I have mild to moderate hearing loss, pretty typical roll off from noise exposure over the years. I was having difficulty understanding my daughter’s voice, making us both progressively uncomfortable. Male voices, as expected, are much better, so her fiancé was understandably better, adding to the discomfort of not understanding my daughter that much more frustrating for us.
I gave in and got some Starkey Livio RICs to help. I had recurrent fitting issues with multiple size tips which still had me fiddling with them a few times an hour. I’m also prone to excessive ear wax, and even with regular trips to ENT for proper cleanings every four months, would clog the wax filters 2-3 times a week. Throw in glasses, and then masks, and I rarely wore them. I was over on the hearing aid forum and learned about the APPs and conversation boost.
I still enjoy music and my Sennheiser Monentums over the ear still serve me well. Despite my audiogram, I can still distinguish compression differences and lossless music (go figure, and yes, those were on blinded tests). The Starkey’s, while MFi, are awful for music and poor for video, limiting my watching movies. All in all, several thousand dollars and an unhappy camper.
After a week with the APP’s and transparency and conversation boost, my results are about 80% the performance of the Livio’s for general speech, excellent for music enjoyment (still prefer my headphones but these are quite good), decent ANC (again, not as good as the Sennheiser’s, but more pleasant when out and about), more comfortable than the RIC’s with less fiddling around, better for phone calls (sure, I could hear through the Starkey’s, but had to talk into the phone), and perfectly fine with masks and glasses (have yet to get a mask tangled with the RIC wire getting caught and flying across the room taking the mask off).
Are they as good as a dedicated HA? No. Are they sufficient for my level of hearing loss? Pretty much yes. As to appearance, everyone else has buds of some type in their ear these days, and I’m not self conscious about it at all (granted, in comparison they do make the Starkey’s seem very discreet).
Apple found a nice way around the FDA OTC HA approval process with no claims made. Unlike the more expensive Bose OTCs, they’re cheaper and multifunctional with solid music, spatial audio for fake surround sound, and well integrated between my phone, iPad, and Apple Watch.
Are they for everyone? Of course not. As my hearing loss worsens over time, I can always go back to the Starkey’s (carefully stored given the expense and probable need in several more years, or not). Are they a very affordable interim solution for my degree of hearing loss? Absolutely. And if Apple does move to true OTC aids, I expect the quality to be excellent for the cost. I got these for $180 on a sale on Amazon, figuring I had 30 days to return them. However, these are keepers for me. I do wish the battery life was better, but as I’m semi retired, 5 or so hours before going back in the case is not terrible for me.
So in short,a decent first impression and a lot of potential at a very affordable price. And just decent semi-IEMs that are good for music and TV entertainment.
