I’m very happy with the unit
Okay I’m doing this focus video to relate my experiences with the Oticon, I have the firmware 1.02 and my hearing aid model is the More 2 miniRITE and I’ve had it for about 3 months now. It’s my first hearing aid, although I did have the previous Oticon model before this newer one came out, it was about a year ago that I did a test run or trial period with it, and then got delayed for a year attempting to get reimbursement from the Veteran’s Administration, but that turned out to be denied after a year, telling me that I should’ve applied 40 years ago for this. The selection criteria that I did in doing this was based on the prior hearing aid that I had, seemed to be very successful, however, with the delay of the Vetaran’s Administration, by the time I was in the market again for buying another unit, this was the newer unit that came out, so, the advantage for doing all this was that the price point dropped considerably and so by purchasing this unit I saved several thousand dollars over what might’ve been my cost for the prior unit. I’m essentially, uh, first experience with the hearing aid, because family was complaining that I had the TV on too loud and they’d come down from the attic to say, you know, turn it down, and by the time I turned it down I couldn’t hear it, but they were comfortable with it. So, for a while I went with headphones attached to the TV so I could adjust the volume to headphones and not disturb other members of the family. I found the hearing aids themselves are very good, I haven’t had any problem with the hearing aid itself. The hearing aids are, this particular one for the right ear, and again they’re red for right and blue I guess for left. It has a charging unit, that you can charge it takes approximately maybe 3 hours to reach a full charge after you’ve worn it for 24 or 30 or so hours. When you first put the unit in the charging base it shows a yellow indication meaning it’s in the process of charging and then when it completes the charge it turns green. In wearing the actual hearing aids, they are comfortable and I’ve found that I sometimes forget that I’m wearing them, so that has one disadvantage in that, without sticking to a routine, let’s say knowing that I’m going to put them on in the morning, and take them off at night, I had an instance or two where I stepped into the shower and then realized I still had the hearing aids on. That turned out to be not a problem because they will survive, you don’t have to stay indoors if it rains outside, and it will survive a shower although they certainly don’t recommend swimming with them on. I have some issues with not so much the unit, but with the application, the app that goes on my Apple smartphone, which gives you the capability of adjusting the unit itself, if you want to do selecting not to have noise behind you amplified into your ear, only sort of facing forward and so forth, and they also have like a booster mode on the app, which in the case of the booster mood, I never noticed any difference. If I enable the booster mode it didn’t seem to matter. And I question whether that might be something that is only invoked or applied on certain models but not the model I have, but then I was told, no, it’s for my model, but again I’ve seen no effect on it. I went with the unit which had the rechargeable batteries and based on the prior test run that I gave, I wanted one with rechargeable batteries and selected this unit on the basis of the longevity of the unit itself, and then being able to replace the rechargeable batteries when they suddenly lose their charge. I believe the other unit had like a 7 year estimate on when the batteries might have to be replaced and this unit I believe is in the 3-4 year range, but the price, at least the current price for replacing the battery as relayed to me, is not that high. My age is 77, and I”m expecting that this unit lasts, let’s say the 20 years, I’m not gonna have to buy or replace it with another unit. One problem I had recently with the app on my phone, was that it suddenly showed that the left hearing aid was disconnected and would not accept any kind of amplification or any commands that were issued to that. I tried many times to try and get the app to recognize that left hearing aid, turning the unit on and off and making adjustments and nothing seemed to work. It turned out that we eventually had to reboot the smartphone, and then it found that left unit, and continued to operate successfully. So, if that’s every once every 3 months, I don’t know what the cause of that was, whether somebody somehow went through a download of an update of a new firmware or software, or whatever they were doing that might’ve caused that or whether it was the hearing aid update, or maybe the phone update, you know that’s something which I cannot give any further information on. One thing that’s happened, when I went on the app to do the “find” function that’s supposed to tell you where the hearing aids are. In doing that, it found the right hearing aid which was in my right ear and it gave me the location where it was at and even said “near” meaning, I guess it was near, which, it was right in my ear so I guess that’s as near as you’re going to get, but I found that the left ear which was disconnected, that showed the location of that, back at the location where the original sale took place, so where the unit was, where I picked up the unit, paid for the unit, and so forth, it seemed to default to that location, which obviously was wrong because it really was in my left ear. I have not really used the app to adjust many parameters, I did just, the first week or so I had it just to see that it does do that as far as increasing volume and frequency response and so forth, but I have not really bothered to make any changes to the settings through the app because it’s really sort of limited in the sense that when you put the hearing aids into the charger at night, it defaults back to the defaults, so anything you put in the app, is not going to be there the next morning, so unless it’s really annoying, there’s no real reason to use the adjustments on the application. If you were to try and do that because you had to, then I believe the ultimate answer would be to go back to the original sales point and have them put in the permanent firmware for the settings and then you’ll be okay. I’ve noticed that the, this unit, which I think was a little bit different than the other unit maybe, the insert that actually goes into the ear canal was a lot smaller than the previous model was, and that’s maybe an advantage or a disadvantage. This model, with the smaller unit is designed such that there, is, if you will, an air corridor, around the ear piece, and that’s used for the amplification and so forth, operation of the unit, whereas the other one, you would just push it in and it was more like an ear plug, and then that’s how that worked. With this particular unit, if you’re wearing hats or masks or moving around your ear, it’s going to push further in, which is not the way it’s designed to work, so then you have to sort of pull it a little out to leave it like floating or you know, loose in your ear for the best fit. The unit as far as the volume seemed to be fine, in the testing before I got and qualified if you will to have a hearing aid, there was a, I had some confusion on word recognition, where I would hear a word differently from what other people heard, so whether that’s hearing, or whether that’s just your mind, or my mind, making the assumptions to fill in, where this is what I think I heard, as opposed to what I actually heard. That hasn’t been a problem since, so I clearly understand what people say, and what they actually mean when they say something, however I have had one or two instances where, for whatever reason, whether that’s the particularly word or frequency range and so forth, where I misconstrued the word that was actually said with what I thought I heard, and ran a few tests where other people would sit there, and say okay this is what the word is, and even concentrating on that particularly word I just didn’t hear it. It works fine, the hearing aid with the bluetooth reception for phone calls, the only problem I would look forward to having corrected is you are not able to answer the phone, you have to actually go to the phone in order to answer the phone and have it go through, so it’s not like you can hit your forehead and suddenly that will enable the phone call to be through to your ear piece. So that has not been an issue. The battery itself has worked fine, well over a 24 hour period. I had to do an extended shift when the second shift or third shift did not show up and it lasted 30 hours, that was when I originally had it and I assume the batteries are still able to maintain that effectiveness of how they are. And again it’s only 3 or 4 hours maybe to fully charge the unit. They have, also on the app, a tracking option and it wasn’t quite clear to me exactly what that means, you know it keeps track of where the hearing aids are, and obviously then usually where I am. I don’t that’s unique, or maybe it is unique, I enabled it so that if I should misplace or whatever which I don’t think given the scale of what I’m doing, I don’t think that’s gonna happen, because it defaulted back to the sales point, rather than where the hearing aid actually was, so I enabled it but I’m not sure what else that tracking function enables, whether that’s a data point or a data collection that other people use for tracking to see where I am, or whether it’s a confidential tracking and nothing else is shared with any other company or whatever, for habits, or where I go, or what I do, or what I should’ve been doing. There was no problem with wearing glasses over the hearing aids, but in wearing masks over it, there is a tendency for the loop of the mask to get twisted into the hearing aid, so you have to be sort of be careful when you take the mask off that you don’t inadvertently throw or drop the hearing aid because that comes off maybe when the mask comes off. So, an overall evaluation, I’m saying that I’m very happy with the unit, it did meet my requirements, and I hope that information is useful to you as well.