- Hi guys, Cliff Olson,
Doctor of Audiology and founder of Applied Hearing Solutions
in Phoenix, Arizona, and in this video,
I'm talking about why rechargeable hearing aids
are not perfect for everyone
and why disposable battery hearing aids
might be the better option for you; coming up.
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It is no secret that rechargeable hearing aids
are all the rage right now.
In my clinic, rechargeable hearing aids
went from being 10% of all hearing aids dispensed
just a few years ago
to 50% of all hearing aids dispensed today.
In fact, some individuals are so dead set
on getting a rechargeable hearing aid
that they do not even consider
any other types of hearing aids that may have features
that are more appropriate for their hearing loss.
Now, I'm not gonna lie.
Rechargeable hearing aids are pretty awesome,
primarily because you never have to worry
about changing the batteries,
and the lithium battery technology that we have today
is significantly better than the technology
that we had just a few years ago.
But before I take you on a trip down memory lane,
if you could do me a huge favor and click the like button,
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That being said, let's go ahead and take a look
at the history of battery technology.
We used to use nickel metal hydride batteries.
These batteries had to be replaced each year
and they never really gave you that long of battery life,
so you'd get to a point in your day
where you get the low battery warning,
and you're like, well,
I guess that's it for these hearing aids
because when you put them back in the charger,
it took them a long time to charge as well.
Then we progressed to silver zinc rechargeable batteries,
which did give you a longer battery life,
and they could be used interchangeably
with disposable hearing aid batteries.
The problem was they were incredibly unreliable
and a lot of the individuals
who were using the silver zinc rechargeable batteries
just ended up throwing them away
and using disposable batteries instead.
But now we have finally progressed to lithium ion
rechargeable battery technology,
just like they use in Tesla cars.
Lithium rechargeable hearing aids are much more reliable.
They give much longer battery life,
and they are much quicker to charge
than the rechargeable batteries that came before them.
The improvements in performance and convenience
are the two biggest reasons why people are making the shift
away from disposable battery hearing aids
into rechargeable battery hearing aids.
However, despite the growing popularity
of rechargeable battery hearing aids,
this does not guarantee that rechargeable hearing aids
are the best hearing aids for you.
For instance, if you happen to travel a lot
and you forget to take your charger with you,
you are basically up a creek,
because there is no way for you
to recharge your hearing aids
if you don't have your charger.
Or perhaps you don't have access
to consistently reliable power inside of your house,
which means that if you lose your power,
there's no way for you to actually recharge
your hearing aids.
Or what happens if you're the type of person
who likes to wear your hearing aids
for 14 to 16 plus hours per day with a of streaming,
either from the TV or from your smart devices?
Well, if you run out of battery,
you're gonna have to take those hearing aids
out of your ears, put them in the charger
instead of just swapping them out
with another disposable battery and going about your day.
No problem.
I mean, just go out and get yourself a set
of disposable battery hearing aids,
and all of these problems will be solved
with no other issues, right?
Well, not so fast.
You see, some of the most technologically advanced
hearing aids out there only come in a rechargeable option,
which means you may have to make a decision
between performance of your hearing aids
and using a disposable battery.
That's why Oticon, today's video sponsor,
developed the Oticon More MiniRITE T,
which gives you all of the amazing technology
and features inside of the rechargeable version of the More,
but with a hearing aid that uses
a size 312 disposable battery.
The Oticon More was initially released
as a rechargeable only hearing aid in early 2021.
And this is great for everybody
who wanted a rechargeable hearing aid
with some of the most advanced hearing aid technology
on the planet.
But if you're the type of person
who wants a disposable battery hearing aid
with all this amazing technology,
then you've basically been in a holding pattern.
That is, until now,
because the Oticon More is now available
with the size 312 disposable battery option
that also has a telecoil.
Now, why should this make you so excited?
Well, the Oticon More is a revolutionary hearing aid
because it's the first hearing aid ever
to use a deep neural network,
which allows the More hearing aid
the ability to perform deep learning.
This allows engineers to feed speech and non speech sounds
through multiple hidden layers of a deep neural network
to allow that network
to determine the characteristics of these sounds.
This results in a hearing aid
that has effectively trained itself to process sound
using deep learning without having to rely
on the limited parameters set by engineers.
Oticon's Deep Neural Network was trained
with over 12 million sounds from real-world environments,
which gives it enough data
to understand the specific characteristics
of each of these sounds.
So how does deep learning actually result in better hearing?
Well, the deep neural network allows the Polaris chip,
which is the engine of the More hearing aid
to better identify speech and non speech signals
so the hearing aid can better determine
which sounds to amplify.
And not only do you get access
to this deep neural network
with a disposable 312 battery option,
you also get all of the other great features
of the rechargeable version of the More
to include direct Bluetooth streaming
from an Android or Apple device;
you can do remote care with your hearing care professional,
so you can get your hearing aids adjusted
without having to go into their office;
and you also gain access to a cross transmitter.
So if you're someone who has single-sided deafness,
you can use a cross transmitter
with your non-rechargeable More hearing aid.
So now you have access
to one of the most technologically advanced hearing aids
ever created by man and machine,
and you can have it in a disposable battery version
or a rechargeable battery version.
Making trade-offs between different features and technology
is very common with hearing aids.
So anytime that you have the ability
to get every feature that you want
without having to sacrifice anything is extremely rare.
Now don't get me wrong.
I absolutely love rechargeable battery hearing aids
as much as anyone,
but sometimes a disposable battery hearing aid
is better based on what your specific wants and needs are.
So the next time you're considering upgrading
your hearing aid technology,
just know that you can still go
with a disposable battery option
and still get a great hearing aid that checks all the boxes.
That's it for this video.
If you have any questions,
leave them in the comment section below.
If you liked the video, please share it.
And if you want to see other videos just like this one,
go ahead and hit that subscribe button.
Also feel free to check out my website, DrCliffAud.com
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