What are the Best Hearing Aid Features?

If you are trying to decide which hearing aid is going to be best for you, then something you need to look at are the features. Each hearing aid will have slightly different features to the others on the market, and it is up to you to decide what you need based on your individual circumstances. In this article, we are going to be looking at what the best hearing aid features are, so keep reading if you want to know more.

Anti-phase feedback

This is present in most basic hearing aids so you will likely find that whatever you choose, this will be part of it. What this feature does is detects any whistling and feedback and cancels it out. This way, you aren’t going to be irritated with annoying sounds every time there is some feedback over the device or every time that your hearing aid picks up some whistling.

Automatic noise reduction

Again, this is another one that is present in most hearing aids. Automatic noise reduction is a feature that detects background noise and can help reduce them. This could be anything from the clinking of glasses in another room to the washing machine being on. Now, this is not going to make the noise go away completely, but it is certainly going to help when it comes to reducing how much you can hear it.

Low battery indicator

A low battery indicator does exactly what it says on the tin. When the battery in your hearing aid is low and needs changing, it will make some kind of sound to let you know that it needs changing. This is going to be useful if you know that you are someone who forgets to change the battery regularly and ends up with hearing aids that aren’t working all the time. Having this feature should stop you from ever having your hearing aids go flat when you need them to be working. 

Microphone

One of the most important features of any hearing aid is the microphone. There are so many different types and each one of them picks up sound in a different way. For example, an adaptive microphone will focus on wherever the speech in the room is strongest, and an omni-directional microphone will pick up anything in a 180-degree radius of you. If you are wearing two hearing aids, then it will pick up sound all around you.

Tinnitus masker

Something that a lot of people want but not all hearing aids have is a tinnitus masker. What this does is generate low-level sound that helps to cover the sound of the tinnitus. This is also known as a combination device and what happens is the hearing aid plays a small, constant sound that you can’t hear to help mask the tinnitus that you would usually experience. This doesn’t work for everyone, but it certainly has helped a lot of people.

If you want to know more about the best hearing aid features, then consult your audiologist.