Hearing aids, you don’t hear about them until you don’t. A prevalent question when looking for hearing aids is, ‘what are the best hearing aids?’ There are several factors that can influence the effectiveness of hearing aids: the severity of hearing loss, the environment of the patient’s lifestyle, and most of all, the cost. Below are a number of options at different price points to consider when buying a hearing aid.
The biggest brands known are Oticon, Phonak, GN Resound, Widex, Siemens Signia, Unitron, and Starkey. Many innovations were shown recently at Consumer Electronic Show 2019 at Las Vegas, namely the Oticon KAIZN, with their personal Artificial Intelligent assistant which learns from the environment and makes its recommended adjustments for an optimised listening experience, ReSoundLiNX Quattro, with their richer sound delivery at a premium, NuhearaIQbuds Max, with microphones that record and analyze noise to form an active noise cancellation system improving music listening quality, WIDEX Evoke with their battery-free solution, and Livio AI, coming with a fall detector, heart rate monitor and even Amazon Alexa, Apple Health and Google Fit integration.
The cost of hearing aids highly depends on the level of technology being used. They can be categorised into multiple tiers of technology levels under the banner of Premium, Advanced, Mid Range, Essential and Basic.
In the Premium range, a single device could cost around $2,990 – $3,450 each. The typical models seen in this range are OticonOpn 1, Siemens Signia Pure 7Nx, PhonakAudeo Marvel M90, and UnitronMoxi Pro. In this range, these are the top of the line devices that money can buy and come with state of the art features.
Moving on to the Advanced range, the price range would be about $2,650-$3,250 per piece. Models seen in this range are the OticonOpn 2, Siemens Signia Pure 5 Nx, PhonakAudeo Marvel M90 and UnitronMoxi ALL 800. This range tends to have a lower bandwidth and digital processing channels compared to their premium cousins.
In the Mid-range, the devices range between $2450-$2650. Relevant models are the OticonOpn 3, Siemens Signia Pure 3 Nx, PhonakAudeo Marvel M90 and UnitronMoxi Tempus 700 makes. At this range we start to see a drop in speech clarity and noise reduction from the former premium and advanced range tiers.
The Essential range consists of OticonSiya, Siemens Signia Pure 2 Nx, PhonakAudeo Marvel M30 and UnitronMoxi 600 to name a few and they come within the price range of $1450-$1950 each. This range is a high-quality budget range which offers neat features on top of great listening experience.
And finally the basic range fulfills the budget between $850-$1,350. Examples of models found here are OticonNera Pro, WidexBeyond Z 110, UnitronMoxi 500. This line tends to be the most budget-friendly and is a decent solution for most general situations.
If your based in Western Australia and looking for a custom recommendation of the best hearing aids in Perth, feel free to contact Art of Hearing.
