- Just when we thought we knew
who was gonna be the first hearing aid company
to develop hearing aids that can stream directly
from an Android phone into both ears,
Phonak comes out of nowhere and beats everyone else to it.
That's why in this video I'm talking
about the Phonak Audeo Marvel hearing aid coming up.
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Hi, guys, Cliff Olson, Doctor of Audiology
and founder of Applied Hearing Solutions in Anthem, Arizona,
and on this channel I cover a bunch
of hearing-related information
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A few weeks back I released a new video talking
about the first hearing aids that will be able
to stream directly from an Android device,
but I wanna apologize, because I was completely wrong.
You see, Phonak has been laying in the weeds,
waiting for the right time to release their new hearing aid,
the Phonak Audeo M, which stands for Marvel,
hearing aids that they're gonna release on November 30th,
and these hearing aids do exactly that.
Here's the new lineup.
As you can see, they will have the 312
which'll use a disposable battery.
They will also have a 312 version that will have a telecoil,
but that won't be available until February of 2019.
They will have a rechargeable version
which is slightly thicker than the 312
at eight millimeters versus 7.1 millimeters.
The rechargeable version will also have a telecoil option
to accompany their size 312
and 13 disposable battery models.
Here's an up close look at the Audeo M 312 devices
that I've been playing with for the last week.
They're very similar to the Audeo B devices,
but a couple of the main differences here
is that they actually have a switch
that lets you increase volume or decrease volume
or change programs at the same time,
something that the Audeo B devices only had
a single push button in the middle for,
so that's a really nice feature.
The battery door here on the bottom,
there's your size 312 battery.
They've also changed the receiver wires.
I find these receiver wires, the contour,
a little bit better than the Audeo B devices.
And they've also changed the dome
and the wax traps on these as well.
Other than that, they fit very similarly
to the Audeo B devices from the previous generation.
This is what they look like on my ear.
So you can see that that contours really nicely.
They are extremely comfortable,
and they won't get in the way
of even the thickest of glass frames.
I've been able to demo these devices for over a week now,
and you can make the argument
that these devices have every single feature
that is available on the market today.
So go ahead and settle in for the long haul,
because we have a lotta things to talk about.
Now let's start talking about some of the major features
of these hearing aids, and the first one is connectivity.
These hearing aids will connect
with literally any phone that you have.
I don't care if you have a brick phone,
I don't care if you have an iPhone,
I don't care if you have Android,
because it uses Bluetooth Classic, not Bluetooth Low Energy,
so there is no restriction on the capability
to connect with traditional Bluetooth
inside of pretty much any device that has Bluetooth.
And when I was demoing this in my office,
streaming directly to both of my ears
from my Galaxy S8 phone,
I couldn't get the smile off of my face
because it has been four long years
for me waiting for this feature to arrive.
Phonak fixed one of the major flaws they had
with the Audeo B-Direct hearing aids,
which was they could only stream audio into one ear.
The new hearing devices now stream audio into both ears,
and it still uses the microphone on those hearing aids
to pick up your voice to send through
to the person on the other end of the phone.
So you can literally have your phone sitting
on the kitchen table, walk into the living room,
keep talking to the person you're talking to,
and they will hear you just fine
because it's using the microphone on the hearing aids.
And you can still answer the phone on the hearing aid itself
so you don't even have to pull your phone
out of your pocket or your purse.
When I say it streams all audio,
I mean it streams all audio, whether it's telephone calls,
whether it's a podcast, it's music,
an audio book, a YouTube video.
You can even stream directly from the TV
as long as you have the TV connector box.
Another absolutely crazy feature of these hearing aids is
that they will have an integrated Roger receiver
inside of these devices.
Even the very smallest size,
which is the Audeo M 312 device
that I held up to the camera earlier,
has a integrated Roger receiver inside of it.
Now, if you don't know what Roger is,
I highly recommend that you Google it,
because the Roger accessories from Phonak are some
of the greatest accessories you could possibly have
to cut through background noise
if you have a lot of difficulty
in background noise situations.
The reason that the integrated receiver is so crazy,
and I'm still just shaking my head wondering
how the heck is this even possible,
is that we used to have access to integrated Roger receivers
with the Phonak hearing aids.
All you'd have to do is pop off the battery door,
pop on the integrated receiver,
and then you would get access
to whatever Roger device that you want.
