Starkey Halo Hearing Aid

I wear them daily.

I love my hearing aids, they are a tremendous help, especially since I can control the settings from my iPhone.

These hearing aids are so comfortable I sometimes forget they are in and go to bed or even start to get in the shower. I like the iPhone remote mic when visiting with many people I can isolate my conversations. Great value and great product.

This aid requires an iPhone connection to manage settings, hearing level, etc. That sounds great--and it is when it works--but the product constantly has trouble connecting, especially after an IOS upgrade. Rather than take responsibility and hire better software engineers (and build a better app), the site's customer support and manuals always blame Apple. Sorry, but I use lots of Bluetooth apps without this kind of trouble. Given the phone connection is THE ONLY way to control the aids, Starkey really needs to invest more in their mobile apps, especially considering I spent $6K on the aids.

The Surf Link unit has manufacturing flaws which are not being addressed by the company. This is the second unit within one year that needs replacing DUE TO MANUFACTURING ISSUES! I am not at all happy with the quality of Starkey products. The hearing aides also have engineering issues that could EASILY be fixed, but this company is not interested in helping people. This company is interested in PROFIT ONLY.

The big problem is that they intermittently and randomly quit communicating with each other and/or the phone app. The audiologist has twice gotten replacements and now it has happened with the 3d pair. I try everything I can think of: switching them on and off, cleaning, replacing or swapping batteries, with no luck. Then just as unpredictably they will start pairing again. Sometimes one side just drops out while I am wearing them. When they are working, they are absolutely life-enhancing and wonderful. When they aren't, it is that much more frustrating. Given the same intermittent failure recurs with 3 consecutive sets, and that I have seen other comments about this problem from users, I am concluding that there is a design or software flaw. I hope a software update or other fix will be offered soon.

I live alone and during the day, when I am working in my office, I do not wear the hearing aids. I wear the hearing aids when watching TV and when I get together with friends/family and they work great to cut out the "mumbling".

going well

Have had them for two weeks. The jury is still out. Can not wear my glasses because they rub up against the ear aids and cause a bad rubbing noise.

I tried StarKey Halos from March 2015 to May. I returned them because the telecoils were oriented wrong for hearing loops. I qualified for a HLAA discount. I posted my problem on the Yahoo Loop and T-coil forum. There are only one or two postings a day. Within a day there were 20 response. The first was, "You should have bought ReSound LinX2." I researched ReSound, and planned to check them out, when we migrated to Florida. Last fall, I learned the ReSound owned Beltone and any Beltone office would tweak HAs. So, I bought very expensive Beltone Ledgend made for iPhone HAs. I hope Starkey has changed their t-coil orientation.

Its a good felling that I can hear people better in a group

I am very pleased with my hearing aid.Just wish the ear piece would fit better.

The in-ear-canal speaker component requires you to regularly change little filters and tiny rubber covers. It's a very fussy operation, and the speakers are incredibly fragile. I have TWICE broken the speakers (which are connected with hair-thin wire), and had to go to an authorized service center to have them replaced. Bottom line: the Halo is so poorly designed it can't be reasonably maintained.

I love my Halo i110. I wear one as a hearing aid won't help with the right side. They are great all around but the noise canceling has to be one of the best features after connectivity to the iPhone. To hear the loud background noise and then 10 seconds or so later have it quiet down is beyond amazing. The car feature is pretty amazing too. I have had some connectivity problems but very few. Best thing I ever did was switch over to them. I don't have a cross but I really don't miss it.

