- In this video, I'm
reviewing the Hearing Assist
recharge plus Bluetooth hearing aids
that you can find at
Walmart and walmart.com.
Coming up.
(upbeat music)
Hi guys, Cliff Olson, doctor of audiology
and founder of Applied Hearing Solutions
in Phoenix, Arizona.
And on this channel, I cover a bunch
of hearing related information,
to help make you a
better informed consumer.
So if you're into that,
make sure you hit that subscribe button.
And don't forget to click the bell
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every time I post a new video.
A little while back, a not very well known
online hearing aid company
called Hearing Assist,
started selling their hearing amplifiers
in Walmart pharmacy
sections and on walmart.com.
Despite being in business since 2008,
Hearing Assist went
largely under the radar,
until their commercials
talking about high cost
of hearing aids and greed
of the hearing aid industry,
became more popular.
But since they'd figured out
a way to get their products
on the shelves at Walmart,
I figured now is a good time
to go ahead and check them out,
and see how well they actually
perform as a hearing aid.
So I took a trip to my local Walmart,
where Arizona is one of those states
that you can purchase
these devices in a store.
However, my first trip to
Walmart in December of 2019,
was unsuccessful because all
of the products were sold out.
My second trip to
Walmart, in March of 2020,
was also unsuccessful.
They did have the Hearing Assist recharge,
but they did not have the
Bluetooth version of the product
that I wanted for this review.
Since the Walmart pharmacy
staff was not familiar
with these devices at all,
and they didn't know when these devices
were gonna be back in stock,
I went ahead and ordered this
product from walmart.com.
It only took a few days
for me to get these devices
in the mail from walmart.com.
And after I got them,
I was able to take them
through a very lengthy
and in depth review,
and I'm gonna start that
review with the unboxing.
All right, let's go ahead
and check out and see
what we've got inside of
the box here, there we go.
So we have a user manual there to start.
There is a registration card.
These do come with a one year warranty,
so fill out that card and send it in.
A little quick guide there for you,
a little welcome information
there for you as well.
So let's set that off to the side
and get into the actual
devices themselves.
I'm actually just gonna turn this over,
it's easier to get this stuff
out this way, there we go.
All right, so, since these
are rechargeable devices,
I'm gonna go ahead and
pull the charger out.
Fairly typical micro
USB charging cable there
that you can also plug into the wall
with this little adapter there.
And then, here is the
stand, the charging stand,
that you have with these
devices, there we go.
So that's what you have
there for charging.
In terms of the accessories here,
just a few things, there's
a little cleaning brush,
and then some extra domes,
different size domes,
inside of the bag as well.
And then of course you have
the hearing aids themselves.
Here you go,
and they come with a medium
length tube on there.
I did call Hearing Assist,
and they also have a
longer version of the tube
and one size shorter
version of the tube as well.
So ultimately they have a
small, medium and large length,
or a small, medium and
long I guess you would say,
length of tubes for these.
On the hearing aids themselves,
they have the charging
contacts there on the bottom,
and then they have a push button,
that is used for turning
the hearing aids on,
and cycling through
different programs as well.
They have dual microphones,
so there is a rear microphone here,
and then there's a front
microphone right there
underneath where this tube
screws into the hearing aid.
The tubes do have a retention
filament right there,
and then of course, they have a dome
pre-attached on the
end of the hearing aid.
That's it for the unboxing.
Let's go ahead and get into
the rest of the review.
Of course, every time I get
a new product to review,
I always get really excited,
but when I got these
devices inside of my ears
to perform some testing on
them, upon taking them out,
I actually got the dome
stuck in my right ear.
Thankfully, I was able to have
my colleague Doctor Lacey Lee
remove the dome for me.
Otherwise, this would
have resulted in a trip
to the emergency room.
All right, so let's first talk
about the physical fit of these devices.
So I'm gonna take the left one
and put it inside of my ear.
And the first thing that you'll
notice, is the tube length.
So they sent a tube length of a two,
they have a one, a two,
and a three length tube
that goes on here.
So you need to really find the one
that fits your ear the best.
