope with? My understanding is the more power the larger the aid. So many people (including myself) need BTEs to achieve that. Just a thought. My Widex Ultimate ITEs are not completely invisible and still don’t have the power of my BTEs. And, if they did, there might be never ending feedback.
I have had Widex m-cic, they are as advertised. Tiny and nearly invisible. I would suspect the audiologist ordered the wrong thing.
Thanks for your response, that is the information I was looking for. Hopefully, Widex will send out the right one this time, but I will report back when I go back to the audiologist in a week or two.
I recently wrote a post about my Widex CIC Micro, which Widex advertises as up to 30% less than a regular CIC. I wrote in my original post that I was disappointed when I saw them as they seemed very big to me. My audiologist sent them back to Widex to see if they could make them any smaller. I went back to the audiologist this week and wanted to show what the Widex CIC micro looked like. For comparison, I also have next to it a picture of my old CIC’s from 18 years ago and my IIC’s from 8 years ago.
Obviously, you can see from the pictures that the Widex CIC Micro is a the same size or even a little bigger than my regular CIC from almost 20 years ago. It is extremely disappointing that Widex would lie straight out and try to market the CIC Micro as a smaller model when it isn’t. It is almost like they are following the car salesman model: lie to the customer to make sure they leave the showroom buying something. Even my audiologist said he doesn’t know why Widex is calling this a CIC micro and saying it is up to 30% smaller when the size is exactly the same as a CIC.
I am posting this because there was really very little information or reviews about the Widex CIC micro and I hope this helps others in making their decision if you are thinking about a Widex CIC Micro.
My audiologist is returning the CIC Micro to Widex and we are going to try a Starkey Evolv IIC. But it is frustrating that Widex wasted so much of my time and if they had been honest up front I never would have tried their model in the first place.
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Late to the reply here, but that Widex pic is not anywhere near what my Widex mCIC looked like. It was buried as deep as the far left image of the Oticon Alto
