As someone who wore hearing aides through high school, this makes me want to go get fitted for some new ones and get them set up like these bad boys. I always hated how uncomfortable my hearing aides seemed to be and have relied on lip reading for the last 8 years since graduation but I know eventually I'd get used to them again. I really should just bite the bullet and get hearing aides again. My wife might love me again.
By all means do so!
The technology has changed greatly in the past several years.
If your old aids relied on an acoustic tubes fitted to a molded plug that fits into the outermost part of your ear, you know how rigid that tube gets over time and how uncomfortable! The new gen of behind the ear aids have a tiny electrical cable with the speaker at the end and it sits inside your ear canal in either a molded plug or a pliable plastic basket.
The newer aids benefit from improved electronics (lower power consumption, filtering, interface to smartphones, faster processing), the separation of the mic and speaker thus reducing feedback at the source), fewer external controls to fidget with or have go bad, moisture resistant nanotechnology coatings, etc.
It's possible to set different filter and volume profiles for the ambient conditions of things like a car, or wind, or restaurant, etc.
Calls can be automatically routed direct via Bluetooth into your aids. (Only thing that's missing is having a mic in the aids to allow a headset function. Hopefully Apple will licens the W chip to MFi aid makers, or make its own aid; they are essentially there now.)
Do take note of the limitations of the Bluetooth connection tech that MFi hearing is built upon. My mom's 5000$ ReSound (she is deaf in 1 ear and 30% in the good ear, so totally dependent) often drops when she gets out of range and if she is on speakerphone and it drops, it reconnects to the aid.
It would be good if her Apple Watch could act as a repeater, and when either it or the aid was in danger of dropping the Bluetooth signal, the watch would preemptively switch to wifi for communication with the phone and relay the call via Bluetooth to the aid (or some such).
My guess is these issues will disappear when all items in this constellation move to the next gen of Bluetooth LE (5 is it?).
Good luck.
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Always respected apple stance on accessibility. Less emoji and more of this!!!
They are not mutually exclusive.
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I definitely understand your hesitancy with the first-gen models and you probably made the right choice. I got mine not quite a year ago, the 2nd gen from Resound, and I am frankly blown away by how well they work in general, and with my iPhone. I've commented many times, even if my hearing were fine I'd want to have these just for the features. Well, if they weren't $5,500 anyway
My mom is 84 y/o and she upgraded from a 5 year old Phonak, and waited a year past when she wanted to get a new aid on my recommendation that her next aid have MFi to interface with her iPhone and Apple Watch.
There have been glitches but in general her ReSound Linx2 is louder, clearer, more flexible settings wise and for things like Live Listen.
Recently one day something glitched between her iPhone and the aid she realized how dependent she had become on this combination (the glitch was easily solved with a hard reboot.)
She is generally happy with her choice (very happy with the higher volume capability). With regard to concerns about the robustness of the overall setup, she has had few problems (biggest issue is tuning the presets with her audiologist, this has been very fiddily and while she is patient, I'm quite annoyed) and has even been an iOS beta tester since late last summer (so she could give feedback and suggestions for enhancements through the Public Beta Feedback Tool.)
