Resound Custom 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 by ReSound hearing aids. Coming up. Well, it has been a while since we've seen a new Custom hearing aid from ReSound, but I have to say that it was well worth the wait.

ReSound released their new ReSound ONE receiver and Canal hearing aid with M&RIE receiver in August of 2020. And since then, we have had to wait nearly two years to see an update to their Custom line of devices. So if you prefer to use a Custom in-the-ear style hearing aid, then buckle up, because there are a lot of things that I like about these Custom by ReSound hearing aids and only a few things that I don't. But before I get into my detailed review, if you could do me a huge favor and click the like button, it really helps out my channel and it lets me know that you wanna see more detailed review videos just like this one. 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 miss one of my newly released videos. And I release multiple new videos every single week.

All that out of the way, I really appreciate it. Now, let's go ahead and get into some disclaimers about this video. Disclaimer number one. I do not give pricing in my review videos because pricing is heavily dependent on where you live and what types of services are included with your hearing aid purchase. Believe me, if I could, I would, but there is not a single person on this planet that could give you an estimate for what these hearing aids would cost, because that is very specific to the clinic that you go to. Disclaimer number two. None of the review videos on my channel, including this one, are sponsors. So I'm gonna say whatever I want about these hearing aids and if ReSound doesn't like it, then too bad. And disclaimer number three. It does not matter how awesome a hearing aid is unless you've had it fit and programmed by a hearing care professional who follows best practices. Now, if you do not know what best practices are, I highly recommend that you check out my video that I will link in the description.

If you would like to find a hearing care professional who follows best practices, then make sure that you check out my website, hearingup.com, to find a hearing up network member near you and experience the difference that exceptional hearing care makes. With all that out of the way, I think, that we should start the review with taking a look at these new Custom by ReSound hearing aids. And I've gotta say these have to be the coolest looking in-the-ear hearing aids that I have ever seen. Most likely inspired by Jabra, which is another GN owned brand. All right, let me go ahead and take these and put them in my ear, so you can see what they look like. I'm gonna take 'em out of the rechargeable case. And let's talk about some of the things that you can see on these hearing aids. So first and foremost, they have a really big push button on the center of them. They have dual microphones here with a removable microphone cover to give them the directionality effect and to make keeping these devices maintained very easy. And they also have a step down vent that you can probably see right here, but it actually hides the vent a little bit and gives it a really modern and sleek look. The ones I'm wearing are the anthracite color, which is considered the in-style color, but they also have their blending colors that will match to hair and skin tones, so they don't stand out as much. Now, it's a little confusing, but these actually are called Customs by ReSound.

Now, ReSound has had other custom line of hearing aids, other brands of hearing aids have custom hearing aids. So it's a little confusing that they would take a generic name like customs and make that the name of this Custom lineup. Now, there are three different tier levels of these. You have the top-tier premium level nines. You have the mid-tier level sevens. And you have the bottom-tier level fives. When it comes to technology level, I always recommend that you go with the highest level of technology that you can reasonably afford. Each time you drop down in tier level, it takes features and customizations away from your hearing care professional who's trying to optimize that technology for your hearing loss. Of course, if you have to drop down in tier level in order to be able to afford these devices, it is the job of your hearing care professional to optimize the performance of whatever technology you allow them to work with. Now, the ones that I am wearing are extremely comfortable inside of my ears. And this is largely due to the fact that ReSound took 3D digital scans from my clinic and made these hearing aids from those digital scans. They will also accept physical impressions of your ears from your hearing care professional. But if I had to make a recommendation, I would say really try to get 3D scans sent into ReSound, so they can optimize the fit of your devices. These customs technically come in three different sizes. You have the full-shell, the half-shell and the completely in canal. Of course, the size of the completely in canal hearing aids will depend on the size of your ear canals, but they will not be invisible.

These Custom hearing aids do not have a telecoil, but the good news is ReSound has a multi-mic accessory that has telecoil capability. And you can connect that multi-mic up to these Custom devices to give you access to a hearing loop, if that's something that's important to you. And know these are not the smallest Custom in-the-ear hearing aids that you have ever seen, but that is not the intent of these devices. The intent of these devices is to make them look cool and to make them look like a cool wireless earbud that has gained a lot of mainstream acceptance in the past several years. One of the other reasons that these hearing aids are the size that they are is that they use lithium rechargeable battery technology, which is a larger technology than if you were to use a disposable battery. Now, I have to say that this charger case is pretty sleek, because they actually build a Custom inserts for these hearing aids inside of the case, that can be remove as you can see right here, but it holds the hearing aid in a really nice orientation to be able to receive the charge from the lid of the charger.

