![]() ![]() ![]() Those scores don’t appear in our ratings but are discussed below.įor any hearing aid brand or retailer to receive a score in our ratings, it had to have been rated by at least 100 respondents in our survey. Respondents scored their overall satisfaction with hearing aid stores, along with aspects including the quality of their evaluation and discussion with the provider, hearing aid options and selection, staff courtesy, and price transparency.įinally, 24,483 CR members with prescription hearing aids gave us feedback on their satisfaction with different types of hearing aid retailers (for example, big-box stores, stand-alone clinics, etc.). These responses inform our ratings of hearing aid retailers. money spent on it, was the strongest predictor of overall satisfaction with a hearing aid brand, followed by clearness of sound, reliability, and richness of sound quality.Īlso, 9,407 members provided us with information about the retailers where they purchased their hearing aids. A hearing aid brand’s score for value, which we defined as performance of the hearing aid vs. ![]() Members rated brands on overall satisfaction, as well as on features such as battery life, durability, reliability, ease of cleaning, value, and sound quality and clarity. These responses comprise our scoring of hearing aid brands. Our scoring of hearing aid brands and retailers is based on a survey we conducted in December 2021 and January 2022.įor these ratings, we used survey results from 26,788 Consumer Reports members who provided us with information about their prescription hearing aids. Our buying guide can help you figure out where to get a hearing aid and what to look for. “It’s going to bring people back to hearing, but because of the way we process sound, it’s not going to bring them back to normal hearing,” says Patricia Chute, EdD, an audiologist and a former provost and vice president for academic affairs at Dalton State College in Dalton, Ga.Ĭomparing hearing aids can be very challenging, especially because there can be several versions of a given model even within the same brand. Most hearing aids will never completely remove background noise and allow you to hear only the person-or people-talking. But a hearing aid that one person likes might not work for someone else, even if both have almost identical audiograms (charts that show the degree of hearing loss for low-, middle-, and high-pitched sounds). The right hearing aid for you depends on several factors, including the type and severity of your hearing loss, your lifestyle, and your manual dexterity. More and more models can sync wirelessly with your smartphone, enabling you to take calls, stream audio, and even adjust your aid’s settings using an app. That can make them more user-friendly.)Ī hearing professional can program a digital aid to filter out wind and other background noise, as well as fine-tune the aid to match your specific hearing loss pattern. (Though analog aids are less common and less complex than digital aids, they do have advantages, including fewer advanced features. In modern digital aids, microphones transmit sound to a computer chip, which adjusts the volume and amplifies the sound frequencies needed to help improve your hearing. Hearing aids have a microphone to pick up sound, an amplifier to make sound louder, and a receiver that sends the sound into the ear canal. But hearing aids may significantly improve your ability to hear by making sounds louder and easier to understand. Once hair cells in the inner ear are dead, there’s no bringing them back. ![]()
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