One Of Affaordable Hearing Care's Clients
I’m writing to thank you for your helpfulness and professionalism in meeting my latest wish to further enhance my hearing.
For two years I was very happy with the Oticon aids you supplied, and I’ve always been impressed by your willingness to devote time free of charge whenever I thought it necessary to adjust their settings. But as technology moved on I thought I would benefit from all the additional facilities available such as Bluetooth connectivity and being able to adjust them myself by remote control to cope with different sound environments. I very much appreciated your impartial expert advice which narrowed down the search and helped me to make my selection.
When you explained the benefits of the most advanced products I was especially pleased to be offered the opportunity to compare side-by-side the latest models offered by Phonak and Siemens. During the trial period of the in-ear versions I realised that both had some advantages over the other and I thought it a shame that one can never have the best of both worlds!
In my opinion the plus and minus points of each model are:-
PHONAK EXELIA
Pluspoints
● Great quality sound.
● The “Zoom” facility is fantastic, especially when using a telephone or talking to a car passenger
● Nice and secure, with only a small projection into the ear
● For me its pink colour matched my skin colour better (my friends thought the bigger aids looked less
conspicuous than the smaller but darker Siemens units)
● iCom is very light around the neck (but only retains its charge for a day if used a lot)
● MyPilot remote control is compact, stylish, and has a colour display. Can be put it in pocket or hooked
on belt in its leather pouch.
Minuspoints
● The aids themselves are larger than the Siemens ones
● Two remote units (myPilot and iCom) need to be kept charged (as opposed to the single Siemens unit)
● No tone control
● You have to buy a separate device (e.g. Jabra 120s) to transmit Bluetooth signals from a non-
bluetooth audio device.
SIEMENS PURE
Pluspoints
● Smaller hearing aids than the Phonak
● Remote control has treble adjustment
● Comes ready-packed with a Bluetooth transmitter and adaptors for connecting to other audio scources.
● Only one remote control unit to carry around with you and keep charged up
Minuspoints
● The hearing aids project deeper into the ear than the Phonaks (but personally that didn’t bother me)
● As I’m pale-skinned the darker colour made them more noticeable in spite of their smaller size
●.My aids came with a report that due to the size of my ear canal Siemens were only able to provide a
very small vent through the aid. (This we believe reduced the sound quality and caused serious
feedback when using a telephone)
● The remote control, which you wear around your neck, is bigger and heavier than the two separate
smaller Phonak units.
● The remote control hangs the wrong way up when you wear it around your neck; you have to invert
it, with limited cord length, to read the controls.
I finally chose the Phonak Exelias for their better sound quality. But I returned the Jabra 120s audio transmitter which I had ordered as an add-on. Although the sound quality of the Jabra was good, it had limited range causing the sound to break up if I walked more than a few metres away from my hi-fi. Also, when connected to my television it produced good sound which, unfortunately was slightly out of synch with the picture.
Instead, to get music streaming wirelessly direct into my Phonak Exelias, I bought the latest Sony Walkman NWZ-A829 bluetooth mp3 player which holds my entire music collection. This ultra- lightweight unit has replaced my hi-fi which I now carry around in my pocket, never going out of range. Paired by bluetooth with my iCom it produces the most amazing high quality sound which I never thought I’d ever hear again.
Thank heavens for advancing technology! If it carries on developing at this rate my hearing experience will actually improve as I get older!
Mike Felstead