I'm not a rep. for any hearing aid company. I have no bias toward or against starkey or any other manufacturer. If the aid(s) work for me then they work for me. I despise bias reviews as they prevent you and ME from making a comparative analysis of the product. I will try to be brutally honest in my review as that is what I would expect from you. I will sing the praises when deserved and do the booing as well. I kicked in $2,800 us dollars with my insurance and the state of Arkansas paid the rest for my halos as I am legally deaf. Just putting that out there so everyone knows that I'm not a starkey or a competitor rep. Here is my review of my starkey halos i110. I completely agree with the previous post about the halos not being able to eliminate a steady annoying sound like fan blades or air conditioner blowing like the ignites were able to do. I too have switched from the ignites to the halos. If it wasn't for the 70db gain ric i would still be with the ignites. The ability to eliminate the steady annoying sounds was ALMOST a deal breaker in my opinion. Seriously ... itc has it but bte doesn't ? REALLY? Bluetooth takes up that much software and hardware space? REALLY? I would give up the iPhone compatibility to have kept the steady sound annoying reduction ability. Don't get me wrong ... the halos are pretty powerful aids ... I have binaural sensory nerve loss in both ears ... 94% in one and 96% in the other and these aids with the 70db ric gain ... with the seemly normal ski slope hearing loss (high pitch forget about it ... low pitch I can hear pretty good) I don't have to amp them up to 100% ... so far they are at 75% volume and I'm loving that. I do not like the fact that the software reboots them at 45% when they are turned on. So I have to pair them every morning to raise the volume to the 75%. Do not even get me started on the pairing issue. They are a BIG HUGE FREAKING headache to pair. You might start one morning with them paired perfectly with no issues. Then the next day you have to fight with them 100 times to get them to both pair. Many times one will pair but the other will not. I have rebooted them as well as my iPhone ... turned bluetooth off and back on ... followed the instructions to the letter ... even sent emails to starkey support complaining about the pairing issue ... only to be frustrated by the "try again" response. I even have them saved to my iPad mini just in case. I wonder if the resound ones have as much trouble? When they work ... they are fabulous ... when they don't ... its a big headache as the halos have no external way of adjusting the volume or any of the features. The starkey rep has said they are going to release an android version of the true link software so that they will work with android phones. If that works out ... I'll say goodbye to my iPhone for sure. While talking on the phone with the bluetooth implementation sometimes one aid will turn off while the other stays on ... so I'm down to listening to the phone call on one aid. Sometimes a few seconds/minutes the other aid will join the call again and I'm back up to both aids with the phone call. Sometimes I'll get a call and neither aid will respond to the call and I have to jerk one out of my ear to answer the call. NOT cool starkey. I have a love/hate relationship with my halos. When they work correctly I sing their praises ... when they fail to work as "advertised" I hate them and will curse them until they work again. But as you ... the end user ... you just want to know ... should I get them? My answer is ... yes ... if you can deal with the pairing issues they have. (I have not heard of any bluetooth earpiece having such trouble ... you know like the ones you can buy at best buy like motorola or plantronics) If you are not tech savvy ... I would not get the halos. A little about me for reference: I do tech support for a living, I am 46, I'm a male. And yes the halos are so small that sometimes I even have a hard time balancing them to get them on my ears. Once they are on ... they stay on ... so I'll give starkey that. And their noise suppression (feedback) is second to none on the bte ... on the itc their noise suppression was close to zero as in 100% failure. I could hold my hand up to my ear and hear the squeal all day long but not with the bte.

Love them. Bluetooth works 96% of the time ... the 4% is probably because I have my iPhone bluetoothed to my car. These are the first hearing aids that I can operate at 60% volume and still have room to up the volume if needed. I am severe to profoundly deaf. The only downside that I've noted is they lack the (i forget the technical term) to eliminate a steady sound such as a fan rotating .... which the ignites *another starkey product* could do. The rep said that was something they did not put in these *halos* because of software limitations due to the size. My ignites were "in the ear" so I don't see how that makes sense. But overall I give the halos two thumbs up ... as they are pretty dang small and have amazing sound output. One last thing ... make sure your ric are specced to you ... my audio ordered the 70db gain and received the 50db gain instead.

I approached my first hearing aids (these are actually my second, but the first were with me only about two weeks) with a lot of experience (my father and his siblings, one of my brothers, grandparents, cousins, second cousins - all of them wear or wore hearing aids). I knew early in my life that I was going to be wearing hearing aids. I am about the same age my father was when he received his first. I have a fairly severe loss of hearing in both ears and a significant degradation in audio quality in my right ear. One primary selling point to me for the Halo is the ability to use my iPhones to control the aids' settings, along with using the hearing aids as my phones' headset. I have a job where I spend a lot of time on the phone. Wired headsets were no longer providing enough volume for me to be able to follow conversations, particularly with sometimes 10-20 people on a conference call. I have to say I am quite pleased with the aids (we call them my 'bionic ears') from the beginning. While they are not invisible and I can always tell they are in my ears, the sensation is not unpleasant. I am sure that I will eventually get to the point where I notice them less and less. Battery life - so far - is quite good. 6-8 days, on average for a set of batteries (I am almost always connected to one of my iPhones via Bluetooth, but have not used the aids to stream music extensively yet), but I am still testing batteries. I like the audio alert (a quiet, male voice says "battery" when one is running low) and I seem to get sufficient life after the alert to find a time and place to swap batteries. Initial Bluetooth connection to my phones was pretty painless, but I still needed the manufacturer-provided instructions, since hearing aids do not pair via Bluetooth like a standard device. The iPhone controller application is fairly full-featured. I am able to control bass, treble and volume. I am able to create my own settings and locations. I very much like the fact that I can create settings without tying them to a geographic location. My audiologist created an "Auto" setting to which I can have the aids automatically change when I am traveling 10 mph or faster. That settings provides a reduction in road noise. I have four audiologist-programmed settings and I have what seems to be an unlimited number of personal settings I can create. The audio coming through my iPhone is very good and I use one of my personal settings to adjust the sound for phone calls. While the aids can be used for audio streaming from my iPhone, I have not yet tested that extensively. I expect the sound to be fair to good, based on limited testing so far. Based on my experience with my first aids, I expect using them in that fashion will impact battery life. Overall, I am very pleased with the aids.