Review of a low-cost hearing aid

For years I reg­u­lar­ly buy cheap goods from Chi­na at wish.com. I am often pos­i­tive­ly sur­prised. Of course you can’t expect top qual­i­ty, but under the giv­en cir­cum­stances, sur­pris­ing­ly good stuff often arrives in my mailbox.

In any case, I found this device in the Wish cat­a­logue, enti­tled “Dig­i­tal blue­tooth Hear­ing Aid USB Recharge­able Sound Ampli­fi­er Deaf-aid Audi­phone Behind Ear”, adver­tised in the pic­ture as a wire­less hear­ing amplifier.

This is promis­ing, I thought, and ordered two of them. These things are not only sup­posed to ampli­fy the ambi­ent sound, as hear­ing aids should, but also con­nect wire­less­ly to the mobile phone via Blue­tooth in order to lis­ten to music or even make phone calls. They also have recharge­able bat­ter­ies that can be charged via USB.

I know since about a year that my hear­ing is no longer the best. The ear spe­cial­ist diag­nosed a hear­ing loss of about 25% in both ears in the high­er fre­quen­cy range. This hear­ing loss is with­in the nor­mal range for my age, just under 60, so she rec­om­mend­ed that I get fit­ted hear­ing aids from a hear­ing health care pro­fes­sion­al. She said it was bet­ter to start with a hear­ing aid right away than, say, at the age of 80, when the audi­to­ry nerve was already so dam­aged that hard­ly any­thing could be done any­more. At this time, on the oth­er hand, the audi­to­ry nerve can still be trained to com­pen­sate for the lack. It is also con­ceiv­able that my tin­ni­tus could weak­en as a result. It is pos­si­ble that tin­ni­tus occurs because oth­er­wise there is total silence around these frequencies.

Well, I fol­lowed her advice and con­sult­ed a hear­ing aid spe­cial­ist. He explained to me that there are hear­ing aids in many qual­i­ty lev­els and price ranges. The most expen­sive one was a Phonak device for about 8000 Swiss francs, equipped with all the frills such as recharge­able bat­ter­ies and a Blue­tooth con­nec­tion to a mobile phone. Cheap­er devices would work with exchange­able but­ton cells and would not have Blue­tooth on board. As my bud­get is a bit tight at the moment, I lim­it­ed myself to what the insur­ance com­pa­ny reim­burs­es me. In Switzer­land, the dis­abil­i­ty insur­ance IV pays up to 1850 francs for hear­ing aids. I got a pair of such hear­ing aids, Widex brand, with which I am quite satisfied.

Now I was curi­ous about the Chi­nese cheap hear­ing ampli­fiers, espe­cial­ly about their Blue­tooth capa­bil­i­ty. But even before I ordered them, it was clear to me that, log­i­cal­ly, I could not expect the qual­i­ty and range of func­tions of a Phonak device. I there­fore assumed that the fre­quen­cy response could only be influ­enced with­in nar­row lim­its or not at all.

I ordered two pieces in beige and two weeks lat­er I had them in my mail­box. The price was indi­cat­ed as 32.00 Swiss franks instead of 343.00 per piece, with a ship­ping fee of 12.00 added. So two of them cost a total of 88 francs. If you take the offi­cial cat­a­logue price, two pieces would be 710, but prob­a­bly nobody pays that price. When I com­pare this price with the Phonak devices, there are worlds apart. Are they worlds apart in terms of functionality?

Unpacking and first glance

The box looks nice enough. Appar­ent­ly the prod­uct does not have a name, but is sim­ply called “Dig­i­tal Hear­ing Ampli­fi­er”. The slo­gan “Bet­ter Sound Bet­ter Life” under­neath sounds very promising.

The box contains:

• Hear­ing ampli­fi­er, com­plete with earpiece
• Pret­ty plas­tic stor­age box
• Exchange­able ear seals in dif­fer­ent sizes
• Clean­ing brush
• Charg­er with US plug (any oth­er stan­dard mobile phone charg­er can also be used here)
• Charg­ing cable USB 2.0 to device con­nec­tor (any oth­er stan­dard Android charg­ing cable can be used here)
• User Guide in eng­lish language

Accord­ing to the user man­u­al, the hear­ing aid should be charged for six hours before first use. The next two charges should only be car­ried out after the bat­tery is com­plete­ly dis­charged, and then a full charge should be car­ried out. The bat­tery has a capac­i­ty of 60 mAH and the device is sup­posed to have a con­tin­u­ous run­ning time of 100 hours. This cor­re­sponds to an oper­at­ing time of over 6 days with a usage time of 16 hours per day. Com­pared to the run­time of my Widex hear­ing aids with but­ton cells of around three days, this is a good deal better.

