Hearing Aid Prices



As you may have found, trying to get reliable information online about hearing aid prices can be frustrating. In my experience, people who haven't done any research very often presume that they'll be able to buy a pair of hearing aids privately for the price of a pair of glasses. The reality very often comes as a shock. Perhaps that's why so many hearing clinics are shy about publishing prices on their websites, for fear of turning prospective customers off at the first hurdle.


We believe in transparency, and we don't indulge in sales tactics. So we reckon there's no point keeping people in the dark about prices in the hope that they'll cave in to sales pressure when they arrive for a test, because we don't do that! So below is an idea - in broad strokes - of what you can expect to pay if you decide to purchase your hearing aids and aftercare from us. We've come up with this by following UK websites which claim to offer hearing aids at prices significantly discounted against those offered by national High Street chains.


First, though, it may be worth offering a bit of background and guidance as to why some hearing aids cost more than others. It's often assumed that this is largely down to how 'discreet' the aids are cosmetically, and that smaller, more invisible models will be more expensive than bigger, more obvious ones. In fact , that was the case years ago. These days, however, it's all about technology: basically, hearing aids with more sophisticated processing ability will cost more. A manufacturer's current models may all look identical in your hand, but the 'brains' inside will work very differently when dealing with difficult listening situations, and this is what determines the price. We'll go into a bit more detail below if you're interested, but essentially if your daily life consists of more than quiet, one-to-one conversations, you're more likely to benefit from higher levels of technology.



More technical information for those interested... (if not, scroll down for prices)



There are several specific factors that affect the performance of hearing aids:



Processing speed


With hearing aids, we're essentially dealing with computer technology. The faster the main processing chip, the more effectively and seamlessly the aid can respond to the sounds it picks up from around you, leading to a more 'natural' experience with the aids. The first generation of digital hearing aids often suffered from a rather irritating quirk known as 'digital echo', or 'lag', because the chips were so slow that the processed sound could be heard out of sync with other sounds reaching the user's ears naturally. Today, even quite basic hearing aids can have processors with speeds on a par with modern laptops - quite a feat when you consider how small they are.



The number of 'channels' or 'frequency bands'


Although - strictly speaking - these two terms are not identical, they're often used interchangeably. Essentially, the number of bands or channels determines the aid's basic ability to process different frequencies of sound. It's a bit like the number of pixels on your TV screen: more pixels means a sharper picture. The more channels a hearing aid has, the more accurately it 'fits' your specific hearing loss. In addition to this, a higher number of channels allows the audiologist to make more precise adjustments to the sound, as well as influencing how effectively the aid deals with different frequencies of background sound, meaning less difficulty in noisy environments. Hearing aids will generally range from six bands at the low end of the tech scale up to about twenty bands for high tech, although a few specific models can have many more than this.



Noise reduction algorithms


This is by far the most complicated - and significant - feature of digital hearing aid technology. If a manufacturer produces a new 'improved' model of hearing aid, those improvements will usually have something to do with how the aid deals with background noise, which is the number one difficulty for the vast majority of hearing-impaired individuals. If you're brave enough to dig deeper into the nuts and bolts of this, you'll uncover all sorts of exotic techno-speak: 'adaptive directionality', 'binaural beam-forming', 'microphone arrays', 'expansion', 'impulse noise suppression', 'dereverberation', 'spectral subtraction', etc., etc., which is all further complicated by the fact that the different manufacturers like to come up with their own proprietary names for these features. In practice it all boils down to how the hearing aid's software uses its microphones to manipulate the various sounds around you in order to produce the best effect for picking out speech clearly. This is probably the most perceptible difference between the cutting edge and lower tech levels: in a complicated noisy environment, the higher tech has more bells and whistles to 'clean up' the noise and allow you to hear speech sounds more easily.



Artificial Intelligence


There's no getting away from it: AI is going to revolutionize our lives in ways we can't imagine right now, and it has already arrived in Hearing Aid Land! The latest aids incorporate a special kind of processing chip - usually referred to as a 'deep neural network' - that has been trained on millions of real-world sound scenarios and is designed to mimic the workings of the brain in determining how best to deal with what it perceives around you. This brings the most sophisticated technology available to solve what were once thought to be intractable problems with extreme listening situations.



Additional Features


Bluetooth technology has brought an array of useful add-ons to the hearing aid world. Aids can now be paired with smartphones and phone-based apps, enabling fine adjustment of sound settings by the user, as well as streaming of voice calls and audio directly to the hearing aids. This means you can now take phone calls and listen to music or video files from your phone and other paired devices directly via the hearing aids. Some manufacturers have really taken this ball and run with it, incorporating additional toys such as heart monitors, fall detection and language translation.

Hearing Aid Prices


Essential Technology ~ £1200 - £1900 per pair


Entry level technology, suitable for those with relatively undemanding lifestyles. These aids will give good sound clarity in quiet situations, one-to-one conversations, watching TV, etc., as well as giving some help with group conversation and moderate background noise. Bluetooth technology has gradually filtered down to this level also, so some models can be paired with compatible smartphones, allowing user adjustment and direct audio streaming. Rechargeable options are also available at this level.




Advanced Technology ~ £2000 - £2900 per pair


Suitable for moderately active lifestyles. As well as all the benefits of lower level models, this level offers better noise reduction features, with improved directionality and more finely adjustable settings. AI noise processing is also available at the higher end of this level, as well as all the benefits of Bluetooth connectivity mentioned above.



Premium Technology ~ £3000 - £3900 per pair


The best help currently available, with the most sophisticated noise reduction and AI processing to deal with a wide range of challenging listening environments.

*All of the prices you see above include fitting, follow-up appointments and lifetime aftercare. We don't load on further charges for 'care packages' (as some clinics do): what you see is what you pay for the lifetime of your hearing aids, with no hidden extras. All aids dispensed by us also come with a 5-year manufacturer's warranty.