Oticon Own Detailed Hearing Aid Review

Hi guys, Cliff Olson, Doctor of Audiology and founder of Applied Hearing Solutions in Phoenix, Arizona. and in this video, I'm doing a detailed review of the new custom line of Oticon OWN hearing aids coming up

A little over a year and a half ago, hearing aid manufacturer Oticon released a revolutionary new Oticon, MORE hearing aid. That was the first hearing aid ever to use a Deep Neural Network for sound processing. The more was built using the Polaris chip to allow for this new type of signal processing. And it has become one of the most popular platforms in the history of Oticon of course, just like most hearing aid manufacturers Oticon chose to prioritize the receiver in canal and behind the ear models of this particular hearing aid that is until right now, because they just released a new custom line of Oticon OWN hearing aids that use this same platform. But before I get into my review of the Oticon OWN, if you could do me a huge favor and click the life button, it really helps out my channel because it gets these videos in front of a bigger audience.

And while you're at it, if you have not yet hit that subscribe button with notification bell, go ahead and do that as well, because that ensures that you never missed one of my newly released videos and I release multiple new videos every single week with that being said, I really appreciate it. And I'll just get into a few of the disclaimers before I get into my review. Disclaimer, number one, I never give pricing in my review videos because the price that you pay for these Oticon OWN hearing aids will depend heavily on where you live and which services are included in your hearing aid purchase. Trust me, if I could give you accurate pricing, I would, but I absolutely cannot. Disclaimer. Number two, none of the review videos on my channel are sponsored. So I get to say whatever I want to about these hearing aids, both good and bad, and there's nothing that Oticon can do about it in disclaimer, number three, it does not matter how awesome these hearing aids or any hearing aids are for that matter.

If you have not had them fit and programmed by a hearing care professional who follows Best Practices, you will not be able to achieve the highest level of hearing performance possible. Now, if you do not know what Best Practices are, then I highly recommend that you check out my video, that I will link in the description. If you would like an easy way to find a hearing care professional who follows Best Practices, then check out my website, hearing up.com to find a HearingUp network member near you. So you can experience the difference that exceptional hearing care makes with that all out of the way. Let's go ahead and get into the review. And since the major feature of these particular hearing aids is the onboard Deep Neural Network. I should probably spend some time explaining what a deep neural network is. Basically a deep neural network is an artificial brain that a computer uses to perform deep learning and deep learning is a subset of artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence is a technique that allows a machine to mimic human behavior. And deep learning is a type of machine learning inspired by the human brain. And this structure is called an artificial deep neural network. Now I know that all of this might sound complicated, but let me give you an example of what it actually means. Just imagine that you have two different computers and you're trying to teach those computers. The difference between a cat and a dog in the first computer, we have to actually tell it which characteristics make a cat, a cat, and which characteristics make a dog, a dog. And we have to be as specific as possible because at the end of the day, the computer's ability to actually identify the differences between a cat and a dog will depend specifically on how well we were able to characterize them. But if the second computer uses deep learning, you lit an artificial deep neural network that mimics the performance of the human brain, determine which characteristics make a cat, a cat, and which characteristics make a dog, a dog.

So it's not limited on our capacity to do so. This is exactly what Oticon did with their deep neural network onboard, the Oticon OWN hearing aids. They fed it with 12 million different sound samples. So the deep neural network could perform deep learning to determine which characteristics made speech speech, and which characteristics made noise noise. Basically allowing the deep neural network to train itself is significantly better than having a bunch of engineers telling the hearing aid how to perform. So if you're wondering, were all of the research and development dollars were going clearly it's to make hearing aids that are smarter than both you and I combined Oticon research indicates that the Oticon own hearing aids reduce listening effort by an additional 30% compared to the Oticon open line of custom hearing aids. And they also improve the output signal to noise ratio by an additional 25% compared to the previous generation as well.

This means that not only will you hear substantially better in a background noise situation using the Oticon owned hearing aids, but you actually get to exert less effort in order to achieve this level of performance. The Oticon OWN hearing aids come in five different sizes. You have the invisible in canal, which is abbreviated. IIC you have the completely in canal, which is abbreviated CIC. You have the in the canal model, which is abbreviated ITC, and then you have the half shell version and the full shell version. Now my devices are actually the color black, but they come in five different colors. So if you do not want black, you have four different color options. It will be much more closely matched to your skin tone, but I'm gonna go ahead and put these inside of my ears. Actually, let me show 'em to you here first, because the contouring of these is a little bit different. And the reason that they're different is that they go so deep inside of the ear canal, that they actually contour in a different direction. And it caught me off guard at first, but let me go ahead. This is the left hearing aid. I'm gonna put this one in here really quick.