These Custom inserts also allow you to easily remove the hearing aid from the charger in the proper orientation to just stick it inside of your ears. So if you're someone who has issues with spatial awareness when you're trying to insert your hearing aids, all you have to do is take it out of the charger case like you normally would and stick it inside your ear. And it's much easier than it would be otherwise. Now, one of the negatives of having these Custom inserts is that if you ever have to send your hearing aids into ReSound to have them work done, you really need to be sending the Custom inserts along with them. So you have to make sure that you bring your charger back to your hearing care professional every single time that you see them. Now, I've also gotta knock ReSound for not putting a power bank inside of this charger. So it's not one that you can just unplug, take it on the go and charge your hearing aids whenever you need it. You have to have it plugged into the wall. And on top of that, if you're gonna unplug it from the wall and have your hearing aids inside the case 'cause you don't wanna put them in your ears yet, it actually turns on the hearing aids. And then you can hear them whistling as well as having the battery drain while they're inside the case. As of right now, there is no option for a rechargeable portable case, but hopefully, that's on the roadmap for ReSound in the future. These rechargeable hearing aids also take longer to charge the most lithium battery rechargeable hearing aids. Instead of three hours, it takes these five hours to go from 0% battery to 100% battery. The good news is you get 24 hours of battery life and a whopping 20 hours of battery life if you stream the entire time, which is absolutely unheard of with hearing aid technology.

Having rechargeable custom hearing aids also makes these hearing aids much better when it comes to moisture resistance and debris resistance. They have an IP rating of 68, which means that you can take and dunk them in a bucket of water for 30 minutes, pull 'em out and they should still be able to function. Every single component of these hearing aids are nano-coded before being assembled. And then after they have it all assembled, they nano-code it again just for good measure. In terms of programmability, these hearing aids are every bit as customizable and have all of the same features as the ReSound ONE hearing aids, except for of course the M&RIE receiver, because that type of technology is just not possible within in-the-ear hearing aid. You get access to the ultra-focused directionality feature, which narrows up the pickup range of your microphones to ensure that you can hear better in a background noise situation. And you also get access to the all access directionality feature, which keeps you aware of your surroundings while still being able to perform well in a background noise environment. In fact, you get up to 25% better speech understanding and background noise compared to the ReSound Quattros from just a generation ago.

From a Bluetooth streaming perspective, these are compatible with an Android device using the ASHA Bluetooth protocol, as well as in Apple device using Apple's Bluetooth flow energy. And in my opinion, it is much better to use an Apple phone with these hearing aids than it is in Android phone. If you do have an up-to-date Apple device, you can also use two way audio, so you don't have to have your phone out and talking into it as you're streaming audio into your hearing aids. That two way audio will allow the microphones of your hearing aids to pick up your voice and send it to the person on the other end of the line. The only time that this does not work so well is if you're in a background noise environment, 'cause you're gonna hear the person you're talking to well, they're just not gonna hear you very well. I do recommend that you go to ReSound's website to check out the compatibility of your specific phone to make sure that you get all the features that you want to have access to with the type of phone that you have. Of course, the quality of streamed audio from your smart device into your hearing aids will depend on a couple of things. Number one, how well your hearing care professional has customized your streaming program inside of their programming software and what the size of your venting is on your hearing aids. And yes, the customs by ReSound are compatible with all of ReSound's great accessories. So whether you have the TV stream or two to take the audio from your TV and send it right into your ears, that feature is absolutely amazing. You can still do that with these hearing aids. You can use the multi-mic, the mini-mic. You can use the remote controls and you can even use the Phone Clip+. You can control all of these accessories through your ReSound smart 3D app, which is still the highest rated hearing aid app that is currently available on the market.

Now, I did wish that they were going to do a refresh to this app, because this app was created all the way back in 2017 and not a whole lot of things have changed. Inside the app, you can switch between different custom programs created by your hearing care professional, or favorite programs that you've created yourself, and activate your accessories, like I mentioned before. Of course, you can adjust the volume of your hearing aids either together at the same time, or separate the hearing aids and adjust them independently. Different programs will have different quick keys that you can use to help filter out background noise or enhance the clarity of speech. And through the sound enhancer tab, you can adjust a three band equalizer and your noise reduction settings. If you are in a restaurant program, you'll also have access to your directionality settings. And if you are in an outdoor program, you'll have access to wind noise reduction settings. If you are streaming through one of your accessories like the TV streamer 2 or the multi-mic, you can adjust your streaming volume independently of your hearing aid microphone volume. This can help if you want to reduce the volume of your surroundings while still getting sound from your streaming device. You can also check to see if your hearing aids and active accessories are connected to the app, and see your battery life in the status tab along the bottom of the app. The my ReSound tab will give you access to the find my hearing aid feature in case you lose your Custom hearing aids. And it will give you access to either live remote sessions or remote programming updates from your hearing care professional. You may also get software updates from time to time that you can initiate through this part of the app. You also get access to this smart 3D app using an Apple Watch if you want to use your watch to adjust your ReSound Custom hearing aids.

Overall, in my opinion, these are by far the best Custom hearing aids that ReSound has ever made, and it's not even close. From the looks to the programmability, to the rechargability, to the performance, you would be hard pressed to find a custom in-the-ear hearing aid that performs better than the Custom by ReSound hearing aid. 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 you wanna see other videos, just like this one go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Also, feel free to check up my new website, hearingup.com.