Now, I have a really short amount of space
between the opening of my ear canal,
and the top of my ear.
And when I'm wearing a hearing aid
that is a typical hearing aid brand,
I'm usually one of the shorter lengths,
and they sent the medium length to me.
So you have the one is the really short,
the two is the medium,
and the three is the long.
They send all of their products
or all their products
have a length of two.
So that medium length inside the box,
and this is basically what
it looked like on my ear.
And as you can see that
tube is too short on me.
That device should be sitting
further back on my ear,
rather than being pulled so far forward.
And these little filaments
right here, if you can see that,
these guys stick out
of my ears like crazy.
I almost wanna cut them off,
but then if I cut them off,
then the dome starts working
its way out of my ear.
So it's not really a perfect fit.
You can go back to Walmart
into the pharmacy section,
and get longer tubes if
they have them in stock,
or you could get shorter tubes,
if you need a shorter tube.
But for me, I actually
called Hearing Assist,
and they mailed me a pack for free,
because they would normally
cost around 10 bucks.
This is what the three length tubes,
so the longest length that they have,
and it makes me worry
that if you're someone
who has a pretty typical amount of space
between the opening and
the top of your ear,
you would probably need a tube
that's even longer than this one,
but there isn't one that exists.
But that definitely fits
a lot better behind my ear
with this longer tube.
And again, that little
retention filament there,
sticks outside of my ear,
so I have to constantly
be putting that back in.
If I was gonna keep these
things as a long term solution,
I would definitely snip those off
and see if I could find a
dome that helped retain it
inside of my ear better.
All right, I also wanna
give you a perspective
of what these Hearing Assist
hearing aids look like
compared to a more traditional
Receiver-In-Canal hearing aid
that you would get from one
of the major manufacturers.
So let me go ahead and give you
a side by side comparison with those.
(upbeat music)
And this is a comparison from the front.
I have a traditional
Receiver-In-canal hearing aid
in this ear, and I have the
Hearing Assist on this ear.
All right, so having issues with the dome
getting stuck in my ear,
and the tube lengths being too short,
this review got off to a
little bit of a rocky start.
But let's go ahead and continue on,
and let's talk about some of the features
inside of these devices.
Hearing Assist has two different types
of behind the ear hearing aids.
They have the Hearing Assist recharge
that retails for around 500 bucks,
and they have the Hearing
Assist recharge plus Bluetooth,
that retails for closer to 600 bucks.
The main difference of course,
is that the Bluetooth
version also uses an app,
so you can use that app
to adjust the volume.
So you don't need a volume wheel,
on the Bluetooth version of these devices.
That also comes with this
hearing check feature
that allows you to self
optimize the hearing devices
based on your hearing loss.
Both types of devices are
of course rechargeable,
and they require a three hour
to 3 1/2 hour charging time.
When charging, the push
buttons will be blue,
when done charging the
buttons will turn to green.
They are expected to give
18 hours on a full charge,
which is adequate in most cases.
They are supposed to be able to provide
upto 43 decibels of amplification,
feedback suppression,
and advanced layered
background noise reduction.
They also come with a one year warranty,
and a 60-day money back guarantee.
Now I decided to review
the Bluetooth version
of these devices, because I wanted to see
how this app actually functioned
with these hearing aids.
But for all intensive purposes,
from a hearing aid standpoint,
the rechargeable version of
these devices without Bluetooth,
function very similarly
to the Bluetooth version
of these devices.
First and foremost, with
the Bluetooth version
of these hearing aids,
just because they have an app,
it does not mean that you can
stream audio from your phone,
into your hearing aids.
It does not allow for any
kind of call function,
or any kind of streaming music,
or podcasts or anything like that.
After you install and open
the Hearing Assist app,
if you find it necessary,
the user guide video can walk you through
all the steps to charge your devices,
connect them with your app,
and how to use the app.
The first thing you will need
to do to connect the devices,
is turn them both on,
and click the search for device button.
This should bring up both of
your Hearing Assist devices
that are indicated by a
long string of numbers.
