Hi and welcome to HearWeb. My name is Doctor Ben Thompson. I'm an audiologist and in this video, I'm going to guide you through the full detailed review of the Audicus Wave rechargeable Bluetooth hearing aids. I have been able to test these out, put them on my ears, connect them to my phone, and in this video, you're gonna learn the full information about how well they work, if they're reliable, and if they're worth the price. Make sure you watch this whole video because we're going to cover the actual effectiveness of these hearing aids inside of the ear, how well they treat hearing loss. I'm going to explain the pros of the hearing aids, what they do well, and very importantly,

I'm gonna explain the cons, some things you need to know before you consider buying them to help you make the right kind of decision. Welcome to HearWeb. Hey there again, my name is Doctor Thompson. I'm one of the audiologists at HearWeb. We have a small team of audiologists and professionals who are creating reviews about common hearing aids that you can find online and in person. Our goal is to create videos that give you value to help you decide what hearing aids are for you, what are the best value hearing aids out there, and things you have to watch out for when you're trying to buy hearing aids online. So to follow us, make sure to subscribe to this YouTube channel HearWeb, and you'll get our newest videos coming out. Thank you so much. So let's get into the Audicus Wave rechargeable hearing aids.

First, Audicus is a company that's been around for a number of years, and they sell hearing aids primarily online. They do have a few in-person locations, in-person clinics. However, most of their business is to sell hearing aids like this online. So now let's open these hearing aids up and see what comes in the box when you buy them. Rechargeable receiver in the canal hearing aids. Opening up the case, there's this modern rechargeable hearing aid case design. And taking this hearing aid out, you can see it's blue, and that signifies the left ear. It comes with this rubber tip, and that rubber tip can be changed. There are various sizes. This is the plastic hook that curls back to keep it secure in the ear. So that's the left ear.

On board here, you can see that there is a button to increase the volume and a button to decrease the volume. This button also can control the program, which I'll speak about in a little bit. But overall, this is the design of the hearing aid. There's the rechargeable ports that go into the rechargeable case. And then you have this thin receiver wire that goes from the hearing aid into this speaker, the very end, the tip that goes inside the ear. Comes in a pair of hearing aids and each of them matches with each other. You can see here, this is red for the right ear. And that snaps in nicely there. This case, this is the rechargeable model, and this is an area where you can put this dehumidifying pack right here into the recharging case so that if you're hearing aids get wet or sweaty, you can put them in this case. And then overnight while they're charging, it'll take out some of that moisture. It plugs into a standard plug, into either USB or into a standard wall plug. And inside the case, open this up here, this is how to remove the ear wax. Additionally, the hearing aids come with these various size domes.

This is the rubber tip that goes in your ear. The domes, the rubber tips that occlude your ear, those will have a different sound quality as compared to the ones that have the open holes in them. So that means that you could pull off this hearing aid, you could take that rubber tip off, and you could change it yourself to find the best sound quality for you. Okay, for this section, we're gonna talk about the fit and feel of the hearing aids. You can notice that the rechargeable case and the hearing aids have a similar design to Phonak hearing aids and Unitron hearing aids. Audicus is owned by the parent company Sonova, so a lot of their hearing products look the same.

Overall, Sonova has a good reputation. I want to put this hearing aid in my ear so you can get a sense of how it goes in and how it looks when it's fully in the ear. Voila, there we go, going to come nice and close to the camera so you can see how it looks from behind and from the side. Overall, it's a modern receiver in the canal hearing aid that tends to look pretty well. Of course, it does come in different colors, so you would select a color to match your hair. When I requested these hearing aids to be sent to me, I submitted an audiogram. The audiogram that I submitted was a mild to moderate hearing loss. That's the most common type of hearing loss. That's why I submitted it. Just to be fully transparent, I, myself am an audiologist, a hearing doctor, but I do not have a hearing loss. However, I was able to run the hearing aids through some technical equipment I have to verify their effectiveness for hearing loss. When the hearing aids came to me, they have what is called a medium receiver.

That's the speaker. So that's accurately selected to match my hearing loss. So that was a good sign that based on the hearing loss I submitted, and if you are considering hearing aids through Audicus, you have some options. You can do an online hearing check with them, but I do recommend getting an in-person hearing test first from a local audiologist or hearing instrument specialist. With that hearing test, you'll have a lot more confidence that your results are actually matching the prescription that you need for your hearing loss. When we're talking about what hearing aids can fit your type of hearing loss, typically there's a maximum range of hearing loss you can have for online hearing aids like this to work. And the reason is because the end of the hearing aid, you see there's a rubber tip there on the end, that does an okay job in amplifying for the low frequencies, the base tones. However, in order to fully amplify past a moderate hearing loss in the base tones, in the low pitch tones, you would need an ear mold, a custom ear mold by an audiologist. So these hearing aids are not for all types of hearing loss, but they would work for a majority of levels of hearing, a majority of hearing losses out there.

