Before buying the BeHear ACCESS, I had NHS behind-the-ear hearing aids for five years and needed them to be readjusted after three. This required waiting for an appointment with the audiologist. Luckily that was before Covid and the lockdowns. One of the great things about the BeHear hearables is that if I feel my hearing has deteriorated, I can just use the built-in hearing assessment any time I like (lockdown or not) and save the settings in the App’s library.
My original reason for moving on from my hearing aids, was I wanted to use Bluetooth. My hobby is Family History and our U3A group face to face meetings had had to be cancelled during lockdown, so we trialed Zoom meetings with great success. Unfortunately, my laptop sound is not of sufficient quality or level for my hearing, and I was losing a lot of the conversation.
I researched a number of available Bluetooth adapters such as neck loops as well as hearables products, and although there are other hearables that also have a self-assessment feature, the BeHear wearables looked to be the only ones that could offer the range of features I was looking for and the level of audio gain that my high frequency hearing loss required.
When I had my NHS (National Health Service) hearing aids readjusted previously I had also had the Telecoil feature enabled as I had found theatre acoustics and reverberation a problem. The BeHear ACCESS provided the perfect solution with the in-built Telecoil.
Having had the BeHear ACCESS for a while now, I have been very pleased with the purchase. There are a number of activities that have improved that I had not considered originally; for example, I can listen to a podcast whilst mowing the lawn or adjust the sound settings on the fly for a difficult sound situation. The wind noise (with or without the supplied wind mufflers) is much less of a problem than with the BTE.
With the extra boost these give to my high frequency hearing, I can appreciate bird song again.
Finally, my BTE hearing aids pick up unwanted noise from behind. This is particularly bothersome in a restaurant. Sitting with my back to a wall doesn’t solve the problem as the hard surface reflects the sound onto the hearing aids. With lockdown coming to an end I am looking forward to enjoying restaurants and theatre shows.
Negatives are few and small. The NHS hearing aids are more comfortable; I did find the earbuds a little difficult to get used to and had to use the smallest size (perhaps I have small ear canals) and they can make my ears sore if I have them in all day. The Bluetooth range would be better if it was version 5.0 rather than Version 4.2, but connection can be made to two devices e.g., laptop and phone concurrently, which is really useful.
