Hear Better

Hear Better

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App details

Release date

0001-01-01

Last update

0001-01-01

Product ID

XPFCPCGDKGZ106

Categories

Health & fitness

About Hear Better

Can You Hear Better Now?

To many people, hearing loss represents another step in the dreaded march to old age. In fact, only about 20% of the 36 million Americans who could benefit from a hearing aid actually use one, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Diseases

Now, a wave of new devices that are smaller, hipper and sold over-the-counter are trying to win over more consumers—and appeal to the growing number of younger people with hearing damage from loud music.

One upcoming model is a smartphone app. Others look like MP3 players or Bluetooth headsets. Some can barely be seen at all.

They’re also less expensive: Traditional hearing aids can cost more than $4,000 per ear and aren’t covered by Medicare or most insurers.

Often likened to “reading glasses” for the ears, many of the new models come preset to boost sounds in the high frequencies that most people lose first. That lets consumers bypass audiologists, who have traditionally controlled the market by giving hearing tests and selling custom-programmed hearing aids.

Technically, many of the new devices are “personal sound amplification products,” or PSAPs, intended to help people with normal hearing better hear in situations like noisy restaurants and large gatherings, according to Food and Drug Administration guidelines issued in 2009. Hearing aids, by contrast, are medical devices for the hearing-impaired and subject to FDA approval, the agency says.

But the distinctions are blurring, with some PSAPs boasting the same technology that digital hearing aids offer for hundreds, not thousands, of dollars. Meanwhile, online retailers such as America Hears Inc. and Audicus are selling custom-programmed hearing aids at steep discounts direct to consumers when they send in their hearing-test results.

Audiologists warn that consumers who skip the professional exam could damage their hearing further with PSAPs. They also may miss finding a treatable cause for their hearing problems, from excess earwax to an auditory tumor. But industry observers say the new versions could get more consumers to at least consider getting help.

“If friends and family are bugging you because you ask them to repeat themselves too often, and if you can’t hear the TV without turning it up, a PSAP is a great way to address the problem initially,” says David Copithorne, a marketing executive who writes the influential blog, HearingMojo.com. “You can buy a PSAP over the Internet, stick it in your ear, and see if it helps. For a lot of people it will.”

Key features

  • Like millions of others, I have mild hearing loss but am not ready for a hearing aid. So I've been trying some of these alternatives. Here's what I found:
  • It is the size of a Cheerio and sits in the ear where it is virtually invisible. The company, known for its noise-canceling headphones, put the same Linx Audio technology into each tiny earpiece to reduce background noise while it amplifies frequencies that carry speech.