You can see how big these integrated Roger receivers were
by switching out the battery door
and adding these onto the bottom of the hearing aids.
And on top of that, you couldn't even do this
for a rechargeable hearing aid.
Eventually everyone, no matter what size
of Audeo M hearing that you have,
will have access to this integrated Roger receiver.
It will just require a firmware update in the fall of 2019.
And as I mentioned before, from a connectivity standpoint,
you are going to be able to have a telecoil
in the size 312, the size 13,
and the rechargeable version of these hearing aids,
while still being able to stream as much as you like
from whatever type of device that you like.
Now, if you're not familiar with what a telecoil does,
it basically gives you access to a looped facility.
Some of these looped facilities are churches
or conference centers, and it will let you gain access
to the audio directly from that facility.
So if you go to a movie theater, for instance,
and you have a telecoil in your hearing aids,
you'll be able to pick up the audio
from that movie right into the hearing aids
as long as that movie theater has a loop installed.
The telecoil versions aren't out yet, though.
You're gonna have to wait until February of 2019.
All right, now let's talk about rechargeability.
And yes, the Audeo M hearing aids are going
to have lithium rechargeable technology.
That means that these hearing aids will be able
to get you a reliable 24 hours worth
of battery life per day on a single charge,
and they will be able to give you 16 hours of battery life
if you stream up to four hours a day.
They have a new mini charger that now has a lid,
compared to their first generation mini charger
that did not, so it keeps your hearing devices more secure
if you need to plug them in while you're on the go.
They will still use the same charger
as the Audeo B-R devices.
Now, it's almost like Phonak watched
the Audeo B-R rechargeable review that I did,
because one of my biggest beefs
with the rechargeable hearing aids was
is that when you pulled it out of the charger,
you will had to press the button
on the hearing aids to turn them back on,
which proved to be a challenge for a lot of individuals
who don't have good finger dexterity.
Well, Phonak has fixed that flaw in their system.
Now when you pull it out of the charger,
the hearing aids turn on.
The Audeo M hearing aids will also give you access
to a variety of different apps,
including the Remote app.
The Remote app will let you control the volume.
It'll let you change programs.
It will let you control the environmental balance
when you're streaming audio directly from your phone.
It will also give you a battery readout
for your rechargeable version of these hearing aids.
The myPhonak app will provide a patient portal
for eSolutions that will give you access to a hearing diary,
and it will also let you have live time adjustments made
by your hearing care professional
while you are sitting in the comfort of your own home.
So no longer do you have to go all the way across town
or across the country to see your hearing care provider
to have them make little adjustments or tweaks
inside of your hearing devices.
These devices will also have call-to-text.
Now, I'm starting to lose my voice,
'cause there's so many different features
inside of these hearing aids,
but the call-to-text feature
is basically like a captioned telephone.
When someone calls you,
it transcribes what they're saying right on your smartphone,
so no longer do you have to just rely
on the audio inside of your hearing aids.
You'll be able to read along with it
on your smartphone as well.
And of course they will also have the Tinnitus app
that you can use for your hearing aids.
If you're someone who suffers from tinnitus,
it gives you the great ability to adjust what you're hearing
to mask over that tinnitus.
And Phonak has also been able
to include Binaural VoiceStream features
inside of these Audeo M hearing aids,
which is really good news for Phonak
and for the user of these hearing aids.
You see, previously they had to make a decision
on whether or not they wanted
to keep the binaural features of their devices intact
or whether or not they wanted
to do streaming from external devices.
Well, now they have the best of both worlds,
which is terrific, because it brings back some
of the great features that they had to leave out
of the Audeo B-Direct hearing aids.
This ability for your hearing aids
to communicate back and forth
with each other using the Binaural VoiceStream technology
allows the hearing aids to create what we call beamforming,
which is the microphones can actually hone in
on the main talker that you're trying to hear.
This feature gives rise to the StereoZoom feature
inside of the Phonak hearing devices,
which Phonak claims can improve your speech understanding
in a complex environment by up to 60%.
And I thought it'd be fun just to go ahead
and throw in a video of an example of how StereoZoom works.
(people chatter)
- They looked real (background chatter drowns out speech).
Sometimes the water was as calm as a millpond
for long distances
and you could really get lost in your thoughts.
(chuckles) What a beautiful trip, being so close to nature.