The cost of the Audicus Wave hearing aids are $1,800 for a pair for the standard battery and then $2,100 a pair for this rechargeable battery kit, so over $2,000 for these rechargeable Bluetooth hearing aids. That price does come with a one-year warranty for repair. Let's talk about the app, the smartphone app that's used to connect the hearing aids with Bluetooth to the phone. You'll notice here I have an iPhone, which almost matches my shirt. I don't know how that happened. So I used my iPhone to download the hearing remote app, and that's the app that connects with these hearing aids. The app is pretty basic. It offers changes to the programs and changes to the volumes. Through the app, you can alert the company that you want some adjustments made, and then they would contact you and be able to remotely adjust the hearing aids through the phone. Overall, the smartphone app for the Audicus Wave hearing aids is okay. It has a two out of five-star rating in the Apple app store out of 10 users, 10 reviews. That's not that great, but in my personal experience, it did work to change the basic functions of volume control and program change. Now, other than the app, the hearing aids do connect through Bluetooth. So you can stream music and stream phone calls through them as well. On the device, you know there's the buttons. There's louder, softer, and then you can use those same buttons to change the programs. Other than that, this rechargeable model doesn't have any other kinds of buttons, which I wouldn't expect it to. Pretty standard hearing aid design, not too big, not too small. I showed you how it fit on my ear. It's not too heavy. It's fairly light.

Overall, the design is pretty consistent with the best modern hearing aid technology. I got the hearing aids sent to me programmed to this mild to moderate hearing loss. In the hearing clinic, I ran the hearing aids through a system called real-ear measures where I put the hearing aid on my ear with a small microphone tube in my ear canal to verify and measure the real response of the hearing aids when it's actually in my ear. Overall, the results showed that the hearing aids, based on the first fit in my ears programmed by Audicus, they matched the targets or the prescription targets of my hearing loss very well up to 3,000 hertz. And then after 3,000 hertz, there is a sharp roll-off, meaning that the hearing aids do well to provide the sound clarity for most of the sounds. However, for some of the highest pitched sounds, which would be sounds like S for Sam, T for Tom, the hearing aid does not meet the prescriptive levels for those very high-pitched sounds. That said, overall, the prescription match on these hearing aids' first fit, it's not horrible. It's not great. It's okay. And it would definitely help your hearing loss, but it's likely not as perfect of a match as you would get if you went to a audiologist in a local area who was using a real-ear measure system to fully match the hearing aids 100%. Now, of course, you need to know that the reason these hearing aids, the Audicus Wave, are affordable and cheap is because they're online. There is no physical location that you have to go to.

Therefore, the company can charge a lot less for the hearing aids, and there's no professional audiologist doctor who's programming the hearing aids to 100% match the prescription. So there's some pros and cons here. There's a little bit of a give and take. There's some explanation about why these hearing aids might be cheaper than going to a standard audiologist in a clinic. The hearing aids come with different programs, and you can request certain programs when you reach out to the company. A program means that the sound quality of the hearing aid is unique to a certain listening environment. So for example, you can create an all around program which is for all situations, and the hearing aid will do well. Or you can create a restaurant program to listen when you're in restaurants.

Additionally, things like outdoors, music, lecture, situations like that, you would create a certain program for. The hearing aid came with four preset programs. And I ran the different programs through my real-ear measures test on my ear. Overall, the gain, the overall amplification of sound for the different programs, it wasn't too different. We did see some fluctuations there. Typically, a program that's built for a place with background noise, like a restaurant or a group party, the overall levels of amplification are going to be lower. The good thing is that when I ran these hearing aids through the noise reduction test, it did measure a significant drop or a reduction in the amplification of background noise. So that shows me as the audiologist that the directional microphones on the hearing aids are functioning well. And that means that these hearing aids in a place like a restaurant or a group party, it would reduce the sound coming from behind me, and it would focus more on the people speaking in front of me. So the hearing aids performed well on that test by reducing the background noise.

These hearing aids have a classic Bluetooth signal. So that means you can connect them to a phone whether that's an iPhone or Android phone. All right guys, you still with me? We're almost done with this review, but now we're gonna get to probably the most important part where I discuss the pros and the cons of these Audicus Wave hearing aids. First of all, the pro is that the actual design and manufacturing of these hearing aids are coming from a group called Sonova. That's the same hearing aid group that makes the very popular and some of the best hearing aids in the world called Phonak. You will notice, anyone who's really following this closely will notice that the design of these hearing aids, the rechargeable system, the actual hearing aid and the buttons, it looks very similar to the newest Phonak hearing aid, the Phonak Paradise, Audeo Paradise rechargeable. So it's not the same hearing aid. The internal computer chip is different as far as we can tell, but it is definitely a similar design. And overall, having that reputation of Sonova as a group, that is a good sign that these hearing aids are going to be manufactured with good quality. The second pro with these hearing aids is that you can submit your own audiogram, your own hearing test from a local audiologist, and the company will program the hearing aids to your real hearing test inside of a real hearing booth. And that's far superior than doing any sort of online hearing test or online hearing check. So submitting that real audiogram from a sound treated booth, the hearing aids would be programmed and then sent to you. When mine were sent to me, I matched them to the hearing test, the audiogram that I submitted, and overall, the match based on the prescription levels was pretty good. It wasn't perfect, as I mentioned earlier. There was a roll-off, meaning that the very high pitch tones it was not amplifying as much as I need to hear perfectly. So even though that match to the prescription levels wasn't perfect, it was pretty good. And because of that, that is a pro for the hearing aids. All right, the third pro here, this is obviously a big one is that these hearing aids are about 40% of the traditional cost of Bluetooth rechargeable hearing aids that you would get from an audiologist or a hearing instrument specialist at a hearing clinic. As I mentioned earlier, there are some reasons why it's much cheaper. Number one, they're an online company.

