[ad_1]

Inexpensive pocket hearing aids

1. ReSound Clip CP2BW‑V

The device is able to com­pen­sate for hear­ing loss from 2 to 3 degrees. The pos­si­bil­i­ties of using mod­ern dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies in these devices have become pos­si­ble due to the WARP sig­nal pro­cess­ing sys­tem, which allows you to achieve the most real­is­tic, loud and clear sound.

The device also uses WDRC com­pres­sion tech­nol­o­gy and an active noise reduc­tion sys­tem. The device allows you to hear clear­ly and com­fort­ably use the hear­ing aid in any sit­u­a­tion. In addi­tion, you do not need addi­tion­al cables and a com­put­er to set up the device.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

2. Rhythm Aria 2‑T

This is a domes­tic pock­et dig­i­tal device that is able to com­pen­sate for hear­ing prob­lems of 2–3 degrees. A pow­er­ful proces­sor is locat­ed inside the device, which is con­fig­ured by a spe­cial­ist indi­vid­u­al­ly for the needs of the patient. The main dif­fer­ence from ana­logues is the abil­i­ty to work from two dif­fer­ent pow­er sources. At home or where it is pos­si­ble to con­nect to a pow­er out­let, it is bet­ter to use a bat­tery that is charged from the mains. In places where there is no elec­tric­i­ty, bat­ter­ies are great. The device has blue­tooth sup­port, which allows you to use it as a phone head­set.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

3.Siemens Pockettio HP

This is one of the most pow­er­ful hear­ing aids in this cat­e­go­ry. The dig­i­tal device is able to com­pen­sate for severe and extreme­ly severe degrees of hear­ing loss (3–4 degree). It has a uni­ver­sal lis­ten­ing pro­gram, has adjust­ments and remov­able clamps, as well as the abil­i­ty to con­nect to a phone. Due to indi­vid­ual set­tings, you can choose the most com­fort­able vol­ume lev­el with high-qual­i­ty sup­pres­sion of ambi­ent noise.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

Inexpensive BTE hearing aids

This is the most pop­u­lar cat­e­go­ry of dig­i­tal hear­ing aids for patients of all ages.

1. ReSound Match MA3T90-VI

This is a pow­er­ful behind-the-ear mod­el that can cor­rect hear­ing loss up to 3–4 degrees. Equipped with a pow­er­ful lin­ear ampli­fi­er using ener­gy-sav­ing chip tech­nol­o­gy. The device is equipped with three trim­mers for adjust­ing the high and low fre­quen­cies and the sound pres­sure lev­el at the out­put. The case pro­vides a sys­tem that elim­i­nates extra­ne­ous noise inter­fer­ence (pas­sive noise reduc­tion).

It is pos­si­ble to adjust the vol­ume depend­ing on the sound envi­ron­ment, there are dif­fer­ent lev­els of set­tings — from min­i­mum to max­i­mum lev­els, the choice of pro­grams is con­firmed by a sound sig­nal, as well as that the bat­tery is run­ning low.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

2. Phonak Baseo Q5-SP

A basic hear­ing aid built on the Phonak Quest plat­form that is capa­ble of com­pen­sat­ing for hear­ing loss up to the most extreme degree 4. The device has a pro­gram­ma­ble, very pre­cise set­ting on the com­put­er, equipped with an omni­di­rec­tion­al micro­phone. In addi­tion, the instru­ment is equipped with a Whistle­Block sys­tem for adap­tive feed­back sup­pres­sion. Also, the hear­ing aid is equipped with a Noise­Block sys­tem (basic lev­el) — this is the abil­i­ty to high-res­o­lu­tion noise reduc­tion. The device is equipped with pro­tec­tion against mois­ture and dust, has a nano-coat­ing and only 2 body col­ors.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

3. Siemens Intuis 3SP

This is a hear­ing aid that is able to com­pen­sate for hear­ing loss up to 3–4 degrees. The device has a sys­tem of auto­mat­ic adjust­ment of the direc­tiv­i­ty of micro­phones with the abil­i­ty to switch to a fixed direc­tion, which depends on the lev­el of ambi­ent noise. It is pos­si­ble to man­u­al­ly con­trol the device from a smart­phone by installing a spe­cial Sig­nia appli­ca­tion. This makes it pos­si­ble to adjust the vol­ume and switch pro­grams, adjust the high and low fre­quen­cies to the indi­vid­ual needs of the patient. The device is equipped with the Tele­coil func­tion, which makes it pos­si­ble to bet­ter dis­tin­guish the inter­locu­tor’s speech dur­ing phone calls.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

Inexpensive in-the-ear hearing aids

We have select­ed three of the most pop­u­lar and inex­pen­sive hear­ing aids in the in-the-ear cat­e­go­ry, how­ev­er, due to the more sophis­ti­cat­ed tech­nol­o­gy, they are much more expen­sive than the pre­vi­ous two groups.

