Nuheara IQbuds² MAX and Hearing Aids Compared
A year ago, our guest contributor, Andy Bellavia, shared his impressions on the performance of consumer hearing enhancement hearables in a difficult environment when he tried out the Nuheara IQbuds Boost along with his newly-fitted hearing aids at NAMM 2019, the annual meeting of the National Association of Music Merchants. This year, armed with his year-old hearing aids and a pre-production version of Nuheara’s latest offering, Andy updated his impressions with a report from a noisy exhibit hall at NAMM 2020.
Andy Bellavia at NAMM with Nuheara IQbuds² MAX (hearable) and Phonak Audéo Marvel (hearing aid). Our guest contributor compares the performance of the latest Nuheara buds with his existing hearing aids. Closed captions are available on this video. If you are using a mobile phone, please enable captions clicking on the gear icon.
Both products worked well.
After testing both products, Andy—who suffers from more-than-mild hearing loss—concludes that the less expensive Nuheara hearables are likely sufficient for those with normal hearing or mild hearing loss, who need “situational” assistance in challenging listening environments. His more expensive Phonak Audéo Marvel hearing aids are better for those with moderate-to-severe hearing loss who need all-day assistance.
“When you have mild or more severe hearing impairment, modern hearing tech does wonders for improving the quality of life,” he says.
Hearables provide excellent “situational” hearing help
The Nuheara IQbuds² MAX, available at $399 a pair, are a lot less expensive than premium hearing aids. There are some tradeoffs for the lower price: they are larger, and their rechargeable batteries don’t provide all-day power.
But they offer some customized amplification for your level of hearing loss and the ability to focus on the voices directly in front, along with features found in premium music earphones such as active noise cancellation (ANC) and voice-assistant access.
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Nuheara IQbuds² MAX
Andy says hearables like the IQbuds2 MAX can be an excellent solution for people with less severe hearing loss than he has. “When situational assistance is all you need, a consumer device like Nuheara’s works well,” he says. “They do their job well for those who need help in environments like NAMM or a noisy pub.”
Premium hearing aids deliver all-day assistance
A year ago, Andy was a first-time hearing-aid wearer, just getting used to amplified sound. Since then, he’s found that his premium-priced hearing aids, which can cost more than $4,000 a pair, are indispensable.
Andy’s hearing aids filter out unwanted environmental sounds, even on a noisy convention show floor, to make it easier to hear the people he’s speaking with. “They sound so natural and are so comfortable that I sometimes forget to take them out when I go to bed,” he says. “It’s only when my head hits the pillow that I realize they’re still in, and then I have to get up and take them out.”
And the small rechargeable batteries in the hearing aids typically provide power for 18 hours or more on a single charge, even when they’re used for calls or audio streaming.
A solution for every level of hearing loss
Andy concludes that no matter what range of hearing loss you may have, there is a device that will make life easier and rewarding. And “like everyone else,” he waited too long to deal with his own hearing loss.
“I finally got tired of checking out of conversations I couldn’t hear, or asking for a person to repeat themselves even when it was quieter,” he says. “Being a social person, I enjoy myself so much more now that I don’t have to struggle to understand others.”
Watch this space for more from Andy — he’s got an open invitation to contribute more of his insights, in both writing and video, as he tries out more new products. Who knows? Next year maybe we’ll see him testing two pairs of black earbuds, one from a provider of medical grade custom fitted hearing aids, and the other from a supplier of off-the-shelf, self-fit hearables.
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It’s becoming clear that hearable designers are not waiting for the FTC to define guidelines for ‘OTC hearing aids’.
First, getting these guidelines defined would be like getting a bill through Congress (i.e. this may not happen in our lifetimes).
Second, that legacy tag (‘hearing aid’) would be the death knell for any modern hearable. ‘Hearing aid’ still congers up the vision of an expensive, dumb device that your grandfather wore that could not discriminate between speech and noise, and that you would not be caught wearing at your own funeral.
Hearable designers have been enhancing ear buds to equal or surpass the performance of hearing aids and doing this at 5% of the cost. Hearables are quickly becoming subsumed into the wearable technology revolution. This is analogous to the smartphone revolution. Thankfully, a new day is dawning for the hearing impaired.
I think you hit on a valid point regarding hearing instrument perception. One thing hearable companies have brought to the table is a more positive, destigmatizing message. Less talk of impairment and loss, more around hearing personalization and augmentation. They also promise to offer alternative solutions for those with milder needs, a group which rarely seeks professional care today and yet can benefit from augmentation in difficult situations. That was, of course, the theme of my video.
As for the cost of medical-grade hearing instruments, they are not expensive because of any kind of monopolistic control. In fact, an industry with five major players that ship combined <20m units annually is rather fragmented and therefore competitive. Take GN for example. They have both hearing instrument and hearable divisions (ReSound and Jabra, etc., respectively). In their annual report for 2019 they published results for the two separately. Both have virtually the same EBITA profit margin. At least for GN, hearing instruments are not more profitable than hearables.
The hearing instruments themselves are quite advanced. As I point out in the video, my devices are unbelievably small, are Bluetooth connected, augment my hearing in more sophisticated ways than mere amplification, and go 18 hours+ between charges. Today's hearables cannot match that. Of course that comes at a cost, in particular the expense to develop the custom processors that make it all happen. For those like me who need hearing instrument processing power combined with all-day wear, the cost is worth it. That's not even counting the multiple audiologist visits which I can say from personal experience are necessary to get the tuning right in more severe cases. So there is a place for medical-grade hearing instruments as well as hearables.
In my opinion, the issue around hearing instrument expense is better directed toward insurance coverage than device cost. At least in the US, hearing care continues to be regarded more as elective than necessary, a situation for which there is no excuse.
ARE GN’s Resound Profit Margins really reasonable? Not from this hearing impaired end user’s point of view. GN’s earnings EBITA may be similar between these two divisions but that overlooks what I believe is a critical difference. The Resound devices (I own one) are sold to the audiology dispensing community at wholesale prices and resold by the audiologists at an enormous markup to the consumers. I understand the audiologists deliver diagnostic and fitting services to the end user that the audiologists believe justify their pricing. I would MUCH prefer to pay a reasonable price for the aids and separately for hearing tests and programming/fitting services according to my own needs. But my main point is that the profit margin of hearing aid manufacturers fails to include combined profit margins of the manufacturer and the dispenser.
I suspect the other GN device mentioned, with which I’m unfamiliar, is not sold through channels characterized by huge additional price markups.
I have both Nuheara and Audeo Marvel M90. I have profound loss of high tones in one ear and some higher frequency mid range loss in the other ear. I have a household of women so higher frequency is vital.
Having used both I would say that based on my experience over the past 18/12 that the Audio Marvel M 90 are very useful whereas in my situation the Nuhera are almost useless.
Thanks for these insights. After a stapedotomy operation that went wrong I'm now completely deaf on my left ear. I'm testing now since a couple of weeks oticon's CROS hearing aids. They help in special situations but I don't think I will wear them every day. Before I decide to buy them, I'm looking into other solutions. Therefore my two questions:
- Does Nuheara's IQbuds2 support CROS functionality, i.e. can one bud work as the microphone (in my case: left side) and the other as the amplifier (right side)?
- Does Nuheara's IQbuds2 work with a Samsung S10 (android) phone?