- Just when we thought we knew
who was gonna be the
first hearing aid company
to develop hearing aids
that can stream directly
from an Android phone into both ears,
Phonak comes out of nowhere
and beats everyone else to it.
That's why in this video I'm talking
about the Phonak Audeo
Marvel hearing aid coming up.
(energetic music)
Hi, guys, Cliff Olson, Doctor of Audiology
and founder of Applied Hearing
Solutions in Anthem, 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 few weeks back I released
a new video talking
about the first hearing
aids that will be able
to stream directly from an Android device,
but I wanna apologize, because
I was completely wrong.
You see, Phonak has been
laying in the weeds,
waiting for the right time to
release their new hearing aid,
the Phonak Audeo M,
which stands for Marvel,
hearing aids that they're
gonna release on November 30th,
and these hearing aids do exactly that.
Here's the new lineup.
As you can see, they will have the 312
which'll use a disposable battery.
They will also have a 312 version
that will have a telecoil,
but that won't be available
until February of 2019.
They will have a rechargeable version
which is slightly thicker than the 312
at eight millimeters
versus 7.1 millimeters.
The rechargeable version will
also have a telecoil option
to accompany their size 312
and 13 disposable battery models.
Here's an up close look
at the Audeo M 312 devices
that I've been playing
with for the last week.
They're very similar
to the Audeo B devices,
but a couple of the main differences here
is that they actually have a switch
that lets you increase
volume or decrease volume
or change programs at the same time,
something that the
Audeo B devices only had
a single push button in the middle for,
so that's a really nice feature.
The battery door here on the bottom,
there's your size 312 battery.
They've also changed the receiver wires.
I find these receiver wires, the contour,
a little bit better than
the Audeo B devices.
And they've also changed the dome
and the wax traps on these as well.
Other than that, they fit very similarly
to the Audeo B devices from
the previous generation.
This is what they look like on my ear.
So you can see that that
contours really nicely.
They are extremely comfortable,
and they won't get in the way
of even the thickest of glass frames.
I've been able to demo these
devices for over a week now,
and you can make the argument
that these devices have
every single feature
that is available on the market today.
So go ahead and settle
in for the long haul,
because we have a lotta
things to talk about.
Now let's start talking about
some of the major features
of these hearing aids, and
the first one is connectivity.
These hearing aids will connect
with literally any phone that you have.
I don't care if you have a brick phone,
I don't care if you have an iPhone,
I don't care if you have Android,
because it uses Bluetooth
Classic, not Bluetooth Low Energy,
so there is no restriction
on the capability
to connect with traditional Bluetooth
inside of pretty much any
device that has Bluetooth.
And when I was demoing this in my office,
streaming directly to both of my ears
from my Galaxy S8 phone,
I couldn't get the smile off of my face
because it has been four long years
for me waiting for this feature to arrive.
Phonak fixed one of the
major flaws they had
with the Audeo B-Direct hearing aids,
which was they could only
stream audio into one ear.
The new hearing devices now
stream audio into both ears,
and it still uses the
microphone on those hearing aids
to pick up your voice to send through
to the person on the
other end of the phone.
So you can literally
have your phone sitting
on the kitchen table,
walk into the living room,
keep talking to the
person you're talking to,
and they will hear you just fine
because it's using the
microphone on the hearing aids.
And you can still answer the
phone on the hearing aid itself
so you don't even have to pull your phone
out of your pocket or your purse.
When I say it streams all audio,
I mean it streams all audio,
whether it's telephone calls,
whether it's a podcast, it's music,
an audio book, a YouTube video.
You can even stream directly from the TV
as long as you have the TV connector box.
Another absolutely crazy
feature of these hearing aids is
that they will have an
integrated Roger receiver
inside of these devices.
Even the very smallest size,
which is the Audeo M 312 device
that I held up to the camera earlier,
has a integrated Roger
receiver inside of it.
Now, if you don't know what Roger is,
I highly recommend that you Google it,
because the Roger accessories
from Phonak are some
of the greatest accessories
you could possibly have
to cut through background noise
if you have a lot of difficulty
in background noise situations.
The reason that the integrated
receiver is so crazy,
and I'm still just
shaking my head wondering
how the heck is this even possible,
is that we used to have access
to integrated Roger receivers
with the Phonak hearing aids.
All you'd have to do is
pop off the battery door,
pop on the integrated receiver,
and then you would get access
to whatever Roger device that you want.