A down­er is that the charg­er has a US plug. So, an adapter to Swiss or EU plug is required. But you can also get these cheap­ly at Wish, for exam­ple the ones shown on the right.

Operation as hearing amplifier

The user man­u­al indi­cates that the vol­ume should be turned down when switch­ing on, oth­er­wise there is a risk that the first hear­ing impres­sions will be too loud. To set the vol­ume, the units have a con­tin­u­ous rotary wheel with posi­tions marked with 0 to 4. When play­ing around with it for the first time, it can be seen that from about posi­tion 2.5 on, the unit tends to have a very strong ten­den­cy to feed­back of its own sig­nal, and thus to whis­tle. Posi­tion 1 is already about as strong as my Widex hear­ing aids. I was there­fore sur­prised about the ampli­fi­ca­tion lev­els which at first sight seemed to be over­pow­er­ing. But these still prove to be quite use­ful, as we will see later.

So the nor­mal oper­a­tion as a hear­ing aid looks like this: Turn the vol­ume to lev­el 1, turn on the hear­ing aid, put it on your ear, enjoy. It can also be switched on and off while sit­ting on the ear, the on-off slide switch can be eas­i­ly felt and oper­at­ed behind the ear. Be care­ful when oper­at­ing the vol­ume wheel, how­ev­er, because it can eas­i­ly be turned high­er than you want — and then it may be roar­ing into your ears.

The device works. Ambi­ent noise is ampli­fied and can there­fore be heard more eas­i­ly. There is, how­ev­er, audi­ble ampli­fi­er noise, which is not so great. Also, you can’t adjust the fre­quen­cy response and, with­out hav­ing tak­en more pre­cise mea­sure­ments, I got the impres­sion that the fre­quen­cy response is not exact­ly hi-fi qual­i­ty. My almost 60-year-old hear­ing, there­fore, is under the impres­sion, that the sound of this hear­ing aid is loud­er, but a bit muf­fled. When I com­pare it with my Widex hear­ing aids: With the Widex, the clar­i­ty and crisp­ness of the sound increas­es, with this Far East hear­ing aid, the sound tends to be muf­fled, but in return, the vol­ume can be adjust­ed much more strong­ly than with the Widex.

I had bought two such devices to be equipped for both the right and left ear. That works well. You put a hear­ing ampli­fi­er on the right and left ear and you can hear and per­ceive the ampli­fied ambi­ent noise well. The clear­ly audi­ble ampli­fi­er noise is not ide­al, but it is not so strong that it would mask the ambi­ent noises.

The gain must be adjust­ed sep­a­rate­ly on the right and left. There­fore, you have to be care­ful when reg­u­lat­ing the vol­ume con­trol to ensure an even vol­ume. By com­par­i­son, Widex hear­ing aids com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er and always set the same gain, whether you adjust the vol­ume in the right or left ear. This is a nice advan­tage, but you can live with the sep­a­rate vol­ume con­trol of the hear­ing aids.

Ear fit

Here is a size com­par­i­son. On the left you see the hear­ing aid from Widex. On the right you see the Chi­nese hear­ing ampli­fi­er. The minia­tur­iza­tion of the right mod­el is not quite as suc­cess­ful, but this may be due to the greater range of functions.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I don’t have a let­ter scale to com­pare the weight of the two devices, but my impres­sion is that the right device is of course a good deal heav­ier than the left one, but that does­n’t mat­ter, nei­ther of the two devices feels like a bur­den on the ear. Both can be placed on the ear in such a way that they feel good and fit quite well.

With the Widex, the sound is cre­at­ed at the top of the device and is con­duct­ed through the clear tube to the ear­piece. The tube and ear­piece can be removed. They come in dif­fer­ent lengths and sizes, so the right choice will give you the best fit.