1. WIDEX UNIQUE 100 XP

This is an inex­pen­sive, com­pact ITE device, the body of which is made from a mold of the patien­t’s ear, and then insert­ed tight­ly into the ear canal and auri­cle. This prod­uct does not have a behind-the-ear hous­ing, and to dis­tin­guish between the left and right devices (when worn bin­au­ral­ly), they are col­ored marks. Rec­om­mend­ed for 2–3 degrees of hear­ing loss. The device cap­tures all the nec­es­sary sounds, while sup­press­ing ambi­ent noise. Com­fort­able to wear out­doors. When there is noise, it changes the direc­tion of the micro­phone towards the inter­locu­tor, allow­ing you to bet­ter rec­og­nize speech.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

2 Phonak Virto B30-312

This intra-ear device with baro­met­ric cal­i­bra­tion tech­nol­o­gy (sound pres­sure reg­u­la­tion) belongs to the econ­o­my class, helps in hear­ing cor­rec­tion of 2–3 degrees. It is equipped with a set of nec­es­sary Phonak Vir­to wire­less fea­tures, which helps to improve com­mu­ni­ca­tion, adapts to the patient. The body of the device is cre­at­ed indi­vid­u­al­ly, on the basis of a pre­vi­ous­ly tak­en impres­sion for each ear sep­a­rate­ly.

The device has sev­er­al mod­ern dig­i­tal sys­tems. So, AutoSense OS (Essen­tial) is designed to rec­og­nize pos­si­ble acoustic sit­u­a­tions (qui­et, loud) and sup­press tin­ni­tus (tin­ni­tus). It allows you to hear the inter­locu­tor in any sit­u­a­tion. Auto Acclima­ti­za­tion is need­ed to grad­u­al­ly increase the vol­ume as you adapt to wear­ing the device. In addi­tion, there are active feed­back sup­pres­sion and noise reduc­tion sys­tems (the device muf­fles back­ground noise). Plus, the QuickSync sys­tem is designed to switch pro­grams and adjust the vol­ume.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

3. Oticon Agil Pro ITC/ITE WL AT

This in-the-ear device belongs to the bud­get cat­e­go­ry of this man­u­fac­tur­er, it helps to com­pen­sate for 1–2 degrees of hear­ing loss. Although this is a rel­a­tive­ly inex­pen­sive mod­el (com­pared to oth­er types), the device allows you to hear speech and music well, the sounds of nature with­out extra­ne­ous noise. The sound qual­i­ty is trans­mit­ted through the RISE 2 plat­form, which makes it pos­si­ble to hear the sur­round­ing sounds as accu­rate­ly as pos­si­ble. This allows the patient not to strain when using the device. Mod­ern Con­nect­Line tech­nolo­gies allow you to com­mu­ni­cate with var­i­ous devices (smart­phone, tablet).

Characteristics

Price — from 59900r.

Pros and cons

Affordable in-ear hearing aids

These are the small­est devices, but due to the com­plex­i­ty of man­u­fac­tur­ing and func­tion­al fea­tures, they are the most expen­sive even in the bud­get seg­ment.

1.ENYA EY2CIC

This basic hear­ing aid mod­el is used to cor­rect hear­ing from mild to severe lev­els (1–3 degrees of hear­ing loss). The receiv­er is select­ed indi­vid­u­al­ly for each patient. In the basic con­fig­u­ra­tion, sound pro­cess­ing goes through six chan­nels. There is a sys­tem of noise sup­pres­sion and elim­i­na­tion of back­ground noise with­out reduc­ing the clar­i­ty of speech, and a “tin­ni­tus gen­er­a­tor” func­tion is also built in. This helps elim­i­nate tin­ni­tus and ring­ing to cre­ate a com­fort­able user expe­ri­ence.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

2. Oticon Get CIC

This hear­ing aid allows you to com­pen­sate for hear­ing loss in the range of mild to mod­er­ate sever­i­ty (grade 1–2). It has a set of nec­es­sary basic func­tions, includ­ing an extra­ne­ous noise sup­pres­sion sys­tem with a tech­nique for eval­u­at­ing and high­light­ing speech in the incom­ing stream. This allows the patient to hear bet­ter even in noisy envi­ron­ments. Also, the device allows you to sup­press feed­back, which increas­es com­fort when using it.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

3. ReSound Vea VE210‑P

A hear­ing aid helps in sig­nif­i­cant­ly improv­ing hear­ing in grades 2–3 hear­ing loss. The device helps to hear speech well even in noisy rooms, there is also no buzzing and whistling when talk­ing on the phone, talk­ing out­doors in the wind. This is achieved by pro­cess­ing the sound with the WARP sys­tem to cre­ate the clos­est pos­si­ble repro­duc­tion of sounds to nat­ur­al. The Sta­bi­liz­er II DFS sys­tem helps in sup­press­ing feed­back with­out muf­fling use­ful sig­nals, while Noise­Track­er rec­og­nizes speech well and sup­press­es ambi­ent noise.

Characteristics

Pros and cons

What are the criteria for hearing aids to be classified as inexpensive?

Today, in the mar­ket of med­ical equip­ment, includ­ing in the field of audi­ol­o­gy (hear­ing cor­rec­tion), the cri­te­ri­on of “bud­get” prod­ucts is inter­pret­ed very broad­ly. This is due to sev­er­al rea­sons.