You can see how big these
integrated Roger receivers were
by switching out the battery door
and adding these onto the
bottom of the hearing aids.
And on top of that, you
couldn't even do this
for a rechargeable hearing aid.
Eventually everyone, no matter what size
of Audeo M hearing that you have,
will have access to this
integrated Roger receiver.
It will just require a firmware
update in the fall of 2019.
And as I mentioned before,
from a connectivity standpoint,
you are going to be
able to have a telecoil
in the size 312, the size 13,
and the rechargeable version
of these hearing aids,
while still being able to
stream as much as you like
from whatever type of
device that you like.
Now, if you're not familiar
with what a telecoil does,
it basically gives you
access to a looped facility.
Some of these looped
facilities are churches
or conference centers, and
it will let you gain access
to the audio directly from that facility.
So if you go to a movie
theater, for instance,
and you have a telecoil
in your hearing aids,
you'll be able to pick up the audio
from that movie right
into the hearing aids
as long as that movie
theater has a loop installed.
The telecoil versions
aren't out yet, though.
You're gonna have to wait
until February of 2019.
All right, now let's talk
about rechargeability.
And yes, the Audeo M
hearing aids are going
to have lithium rechargeable technology.
That means that these
hearing aids will be able
to get you a reliable 24 hours worth
of battery life per
day on a single charge,
and they will be able to give
you 16 hours of battery life
if you stream up to four hours a day.
They have a new mini
charger that now has a lid,
compared to their first
generation mini charger
that did not, so it keeps your
hearing devices more secure
if you need to plug them
in while you're on the go.
They will still use the same charger
as the Audeo B-R devices.
Now, it's almost like Phonak watched
the Audeo B-R rechargeable
review that I did,
because one of my biggest beefs
with the rechargeable hearing aids was
is that when you pulled
it out of the charger,
you will had to press the button
on the hearing aids to turn them back on,
which proved to be a challenge
for a lot of individuals
who don't have good finger dexterity.
Well, Phonak has fixed
that flaw in their system.
Now when you pull it out of the charger,
the hearing aids turn on.
The Audeo M hearing aids
will also give you access
to a variety of different apps,
including the Remote app.
The Remote app will let
you control the volume.
It'll let you change programs.
It will let you control
the environmental balance
when you're streaming audio
directly from your phone.
It will also give you a battery readout
for your rechargeable version
of these hearing aids.
The myPhonak app will
provide a patient portal
for eSolutions that will give
you access to a hearing diary,
and it will also let you have
live time adjustments made
by your hearing care professional
while you are sitting in the
comfort of your own home.
So no longer do you have to
go all the way across town
or across the country to see
your hearing care provider
to have them make little
adjustments or tweaks
inside of your hearing devices.
These devices will also have call-to-text.
Now, I'm starting to lose my voice,
'cause there's so many different features
inside of these hearing aids,
but the call-to-text feature
is basically like a captioned telephone.
When someone calls you,
it transcribes what they're
saying right on your smartphone,
so no longer do you have to just rely
on the audio inside of your hearing aids.
You'll be able to read along with it
on your smartphone as well.
And of course they will
also have the Tinnitus app
that you can use for your hearing aids.
If you're someone who
suffers from tinnitus,
it gives you the great ability
to adjust what you're hearing
to mask over that tinnitus.
And Phonak has also been able
to include Binaural VoiceStream features
inside of these Audeo M hearing aids,
which is really good news for Phonak
and for the user of these hearing aids.
You see, previously they
had to make a decision
on whether or not they wanted
to keep the binaural features
of their devices intact
or whether or not they wanted
to do streaming from external devices.
Well, now they have the
best of both worlds,
which is terrific, because
it brings back some
of the great features
that they had to leave out
of the Audeo B-Direct hearing aids.
This ability for your hearing aids
to communicate back and forth
with each other using the
Binaural VoiceStream technology
allows the hearing aids to
create what we call beamforming,
which is the microphones
can actually hone in
on the main talker that
you're trying to hear.
This feature gives rise
to the StereoZoom feature
inside of the Phonak hearing devices,
which Phonak claims can improve
your speech understanding
in a complex environment by up to 60%.
And I thought it'd be fun just to go ahead
and throw in a video of an
example of how StereoZoom works.
(people chatter)
- They looked real (background
chatter drowns out speech).
Sometimes the water was
as calm as a millpond
for long distances
and you could really get
lost in your thoughts.
(chuckles) What a beautiful
trip, being so close to nature.
