Oticon More

Hello my name is Heather and I am new to the hearing aid world, I just received my first pair at the end of July 2021. I chose, well, I have hearing loss that’s hereditary in my family, for about the past 5 years I’ve been following my hearing, 1 side is fine, and 1 side I need a hearing aid. So I’m still in the trial period but I am trying out both hearing aids to see if that helps. I bought the Oticon More brand of hearing aids, one of the things I was looking at were Bluetooth capabilities, as well as, the fact that I’m a teacher in a preschool setting, so there’s a lot of background noise and lots of little children, and so my audiologist was able to advise me on different brands, and different specialties that they have, and it looked like the Oticon was gonna be the best fit for me, in the classroom setting. One of the things I really like, I’ll take one out and show you, is they’re super easy to put in and take out. They’re small, they fit right behind the ear, they’re very discreet, in fact many people, once I’ve shared with them that I have hearing aids, they’re like “what!?” and often times when I wear my hair up, they don’t even notice them, so I like that part about it. One of the dislikes, and pretty much the only dislike I have right now is that when I’m using the Bluetooth on my phone, the volume adjusting doesn’t go super loud, so if I’m in a setting where there’s a lot of background noise, or if I’m in a store, or somewhere like that, sometimes it’s very hard to hear the person on the other end of the call, through the Bluetooth. So I’m working through that, I’m making the best of it. So would I recommend these to a friend? I most certainly would. They have made a world of difference in my ability to hear, especially some of the details of conversations if I’m in a group setting, I feel like I’m not missing out on anywhere near as much as I was without the hearing aids. My number 1 advice I would give to you if you are considering hearing aids is to give it time during your trial period, wear them everyday, that first week is gonna be a little bit rough, or uncomfortable as you’re adjusting to them, and I remember thinking, oh my goodness, I feel them, I hear everything, my hair rustling would make noise, but, you do get used to it, and now I’m to the point where I automatically put them in, and I kind of forget that they’re there, except for that they do amplify and make me be able to hear conversations and participate in a lot more activities because I’m able to hear everything a lot better. So good luck to you as you research them and I wish the best for you.

Hi, I'm Virginia from Chattanooga, TN. I had hearing loss about 10 years ago and I tried several hearing aids which I wasn't happy with. And then I tried Oticon. I really like Oticon. I'm now wearing another pair that I bought recently, and this is what they look like. The best thing I like about the Oticon is at night you plug them in by your bedside, the next morning you take them out and they're ready to go. So if you're having hearing loss, please give Oticon hearing aids a try. I think they're the best.

Hello my name is David P., I am the owner of a pair of Oticon hearing aids, which I have been wearing for about 3 weeks now, and I can say that I am very very pleased with them. The history of how I wound up with hearing aids is as follows: about 4 months ago I had tried to remove some wax from my ears with q-tips and I got the wax jammed into my ear. I went to an ENT who removed the wax and said he would like to perform a hearing test, which they did. And I was very weak in the high ranges, and when I thought about it, I was missing words on the TV, a lot of words, so maybe there was some truth to it, but I gotta tell you, it was a big big shock that I needed hearing aids. Never in a million years did I ever think I’d be wearing hearing aids. I did nothing for a couple of weeks and then I decided, alright I’m gonna give it a try, I went back to the ENT office and they recommended that I take the Phonak hearing aids. I did that, and from the get go I had problems. First, I sweat a lot, and they were getting moisture in it, and nobody told me to use some kind of device to remove the moisture. So it went back to the Phonak people, they repaired it, got it back, and then the same thing happened again. Well, I was not pleased with the Phonak and I started looking around for other places to go, and I found ZipHearing, and lo and behold, hey, there was a big difference in price between the doctor and Zip, and so I looked into it, and they recommended the Oticon. Now one of the things I like about the Oticon, is that it has a dome that goes into the ear that’s round that seems to fit in, and the one for the Phonak was like a big ring around this thing and it was not sitting all the way into the ear, so I found this very very beneficial. The hearing aid is quite small, people don’t notice that I’m wearing a hearing aid unless I tell them. Quite honestly I’ve been telling people, hey, I’m wearing a hearing aid, it’s very simple to put in, and I’ve been very pleased with it. The service that I’ve gotten from the provider for the hearing aid has been very good, they have been very patient and have gone through all my concerns, and I feel very pleased with it. In looking for hearing aids, when I realized what I was looking for, I tried to search and gain as much knowledge as I possibly could going on the internet, looking at different providers and different manufacturer and so forth and so on, and I examined just about every hearing aid possible, with all the ramifications and so forth, and ZipHearing, they seemed to care, and I was very pleased with the service that I’ve gotten. Thank you very much, bye bye.