In the Chi­nese hear­ing ampli­fi­er, the sound is pro­duced in the ear­piece. An elec­tri­cal cable runs through the clear tube to the loud­speak­er in the ear­piece. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the tube can­not be removed from the hear­ing aid, as is the case with the Widex. There­fore, the tube can­not be short­ened or length­ened. At least the rub­ber part of the ear­piece can be removed. Dif­fer­ent sizes of this rub­ber part are includ­ed with the device. The user can there­fore eas­i­ly make this adjust­ment him- or her­self. The ear­piece can also be turned slight­ly on the rub­ber tube so that it can be adjust­ed to eas­i­ly sit on the right or left ear. For my ear, the tube is a bit long, but the rub­ber seal in the ear feels good and is com­fort­able enough. It’s a good idea to press the ear­piece firm­ly into the ear so that it seals well and no ambi­ent sound around the ear­piece enters the ear dur­ing use.

Because of the thick­er and longer tub­ing, the sound proces­sor is more vis­i­ble from the front and also pro­trudes slight­ly beyond the wearer’s ear. By com­par­i­son, the Widex’s thin­ner tube, which also dis­ap­pears com­plete­ly behind the wearer’s ear, makes it unob­tru­sive. I have already been told sev­er­al times by a per­son I’ve met that they did­n’t even notice that I was wear­ing hear­ing aids. The sound proces­sor, on the oth­er hand, is noticed more quickly.

Bluetooth

Blue­tooth pair­ing with the mobile phone was as uncom­pli­cat­ed as one would expect nowa­days. You press the cor­re­spond­ing but­ton on the hear­ing aid for three sec­onds (it is labeled with “M”, I guess that stands for “mobile”), check your mobile phone, tap the appear­ing device “ZTQ” and per­form a pair­ing. Now it is con­nect­ed and active.

Now you can play music on your mobile phone and the music will resound in the active hear­ing ampli­fi­er. I’ll come back to what this means in a moment.

When the music is turned off, only the ampli­fied ambi­ent noise is heard again, so the hear­ing ampli­fi­er goes back to nor­mal sound proces­sor function.

When a call comes in, it can be answered by press­ing the M but­ton on the hear­ing ampli­fi­er. The voice of the call will then sound in the active ear.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, nei­ther the music nor the call will be heard in both ears.

The two sound ampli­fiers do not com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er and not simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with the mobile phone. Both can be paired with the mobile phone, but only one of them can be acti­vat­ed at any one time. This means that the sound from the mobile phone is only trans­mit­ted to the hear­ing ampli­fie that is cur­rent­ly active. By acti­vat­ing one or the oth­er paired hear­ing ampli­fi­er on the mobile phone, you can decide whether the sound is trans­mit­ted to the left or the right ear. This is a great pity and clear­ly clouds the Blue­tooth lis­ten­ing pleasure.

The width of the vol­ume set­ting proves to be an advan­tage now. Music or a con­ver­sa­tion part­ner can reach the ear much bet­ter if the ampli­fi­ca­tion is sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased for this purpose.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, when active­ly paired with the mobile phone and with­out active sound trans­mis­sion, a weak but nev­er­the­less annoy­ing reg­u­lar short beep­ing can be heard. This is prob­a­bly due to the fact that the Blue­tooth con­nec­tion to the mobile phone is con­tin­u­ous­ly main­tained in order to be ready for use at any time. If the Blue­tooth func­tion is switched off by press­ing the “M” but­ton for three sec­onds, the beep­ing also dis­ap­pears again.

Conclusion

This hear­ing ampli­fi­er is unbeat­able for its price, even though it can­not be adjust­ed to indi­vid­ual hear­ing, is a bit noisy, and Blue­tooth can only be acti­vat­ed on one ear. On the plus side, we have the long run­ning time, as well as the wide range of adjustable vol­ume. It is very well suit­ed as an inex­pen­sive intro­duc­tion to ampli­fied ambi­ent hear­ing, less so for spe­cial hear­ing needs and as a Blue­tooth device. The man­u­fac­tur­er should def­i­nite­ly do his home­work and enable pair cou­pling of two devices, just like Apple’s Air­Pods, for exam­ple. The hear­ing ampli­fi­er isn’t worth the cat­a­logue price of 343, but the offer of 32 is def­i­nite­ly worth considering.