- Phonak also decided to
update their AutoSenseOS
to AutoSenseOS 3.0.
Now, if you would've seen my video talking
about my favorite features of 2018,
you would've seen that the AutoSenseOS,
the previous version of it,
was my favorite feature.
And this is because
this feature allows you
to go into different environments
and having the hearing
aids automatically detect
that environment that you're in
and kick your hearing aids
into the proper settings
for that environment.
I also love it because as a
hearing care professional,
I can see which environments
that you've been in
so it can help my counsel you accordingly.
Even though the previous generation
of AutoSenseOS was already better
at identifying different environments
than a human being was,
they've still improved upon
that and made it more robust
in the new AutoSenseOS 3.0.
Phonak has also made the claim
that it improves speech
understanding and sound quality
inside of their devices.
They have also said that
it can adjust automatically
whether or not you're streaming audio
that is speech-based
or whether or not you're
streaming audio that is music
and putting you into the proper settings
for each one of those inputs.
They have also said that you
get variable compression speeds
on any type of audio coming
into the hearing aids,
which is supposed to reduce
your listening effort.
Now, I just have a feeling
when I make my video talking
about the best hearing
aid features of 2019,
it's gonna be really hard
for any other feature
to even come close to the AutoSenseOS 3.0.
Now, it is obvious that Phonak
has much a huge leap forward
with the Audeo Marvel hearing aids,
but there are still a
few things that bother me
about these devices, a few
little things that I don't like.
The first one is it is
not compatible with CROS,
at least at this time.
If you have a single-sided deafness issue,
then you are gonna have to go
with the previous generation of devices
so you can get access
to the CROS transmitter
because it won't work with
the Audeo M hearing aids.
The other thing is about
the rechargeability
of these hearing aids.
Even though they fixed the issue
of where when you pull
them out of the charger,
they automatically turn
on, it still has the issue
of using the old charger case.
The old charger case,
at least the newer versions
of the old charger case,
they're really hard to get
those out of that case.
Any time that I have someone
with poor finger dexterity,
I always break out a demo kit
of the Audeo B rechargeable hearing aids,
and they can hardly get them
out of the case in most cases.
So going with these devices for someone
who has really bad finger dexterity
might not be a good option.
The other thing that I don't really like
about the rechargeable aspect
of these hearing aids is
that it doesn't really give
you that long of battery life.
Yes, if you don't stream at all,
it gives you 24 hours in a day,
which is great for almost everybody,
'cause almost nobody stays away
for longer than 24 hours at a time.
But if you start to stream a
lot with these hearing devices,
four hours of streaming
will pull that down
all the way to 16 hours,
which is kind of on the
verge for some users
depending on how long they
actually wear their hearing aids
throughout the day.
Now, this isn't really surprising,
because they have to use Bluetooth Classic
instead of Bluetooth Low Energy.
So that is the trade-off that you get
when using a rechargeable hearing aid
that also is able to
stream from any device.
The other thing that I'm
not really a big fan of
with the Audeo M hearing aids
is that Phonak has chosen
to try to improve the sound
quality of their devices,
but by doing this, they are
lowering the amplification
in the high frequencies on
their first fit settings,
meaning the auto program
settings of their devices.
In my opinion, this is catering
to hearing care professionals
who do not use real ear measurement
to verify their hearing aid fittings.
Adapting the high frequency
amplification is absolutely
critical to maximizing your
performance with hearing aids.
And in my opinion,
this reduction of high
frequency amplification
in order to give the perception
of better sound quality
at the initial fitting
puts you at a higher risk
of an improper fit from a
hearing care professional
who doesn't perform real ear verification.
Now, I would never recommend you go
to a hearing care professional
who doesn't verify your
hearing aid fitting
using real ear measures,
but some people might
not even have the option.
Now, if you wanna learn more
about real ear measurement
and why it is so critical
to maximize your performance
with whatever hearing aids that you have,
I highly recommend that you watch my video
that I will link in the card up here
and in the description below.
Despite these little flaws that exist
in the Audeo M hearing aids,
Phonak has moved itself
from the bottom of the list
when it comes to connectivity
and firmly placed itself
at the top of the list.
Even though there are other hearing aids
that do some things better
than these hearing devices,
you would be really
hard-pressed to find a device
that does so many things as
well as the Phonak Audeo Marvel.
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 wanna see other
videos just like this one,
make sure you hit that Subscribe button.
I'll see you next time.
(upbeat techno music)