Just tap on one of the listed devices,
and listen for the device that is beeping.
If you can't hear the beeping
coming from one of your devices,
it means that your hearing
loss is definitely too severe
to receive benefit, from
these Hearing Assist devices,
and you should schedule an appointment
to see a hearing care professional.
If you can hear the beeping,
indicate which hearing aid
that beeping is coming from.
Make sure that you identify
the correct hearing aid.
Otherwise, everything
you do through the app,
will be backwards.
Once correctly identified, you can rename
the devices if you like.
The next step is to
perform the hearing check.
You can either use your
Hearing Assist devices,
or a pair of headphones or earbuds.
I of course recommend that you use
the Hearing Assist devices for this test.
Environmental noise can
make or break this test.
So make sure that you find a quiet area
to complete the hearing check.
It will give you an indicator
of whether or not that
environment is quiet enough.
This feature will test
your hearing sensitivity
via air conduction, at
five different frequencies
per ear starting with the left ear.
Once you complete this
hearing check for both ears,
it will show you a graph that
looks similar in appearance,
to an audiogram at 500 hertz,
1000 hertz, 2000 hertz,
3000 hertz and 4000 hertz.
When I compare the results
of the hearing check
to my actual pure-tone thresholds
that were taken in the clinic,
you can see that it has
the same general shape
as my actual audiogram,
except for the inaccurate
readings at 500 hertz.
Based on my actual
thresholds, it would appear
that the 50% score would roughly correlate
with my 60 dB HL threshold at 2000 hertz.
Nevertheless, after
completing the hearing check,
we can either choose to
optimize our hearing devices
to take a hearing check into account,
or choose not to optimize our devices.
Next, let's go back to
the main menu of the app
and select sound control.
Under the sound control tab,
you have four different options
that you can use to adjust your devices.
First, you can change the
mode or hearing aid programs
between either all around,
restaurant, traffic, or outdoor.
Each of these programs
progressively reduces
the background noise by
reducing amplification levels.
The volume tab is pretty self explanatory.
You can adjust the volume either together,
or separate for each of the devices.
The band tab is where you can
control a five band equalizer
between 500 hertz and 4000 hertz.
This is where the optimization happens
from the hearing check,
if you choose to optimize the devices.
Since I opted to optimize
based off of the hearing check,
if we compare the left
and right equalizers,
you can see how much amplification
was applied by the app,
for the right ear hearing device.
The more tab has the compression settings.
Basically, compression
is supposed to reduce
the amplification of loud sounds,
and increase amplification
for soft sounds.
Later in this review, I will show you
some objective measures
to show you just how well
these app adjustments really work,
when it comes to actually
receiving benefit or not.
To actually check how well
these devices amplify sound,
I decided to perform real ear measurement,
for a mild sloping to
moderate high frequency
sensory neural hearing
loss in my right ear,
and a normal sloping to
moderate high frequency
sensory neural hearing
loss in my left ear.
This will give me an objective measurement
to see how capable these devices are,
to treat a level of hearing
loss based on claims
from the Hearing Assist website.
When performing real ear measurement,
we are looking to see if the amplification
of a hearing device is capable
of meeting the prescription
of sound required,
to successfully provide audibility,
to a hearing impaired individual.
The hashmark lines on these graphs,
indicate the prescriptions
for hearing losses
that I illustrated earlier.
The solid lines indicate
the amount of amplification
that the hearing aids are producing.
Ideally, we would like to
see the solid line overlap
with the hashmark line.
The purple curve that you see here,
indicates the default
level of amplification
before using the app to make adjustments
to the programming of the hearing aids.
As you can see, the solid curve
does not match the hashmark
prescription curve very well.
There is a huge gap between
what the hearing aids
are giving in the high frequencies,
and what is required to overcome
a moderate high frequency hearing loss.
And this is unfortunate,
because this is the primary area
required to achieve better clarity
and speech intelligibility.
The green curve is my attempt
to match the prescription
using the equalizer inside
the Hearing Assist app.
After numerous attempts, this is as close
as I could get to these prescriptions.