Product type

Hear­ing aids fall into sev­er­al dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories:

• Pock­et — This is a small device that the patient car­ries with him in his pock­et. Head­phones go from it to the ear, which trans­mit the sound cap­tured and processed by the hear­ing aid. These are not the most pop­u­lar mod­els, they are not con­ve­nient for every­one, so they are rel­a­tive­ly inex­pen­sive.
• Behind the ear are one of the most pop­u­lar hear­ing aids. The body of the device is hid­den behind the ear, from which a thin tube pass­es into the ear canal, through which sound is trans­mit­ted. Small size, ease of set­tings and a lot of addi­tion­al fea­tures make these devices one of the most pop­u­lar. There­fore, their cost is high­er than that of the pre­vi­ous group.
• Intra-ear — these are devices that are placed in the auri­cle area, they are hard­ly notice­able and con­ve­nient when lead­ing an active lifestyle, wear­ing glass­es or a pro­tec­tive mask. But these devices are tech­ni­cal­ly more com­plex than behind-the-ear devices, so the cost of these types of hear­ing aids is high­er.
• Intra­canal — the small­est and most expen­sive of all. In a tiny case, which is made only indi­vid­u­al­ly, accord­ing to a cast of the ear canal, there is a pow­er­ful proces­sor and a lot of addi­tion­al minia­ture devices that allow you to hear well.

Sound processing type

The sec­ond cri­te­ri­on is the type of sound pro­cess­ing. Pre­vi­ous­ly, there were only ana­log devices on the mar­ket that allowed you to hear bet­ter, but the sound qual­i­ty was far from ide­al. Today they have been replaced by mod­ern dig­i­tal devices. They are com­plex and there­fore more expen­sive.

Grad­u­al­ly, ana­log devices are being squeezed out of the mar­ket, giv­ing way to more mod­ern ones. It is already dif­fi­cult to buy them, many man­u­fac­tur­ers have refused to release them.

Manufacturer

The third cri­te­ri­on is the man­u­fac­tur­er. If we draw an anal­o­gy with cars, this area has its own “Mer­cedes” and “Audi” – brands that have estab­lished them­selves as flag­ships in hear­ing care. Their hear­ing aids are man­u­fac­tured using the most mod­ern tech­nolo­gies, using the most expen­sive mate­ri­als and they are not cheap.

On aver­age, inex­pen­sive mod­els from these man­u­fac­tur­ers have aver­age price tags of about 40–50 thou­sand for behind-the-ear mod­els, and about 60–70 thou­sand for in-the-ear, canal devices.

There are less well-known, domes­tic and for­eign man­u­fac­tur­ers, a kind of “Lada Grants” and “Kia Rio”, whose prod­ucts are sim­pler and cheap­er. Each man­u­fac­tur­er inter­prets the bud­get cri­te­ria in its own cost lev­el.

How to choose a hearing aid

We dis­cussed with an otorhi­no­laryn­gol­o­gist, audi­ol­o­gist at the Euro­pean Med­ical Cen­ter (EMC) Alexan­dra Ger­shevskaya and can­di­date of med­ical sci­ences, otorhi­no­laryn­gol­o­gist, doc­tor of the high­est cat­e­go­ry of the Euro­pean Med­ical Cen­ter (EMC) Evge­nia Tsy­ganko­vathe main nuances of choos­ing inex­pen­sive hear­ing aids and clar­i­fied what to con­sid­er when buy­ing a prod­uct.

The class of elec­tron­ics that is used in devices can be con­di­tion­al­ly divid­ed into “Eco­nom­ic”, “Stan­dard”, “Busi­ness”. There are pre­mi­um class devices with the max­i­mum num­ber of adjust­ments and pro­grams used. But the sim­plest appa­ra­tus may be enough to qual­i­ta­tive­ly change a per­son­’s life. Among its options, the main thing is pow­er, that is, the total ampli­fi­ca­tion intro­duced in this device should be ade­quate to the request for the audio­gram that the patient has.

There must be a fre­quen­cy range that is nec­es­sary to allow the per­cep­tion of speech and there must be a “form of com­pres­sion”. Com­pres­sion is the com­pres­sion of the dynam­ic range of a sound.

When a per­son has hear­ing loss, their hear­ing thresh­olds increase, but there are also dis­com­fort thresh­olds and they do not nec­es­sar­i­ly increase along with hear­ing thresh­olds. Hear­ing field or dynam­ic range — the dif­fer­ence between the thresh­old of per­cep­tion and the thresh­old of dis­com­fort, it turns out to be sig­nif­i­cant­ly nar­rowed, and in order for such a per­son to use a hear­ing aid, the device must be able to com­press the dynam­ic range. Not all sim­ple devices can do this, in par­tic­u­lar, sound ampli­fiers can­not pro­vide this.

How­ev­er, there are patients who do not need this, there are some types of con­duc­tive hear­ing loss. Hear­ing ampli­fiers as a hear­ing aid are suit­able for small lin­ear hear­ing loss­es, but inex­pen­sive hear­ing aids offer a wider range of options. Alas, guess­ing in advance which hear­ing aid is right will not work, you need to try dif­fer­ent options.

Popular questions and answers