Hi, my name is Denise H, and I just want to tell you something that recently happened in my life that has changed it for the better. I’ve been dealing with hearing loss for years and it gradually got to the point where I was missing out on a lot of social things that were going on around me because I couldn’t hear what anybody was saying or what they were talking about and I got so tired of saying “huh, huh, what did you say?” Well, I wanted to get a hearing aid, I figured it was that time, I needed to do something, and I started looking into it and it was so expensive I just couldn’t deal with it, so finally my husband said, “well let’s look online”, and we contacted ZipHearing. And we have got a hearing aid now, it’s called Oticon and it is amazing, and what I really like about it is not only that its changed my life for the good and I can hear everything that’s going on around me, is you don’t have to have batteries, it’s completely rechargeable, I just clean it, it’s very simple with a little light toothbrushing every night and stick it on the charger and it’s good to go in the morning. And it’s good all day, no problem with that. And also, it adjusts itself. I don’t have to worry about the background noise and all that stuff going on because if I’m in a crowd it will kinda adjust out some of the background noise so I can hear the person right there with me, and it’s amazing, I haven’t had a problem at all, there’s absolutely nothing I do not like about these hearing aids, they are amazing. The number one thing I would say is if you can’t hear and it’s causing problems for you, look into Oticon, it’s amazing, it’ll change your life, and it’ll give you a new perspective.

Hi my name is Dave L., I’m 71 years old, a retired college professor, and I have 7 grand children. The reason I mention those last two is that they’re very relevant to my hearing problems. In classrooms and lecture halls I was having difficulty listening to women’s voices, group conversations in seminars was getting to be impossible, and I was told that I had high frequency hearing loss, which I gather is pretty typical, kind of aggravated by the fact that making furniture is my hobby and I didn’t really wear hearing protection going to too many music concerts and standing too close to the PA system. I tried just about everything I could think of. You know, living on a limited budget I tried to get the hearing aids as cheaply as I could. First went to Costco, tried about 4 or 5 of their hearing aids, nothing really seemed to work very well for me. I tried Miracle Ear and had no joy there, and I even tried and online company called Nuheara which makes a hearing assistance device, I don’t think they call them hearing aids, but it sounds good, you know, and it was good in music situations but didn’t really solve the problems. I’d just about given up on correcting the thing and was getting pretty down about it all when a friend suggested that I try ZipHearing, and the results have been pretty good. You know, they’re easy to deal with, they make great referrals, which I think is really crucial, and they saved me a couple thousand dollars on the hearing aids, so I’m happy with that. At the same time I did some research and discovered that a company called Oticon is taking a completely different approach to making hearing aids. Their hearing aids, rather than focusing narrowly on the source of the sound, mimic what the brain would normally do in eliminating sounds that are irrelevant, don’t ask me to really explain it, I don’t fully understand it, but I can tell you that it works, definitely. Their hearing aids are very comfortable, they’re small and discreet, I’m wearing them now. Let me take one off and show you, there it is, you know the tip of it is somewhat unusual, let me see if I can get it to the right angle. It’s extremely comfortable and it kind of seals the ear off to make sure that wind noise doesn’t really affect it, or feedback doesn’t seem to be a problem which it was with the other hearing aids I tried. One situation that was really driving me nuts was if I was in the car and had the window down it just was like being in a wind tunnel, so I pretty much gave up on that. I ended up having them fitted by a company recommended by Zip, this probably is only relevant to people in Southern CA though, but the provider was absolutely fantastic, so even if you have to take a bit of a drive to get there, it’s worthwhile. I think having the hearing aids fitted and adjusted properly is more than half of the battle.

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.