On-ear "hearing aids"?

[oldbrownhat]

I think my wife and I are in the same situation with her 98 year old mom having hearing problems....

I just tried a new search term which might describe what I was thinking about initially: "hearing-assist headphones" and got a lot of hits on Amazon as well as a few articles.

Many are probably pretty naff and none will likely have the precision/adjustability of real HAs, but might be a help for "really senior" folks (?) esp. those with dexterity issues, depending on the amount of amplification required. One article mentioned a product from BeHear which has quite a bit of amplification.

 

[ACORN]

One thing I really like is my HAs are Bluetooth. I bought a Bluetooth low latency transmitter and connected it to my TV in our game room. It pipes the audio to my HAs where I control the volume for me, while leaving the TV remote control the sound to TV speakers.

 

[messmergreen]

Another vote for Costco. As far as i know they are decent quality and don't cost the fortune. You can also check hearing aids staten island, they always have couple of aids on sale and they have great audiologist. My general recommendation when choosing hearing aids - always try them on before buying.

 

[BC38]

I think my wife and I are in the same situation with her 98 year old mom having hearing problems. It has caused her to withdraw from social interactions and maybe life itself.

She has problems with her hands and would not be able to insert HA each morning. She has no idea about apps and tuning.

Until I can convince the assisting staff to schedule HA insert each morning, there appears to be little we can do.

I personally got the Jabra from Costco at $1800 and they get me 80% of what I need. Their android cell phone app no longer works. Maybe in a couple of years. So the "tuning" is left to Costco. Costco local is HORRIBLE for customer service. They are into profit, and free tuning doesn't fit their model.

Private Audiologist will want double the price for the same gear as Costco, but will provide tuning and service much better. So if you want the service, be prepared to pay for it.


Prescut

FWIW, I got a pair of the Jabra Enhanced Select hearing aids ordered directly from Jabra's website and got them for a couple of hundred bucks less than Costco's price. My phone is a little older (Android 8.0) so it won't do the streaming functions, but all the adjustment and tuning functions work just fine. I read that there are some issues with their app and Android 12, so if it were me and I had that problem I'd pick up a cheap older phone off eBay or whatever to install the app on and use it for tuning and adjustments.

I don't know about getting them through Costco, but ordering direct from Jabra you get 100 days to try them with a no questions asked return policy, plus a full 3 year loss/damage warranty.
For $1400 I'm quite happy with them.