And I don't know if you guys saw my post on Instagram, but these guys, once you get them in your ears, you basically cannot see them. So left ear. All you see is basically a black hole, like my ear canal, same thing on this side. So these guys are so small and it's very clear that Oticon was attempting to make the invisible in canal as small as they possibly could. This new line of Oticon owned hearing aids are definitely smaller than the previous line of Oticon open hearing aids. And I'm gonna take out the IICs here. I also had, Oticon send me a pair of half shells. So this is like the second to largest size. And even with the second to largest size, these guys are still pretty slim looking inside of my ear. So again, the half shell version here, and again, they're in color black.

I mean, black is, is trending in more of a popular color right now, but like I said, you can get these in a variety of different colors that would match your skin tone better. If you want it to blend in more, the Oticon owned hearing aids, not only come in five different sizes and five different colors, but they also come in five different technology levels. So you have the Oticon OWN one, which is their premium top tier level. Then you have the OWN two OWN three OWN four and OWN five. Now, when you start comparing these tech levels to the receiver and canal counterparts, the own one would be very similar to the More one. So on so forth all the way down to the OWN three and the More three. But then when you start getting into the OWN four and five, those are very similar to the Zircon one.

And Zircon two, when it comes down to selecting which technology level you should go with, I always recommend you go with the highest level of technology that you can reasonably afford because each time you drop down in technology level, it takes features and customizations away from your hearing care professional. That being said, if you cannot afford it, then you should be dropping down in technology level to a level that you can afford. And then it is the job of your hearing care professional to optimize the performance of whatever devices you go with. One thing I absolutely love about these hearing aids from a professional standpoint is that we can use 3d digital scans to take an impression of your ear canal. So we can get an extremely accurate, deep and comfortable physical fit. Yes, you can still have physical impressions taken of your ears and sent off to Ocon.

But if you ask me, I'd prefer to do digital scans every day of the week and twice on Sunday. The, I, I see version of the own hearing aids is by far the most comfortable invisible in canal hearing aid, that goes that deep into my ear canal that I have ever worn. That being said, let's go ahead and talk about the elephant in the room. These hearing aids are not rechargeable. There is no model of these that has a rechargeable lithium battery. Every single one of them uses a disposable battery, either the size 10 battery for the two smallest versions of these hearing aids or a size three 12 battery for the larger versions of these hearing aids and know the full shell does not even have an option for a size 13 battery. Unfortunately. Now, if we're gonna start talking about fitting ranges and available features inside of these hearing aids, we really have to go size by size because size will be a limiting factor for some of these features.

The IIC model is the smallest version of this hearing aid. It uses a size 10 battery, and it does not have the ability to use a push button, which means that you can only use one automatic program sensor. There is no way to use a push button to change programs or change volume since the face plate of the invisible in the canal device is so small. There's not a whole lot of room for the removal string, which means it's right next to the battery door. So every time I open up the battery door, it pushes over on the removal string, which makes me worry that it's gonna eventually pop off. Surprisingly, the invisible in canal version of this hearing aid still gives you the option of a 75 decibel receiver and a 90 decibel receiver and a receiver just in case you're unaware is also considered the speaker of the hearing aid.

The rule of thumb is that you wanna make sure that you have a decibel level that is high enough to accommodate your level of hearing loss. So if you happen to have a high frequency hearing loss that caps out at around 70 decibels, having a 75 decibel receiver inside of your hearing aid would be able to accommodate that. But if you have an 85 decibel high frequency loss, you're gonna wanna make sure that you go with these stronger receiver and get all the way up to 90 decibels. Keep in mind though that if you try to get a 90 decibel receiver inside of this, IIC hearing aid. It might actually make the, I IIC hearing aid look more like a CIC hearing aid or an ITC hearing aid, because it just requires more space. The IIC hearing aid also has no wireless capabilities whatsoever.

So there's no ability to connect with your smartphone. And there's no ability for your two hearing aids to communicate back and forth, which means that you're not gonna get any kind of cross technology inside of these. And you're not gonna be able to actually do Ural sharing of information to help you hear better in background noise. Now, if you choose to go up one size from an IIC to a CIC, you still don't get Bluetooth connectivity, but you get near field magnetic induction, which means that the two hearing aids can actually share information to help you perform binary processing, which will help you out in a background noise situation better. If you do go up one size to the CIC hearing aid, Oticon can usually add a push button on the face plate of this particular device, which will give you access to multiple programs.

