Dr. Amy White explains the different pricing tiers of hearing devices. In this video, she focuses specifically on the abilities and limitations of basic-tier models, including manual controls and lack of noise reduction. Basic level hearing aids are best suited for patients who spend most of their time at home doing quiet activities.
Transcription:
Hi, this is Dr. Amy White, owner and audiologist at Elk Grove Hearing Care. Today I’m here to talk to you about the different technology levels of hearing aids and how we use your lifestyle needs to try and figure out which hearing aid technology would best suit you.
Hearing aid manufacturers generally sell their hearing aids somewhere between three and six different tiers of performance levels or technology levels. At our office, we tend to break that down into about three different tiers: a basic, a mid and a premium level, but you may find this differs slightly at other offices.
Today I’m going to talk to you specifically about a basic model hearing aid. A basic model hearing aid has very limited noise reduction, and noise reduction is the technology that hearing aids use to try and help filter some of the background noise so that you can better hear in noisy places like restaurants or in cars.
Basic model hearing aids are really best suited for people who very infrequently find themselves in noisy environments. So if you’re someone who spends most of your time at home, you just want to hear your spouse and the TV and the telephone better, you rarely go out to eat, you don’t go to a lot of social events, a basic level hearing aid may be appropriate for you.
They will still have controls on them where you can turn your volume up or down, and you may find that you use that more often because basic level hearing aids are less automatic than mid- and premium-model instruments. As you go up in those performance or price tiers, hearing aids become more and more automatic, so they make better choices and patients find they less often have to interact with their devices.
If you’d like to learn more about these hearing instruments, come and see us at Elk Grove Hearing Care.