- Phonak also decided to update their AutoSenseOS
to AutoSenseOS 3.0.
Now, if you would've seen my video talking
about my favorite features of 2018,
you would've seen that the AutoSenseOS,
the previous version of it, was my favorite feature.
And this is because this feature allows you
to go into different environments
and having the hearing aids automatically detect
that environment that you're in
and kick your hearing aids
into the proper settings for that environment.
I also love it because as a hearing care professional,
I can see which environments that you've been in
so it can help my counsel you accordingly.
Even though the previous generation
of AutoSenseOS was already better
at identifying different environments
than a human being was,
they've still improved upon that and made it more robust
in the new AutoSenseOS 3.0.
Phonak has also made the claim
that it improves speech understanding and sound quality
inside of their devices.
They have also said that it can adjust automatically
whether or not you're streaming audio
that is speech-based
or whether or not you're streaming audio that is music
and putting you into the proper settings
for each one of those inputs.
They have also said that you get variable compression speeds
on any type of audio coming into the hearing aids,
which is supposed to reduce your listening effort.
Now, I just have a feeling when I make my video talking
about the best hearing aid features of 2019,
it's gonna be really hard for any other feature
to even come close to the AutoSenseOS 3.0.
Now, it is obvious that Phonak has much a huge leap forward
with the Audeo Marvel hearing aids,
but there are still a few things that bother me
about these devices, a few little things that I don't like.
The first one is it is not compatible with CROS,
at least at this time.
If you have a single-sided deafness issue,
then you are gonna have to go
with the previous generation of devices
so you can get access to the CROS transmitter
because it won't work with the Audeo M hearing aids.
The other thing is about the rechargeability
of these hearing aids.
Even though they fixed the issue
of where when you pull them out of the charger,
they automatically turn on, it still has the issue
of using the old charger case.
The old charger case,
at least the newer versions of the old charger case,
they're really hard to get those out of that case.
Any time that I have someone with poor finger dexterity,
I always break out a demo kit
of the Audeo B rechargeable hearing aids,
and they can hardly get them out of the case in most cases.
So going with these devices for someone
who has really bad finger dexterity
might not be a good option.
The other thing that I don't really like
about the rechargeable aspect of these hearing aids is
that it doesn't really give you that long of battery life.
Yes, if you don't stream at all,
it gives you 24 hours in a day,
which is great for almost everybody,
'cause almost nobody stays away
for longer than 24 hours at a time.
But if you start to stream a lot with these hearing devices,
four hours of streaming will pull that down
all the way to 16 hours,
which is kind of on the verge for some users
depending on how long they actually wear their hearing aids
throughout the day.
Now, this isn't really surprising,
because they have to use Bluetooth Classic
instead of Bluetooth Low Energy.
So that is the trade-off that you get
when using a rechargeable hearing aid
that also is able to stream from any device.
The other thing that I'm not really a big fan of
with the Audeo M hearing aids is that Phonak has chosen
to try to improve the sound quality of their devices,
but by doing this, they are lowering the amplification
in the high frequencies on their first fit settings,
meaning the auto program settings of their devices.
In my opinion, this is catering
to hearing care professionals
who do not use real ear measurement
to verify their hearing aid fittings.
Adapting the high frequency amplification is absolutely
critical to maximizing your performance with hearing aids.
And in my opinion,
this reduction of high frequency amplification
in order to give the perception of better sound quality
at the initial fitting puts you at a higher risk
of an improper fit from a hearing care professional
who doesn't perform real ear verification.
Now, I would never recommend you go
to a hearing care professional
who doesn't verify your hearing aid fitting
using real ear measures,
but some people might not even have the option.
Now, if you wanna learn more about real ear measurement
and why it is so critical to maximize your performance
with whatever hearing aids that you have,
I highly recommend that you watch my video
that I will link in the card up here
and in the description below.
Despite these little flaws that exist
in the Audeo M hearing aids,
Phonak has moved itself from the bottom of the list
when it comes to connectivity
and firmly placed itself at the top of the list.
Even though there are other hearing aids
that do some things better than these hearing devices,
you would be really hard-pressed to find a device
that does so many things as well as the Phonak Audeo Marvel.
That's it for this video.
If you have any questions,
leave them in the comment section below.
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make sure you hit that Subscribe button.
I'll see you next time.
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