Oticon Real Hearing Aid

Real is the latest flagship hearing aid family from Danish hearing aid giant Oticon. Real offers many of the same features as its predecessor More, such as Bluetooth audio streaming, access to Oticon's Deep Neural Network (DNN) technology, and water resistance. Tune in, or keep reading, to find out the two biggest advancements offered by Oticon Real.

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Oticon released their Oticon More receiver-in-canal hearing aids exactly two years ago now. And as with all hearing aid manufacturers, this is the pattern we tend to see in terms of them superseding their existing technology. Then, in August 2022, we also saw them update their custom in-the-ear hearing aid family called Oticon Own.

The new Oticon Real hearing aids became available in February 2023. The Real looks identical to its predecessors and is initially available in four different models:

• The miniRITE R is a receiver-in-the-ear (RITE, which is the same thing as a RIC or receiver-in-canal) hearing aid with a rechargeable battery
• The miniRITE T uses a disposable size 312 battery
• The miniBTE R is a behind-the-ear (BTE) with a rechargeable battery, and
• The miniBTE T is a BTE that uses a size 312 battery.

Although the "T" mark on a hearing aid model usually denotes a "Telecoil," all four of these models (including the rechargeables) have telecoils.

You'll note that the miniBTEs are behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aids, which can be fitted using both a standard tube or a slim-tube that is a very thin, almost transparent plastic tube that transfers the sound from the processing unit behind your ear to the earmold and your ear canal. The miniRITEs, in contrast, have a very thin wire that runs from the processing unit behind the ear to a speaker connected to a dome eartip in your ear canal. Both the RITE and BTE slim-tube are aesthetically discreet and the hearing aid comes in nine different colors to choose from with a matted finish. Most hearing aid users tend to find something that's the closest color to their hair.

Interestingly, unlike other hearing aid manufacturers, such as the new Phonak Lumity, Oticon are sticking with their guns and launching these hearing aids in both the rechargeable and non-rechargeable version at the same time. The rechargeable version should give you a full day of battery life with a three-hour charge, and the battery version is likely to last just under a week before you need to change the batteries over.

So the burning question is, "What exactly is new with these Oticon Real hearing aids?" From my recent discussions with Oticon, they're focusing on very practical, day-to-day improvements that I do have patients mentioning periodically in clinic. As a basis, they've all the same key features as the Oticon More family, however with two key feature developments to-date.

So first of all, let's discuss their wind and handling stabilizer, which runs under the new More Sound Intelligence 2.0. More Sound Intelligence 2.0 is an automatic feature designed to make it easier for you to follow and engage in conversations in more complicated listing environments such as groups, crowds, and noisy listening situations. It comprehensively scans your sound scene 500 times per second and then organizes and delivers the sound based on the training from the hearing aid's Deep Neural Network. This hearing system is driven by artificial intelligence (AI) to highlight the sounds that will be of interest and create a contrast with the sounds that you are less likely to want to hear.

Now, Oticon is claiming that their addition of this new wind and handling stabilizer is the world's first wind and handling noise prevention feature which detects and cleans up wind and handling noise. But what exactly does that mean?

Oticon is boasting that they took this nice lady to one of the world's largest university-owned wind tunnels and tested their new tech against two other hearing aid manufacturers. Their testing showed that the Oticon Real was able to both reduce wind noise and provide better speech clarity where two leading competitors could only perform well in one of those tasks. On top of that, they've also focused their attention on what they call handling noise, which is the sound that your hearing aid makes when it's touched.

When I say touched, this can be on purpose such as pressing the button on the back of your hearing aid, or alternatively when running your fingers through your hair and catching it by accident. Oticon clearly felt that this was enough of an issue to focus their attention on and their research shows Real to have outperformed those competitor hearing aids by both 14 and 19 decibels.

Their second new feature is their Sudden Sound Stabilizer which runs under the More Sound Amplifier 2.0. The More Sound Amplifier 2.0 works alongside the More Sound Intelligence 2.0 and provides dynamic and balanced amplification reacting to the nature of the sound scene and then adapting its resolution. Oticon states that this results in a far more natural listening experience, giving you access to speech but at the same time, not overwhelming you with loud environmental sounds around you.

The new Sudden Sound Stabilizer is designed to detect both soft, loud, and sudden sounds and to control them so that yes, they're audible, but at the same time, they're not uncomfortably loud or intrusive. This is all whilst maintaining speech audibility at the same time.

In practical terms, Oticon boasts that this should reduce your listening effort when you're surrounded by annoying background noises and maintain your ability to hear the speech of the person sat in front of you which should result in a comfortable, easy listening situation.

Now, as I briefly mentioned before, the Oticon Real has the same foundations as their Oticon More family of hearing aids, such as Bluetooth connectivity, artificial intelligence via Deep Neural Network, their waterproof rating, etc., but with these two main developments.

So are these changes that we're seeing from Oticon big life-changing developments? Not necessarily. Do they sound like improvements over and above their Oticon More family? Absolutely.