There are definitely some
areas of over amplification,
and still areas of under amplification.
Interestingly enough,
the app also allows us
to adjust compression settings,
which means that we should
be able to reduce the amount
of amplification given to loud sounds,
to make them more comfortable,
and increase amplification
given to soft sounds,
to make them more audible, and
do this all at the same time.
While compression does reduce
the amount of amplification
given to loud sounds,
it does not increase soft
level sound amplification.
Which is very unfortunate,
because most individuals
with hearing loss,
struggle the most with
hearing and understanding
soft spoken individuals.
Okay, so from an amplification standpoint,
these devices run into
the same exact issues
that you would typically
see from other devices,
that are sold over the counter or online.
They tend to over amplify
the mid frequencies,
and under amplify the high frequencies.
So they typically give you this perception
that things are louder, but
not necessarily clearer.
And if you're like anybody
else with hearing loss,
you're typically looking for more clarity,
not necessarily more volume.
Now to give you some comparison,
these new green curves
represent the amplification
of traditional hearing aids,
that you would find inside
of an audiology clinic.
You can see how much
better they are at matching
the prescriptive hashmark lines.
They are nearly perfect at
precisely amplifying sound
for these hearing losses,
which means that you get
the full amount of benefit
out of these hearing aids,
and the most speech clarity possible.
Not only does the lack of
adequate high frequency
amplification prevent
you from understanding
people clearly in a quiet situation,
it also significantly hinders
your ability to understand
speech and background noise.
If you're like most individuals
with the hearing loss,
you hear background noise really well,
but you don't have the
high frequency information
which is what our brain
uses to separate speech,
from the background noise.
That being said, let's
go ahead and take a look
at the noise reduction capabilities
of the Hearing Assist hearing aids,
which I can also perform an
objective measurement of.
When I'm performing noise
reduction measurements,
I'm seeing how much background noise
the hearing aids reduce,
and how quickly these
devices do the reduction.
At first, I thought that these devices
did no noise reduction at all.
However, I finally realized
that they do perform noise reduction,
they just take significantly longer
than a standard hearing
aid, to start the reduction.
I'm not sure exactly
what Hearing Assist means
by advanced layered noise
reduction, but whatever it does,
it appears to slow down the reduction time
of the devices to background noise.
But at the end of the day, it
does look like it gives you
about six decibels of
background noise reduction.
You can only do that so long
before you actually get a hearing loss.
But what I'm doing is, I'm
seeing if their digital feedback
suppression actually
kicks in at any point.
And I can't tell that it actually does.
Feedback is basically that
whistling that you get
from your hearing aids, if
sound is being over amplified
and then leaks out of your ear canal,
and recycles back through the microphones.
That's something that you
do not want to experience.
That being said, in my opinion,
from a digital feedback
suppression standpoint,
these devices just aren't that good.
All things considered, it is
nice that the Bluetooth version
of these devices allows you to do
some kind of a hearing check.
The other thing that I'll say
is, that if this is
what the hearing devices
are going to be like when the
FDA finally creates guidelines
for the over the counter hearing aid act,
I am not gonna be surprised
if a lot of individuals
who purchase these devices,
aren't gonna have a lot of success.
Because they just don't
have the capability
of customizing specifically
to someone's hearing loss,
which means a significant reduction
in your overall hearing ability.
While these devices are
only 500 to 600 bucks,
there are other hearable
options on the market right now,
that are less money, and
actually perform better
than what I find these devices to perform.
And at the end of the day,
they seem like they're a good deal
in comparison to traditional hearing aids,
but they still won't
give you anything close
to the level of performance.
So if you're someone
who just cannot afford
hearing treatment inside
of a local hearing clinic,
that is totally okay.
Go ahead and put the
Hearing Assist hearing aids,
on your list of devices to check out.
However, do not rule out
other cheaper options as well
because you might find another option
that actually works
better than what these do.
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.
If you wanna see other
videos just like this one,
go ahead and hit that subscribe button.
Also feel free to check out
my website, drcliffaud.com.
(upbeat music)