Number two, the professional services that make the hearing aids match 100% to the prescription that you would need. There's no in-person services for these hearing aids unless you're going to one of Audicus's in-person clinics, but there's only three of them in the US right now. Anyways, the reason that these hearing aids are 40% less than a similar brand that you would find at a clinic is because you miss out on those professional services that optimize the hearing aids through verification and validation. But if you're interested in these, and I assume you are if you're watching these videos, that might not matter so much to you, and the cost of a 40% reduction in the overall cost of hearing aids, that might outweigh missing out on some of those in-person professional services. Finally, the last pro for these hearing aids is that they do connect to Bluetooth, Android, iPhone. They do have an app where you can make adjustments, and that's big. Any hearing aids, modern hearing aids, they need to connect to Bluetooth. And these hearing aids do so pretty well. Thanks for sticking in 'till this far in the video. Now we're gonna talk about the cons or the drawbacks of these hearing aids. These are important to understand. The first is that when these are sent to you, you have to do it yourself. You have to actually put them on your ears. You have to make sure you pick the right rubber tip in your ear, make sure there's no whistling. You have to make sure it's fit right. You have to basically teach yourself how to put it in the ear, making sure it's in the right position. You have to select the levels on your phone. You have to go test it out in using your phone, using the adjustments on the devices. You don't really know if you have them set perfectly. So the major con with these kinds of hearing aids, the online hearing aids, is that you have to do it yourself, and you might be missing out on some potential benefit that you could get if you went to an in-person clinic to fully optimize the hearing system for you. That said, with the dramatic reduction in the cost of these hearing aids, that might be very well worth it for you to do it yourself, take some initiative on your own.

Additionally, Audicus has the support team. So if you get stuck or if you're looking for extra help, you can contact them. They do have a limited number of professionals working on the team, and they also have a call center that can help answer some of your questions. Finally, the last con here is that if you're buying hearing aids online and you're spending about $2,000, which is what these hearing aids cost, these rechargeable Bluetooth Audicus Wave hearing aids, these are actually some of the more expensive direct-to-consumer hearing aids that you can find online. The Audicus Wave is a quality online hearing aid, but it's more expensive than other online hearing aids. Here at HearWeb, on this YouTube channel and at our website hearweb.com, we review different kinds of hearing aids, ones you can buy in person in a clinic, ones you can buy online. So these hearing aids are more expensive than other online hearing aids. At HearWeb, our team reviews the different hearing aids, especially the online hearing aids, and we compare them. We compare their pros and cons. We compare their features ultimately to help you make a better decision about what you're going to move forward with to treat your hearing loss.

So definitely make sure you check us out, hearweb.com, to really see all of the reviews and the differences. Just to give some context here, these hearing aids are around $2,000, right? And the Phonak Audeo Paradise hearing aids, those are sort of the gold standard of hearing aids right now when I'm making this video. And if you were to go to a local clinic, a local hearing clinic to buy them, for the pair, the price would start at around $5,000. So that's a $3,000 difference to these hearing aids. That sounds pretty good. But when we start to compare these Audicus Wave hearing aids to different hearing aids online that are cheaper that we review on this YouTube channel, then we start to question whether this is the right choice for you. Two other products that we have reviewed which are worth discussing here, number one is the MDHearingAid VOLT. These are hearing aids that are rechargeable that costs $600. Now, they're not made for phones. They're not Bluetooth connected, but they are rechargeable hearing aids for a lot less than these ones for around 2,000. Additionally, another pair of hearing aids that I reviewed on the HearWeb YouTube channel are the Lexie Lumen hearing aids. Those are also online hearing aids, and those costs around $800 for a pair. Those can connect to phone. Those are not rechargeable hearing aids, but you can buy all of those online. As you can see here, it's rather complicated to decide what hearing aids are right for you. At HearWeb, we try to make that easy for you. Make sure to subscribe to this YouTube channel to hear all of our hearing aid reviews and check out hearweb.com where we offer exclusive coupons and discounts on these hearing products all to help you get your hearing aids with a little more confidence, a little more clarity, and of course, to actually improve your hearing to be with your loved ones, friends and family. Thank you guys so much. My name is Dr. Thompson. I'm one of the audiologists on the team at HearWeb, check out this next video to my side to learn about some other hearing aids. And I'll see you there to review that different product