It will give you access to volume control, and it will also give you access to tinnitus, sound support. If tinnitus masking is something that you do want to have inside of your hearing aids, I do recommend that you go up one size to this CIC version of this hearing aid. So you can access that feature. The CIC hearing aid also uses the size 10 battery, and it still has access to a 75 decibel receiver and the 90 decibel receiver to try to keep the size of this device as small as possible if you are okay with a slightly larger albeit still very small hearing aid, I definitely recommend that you go with the CIC compared to the I IIC because the nearfield magnetic induction to allow for Ural connectivity of these devices is something that's really worth it. Things start to get even more interesting.

If you're willing to go up in size to an, in the canal, half shell or full shell version of these Oticon OWN hearing aids. Once you go up to these sizes, you unlock the ability to use a hundred decimal receiver, which means that if you have a little bit more of a severe hearing loss, the larger sizes of the Oticon OWN hearing aids are going to be able to accommodate that. Not only do these larger sizes allow for more amplification, but they also give you nearfield magnetic induction for Bial sound processing and optional Bluetooth connectivity or telecoil capabilities. Now, when I say optional, I mean that you can get either Bluetooth or telecoil. You cannot get both of them, which means you have some decisions to make in order to connect with an apple device or an Android device, you need to select a Bluetooth option.

If connecting to a hearing loop is more important to you, then you're gonna have to select a telecoil option and sacrifice the Bluetooth. Now, I really wish that Oticon would've given you the ability to have both of them inside of the same device, but unfortunately this is not the case from a Bluetooth perspective. I prefer to use the Oticon hearing aids with an apple device. It's just much better connectivity in my opinion, because these hearing aids are made for iPhone technology. First and foremost. Now you can technically use them with an Android device, but you have to use the Asher Bluetooth protocol. And I'm just not that big of a fan of the Asher Bluetooth protocol. I just don't think it works as well as the made for iPhone connection. Now, if you do elect to go with an Android device with these hearing aids, you are going to lose the two way audio feature.

So you do not get fully hands free phone calls. I always recommend that you check out Oticon's website to make sure that your smart devices are compatible with your hearing aids. The last thing that you want to do is going on for your fitting appointment only to realize that your smartphone is not actually capable of streaming audio to your new hearing aids. If you have a push button on your, in the canal, have shell or full shell version of this hearing aid, then you can use that push button to answer a phone call and use that two-way audio. As long as you have an iPhone. And then the person on the other end of the line can hear you because your voice goes through the microphones of the hearing aids, which means you can leave your phone in your pocket or leave it in your purse.

Again, you cannot do this two way audio with an Android device. You have to have a compatible apple device in order to do that, but you can stream audio from an apple device or an Android device into both of your hearing aids. So this means music, podcasts, audio books, YouTube videos, and basically anything that has sound in order to use the connect clip or TV streamer accessories. You also have to have the 2.4 gHz Bluetooth option in these hearing aids. If you elect to go with the Bluetooth option, you also gain access to the Oticon On app. This app is available on apple or Android devices, which will allow you to adjust between different programs, including your accessories, and you can increase or decrease your volume. The Oticon on app is also unique in that it allows you to adjust a three band audio streaming equalizer to help you optimize the sound quality of music and other streamed media.

Of course, if you happen to lose either one of your Oticon OWN hearing aids, the find my hearing aid feature will help you locate them by telling you their last known location. If you're a really techy person, you also gain access to the Oticon On app using your apple watch, which will allow you to adjust your hearing aid programs, your different accessories and adjust apple or Android devices, which will allow you to adjust between different programs, including your accessories, and you can increase or decrease your volume. The Oticon on app is also unique in that it allows you to adjust a three band audio streaming equalizer to help you optimize the sound quality of music and other streamed media. Of course, if you happen to lose either one of your Oticon OWN hearing aids, the find my hearing aid feature will help you locate them by telling you their last known location.

If you're a really techy person, you also gain access to the Oticon on app using your apple watch, which will allow you to adjust your hearing aid programs, your different accessories, and adjust your volume. And you can do all of this without having to pull out your phone. Overall, the Oticon OWN hearing aid finally gives hearing aid users who want a custom hearing aid, all of the same great features that you could find inside of a Oticon More hearing aid. Of course, I would have loved to see a rechargeable version of these particular devices. And I would've loved to see the ability to get both Bluetooth and telecoil connectivity inside of the same device. But unfortunately you're gonna have to make some compromises here, but if you want a fantastic custom hearing aid that uses a deep neural network and has a bunch of great features inside options, you may wanna ask your hearing care professional about the Oticon OWN. The next time that you're looking at new hearing aids. That's it for this video. If you have any questions, leave them in the comment section below. If you like the video, please share it. And if wanna see other videos, just like this one, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Also feel free to check out my website, HearingUp.com.