Resound linx hearing aids - user review

I have started to struggle with poor hearing, so took the plunge and went to the audiologist a couple of months ago for a hearing test. Results did not come as a surprise. Moderately severe high frequency neuro-sensory hearing loss in both hears. I suspect its partially genetics as my eighty plus mother is very hard of hearing and when my son started school his hearing lost was picked up. High noise levels while working in bakeries and teaching baking for almost 30 years probably didn’t improve things. Cake mixers and other bakery machinery can run very loud and the sound reverberates through all the hard surfaces in the bakery.

Over the last year or so, I noticed difficulty at meetings and when running workshops with hearing people who were a meter or so away. Also, nearly impossible to hear people talking in the car when I sit in the back seat but recently, also difficult to hear someone seated in the car next to me, due to the noise of traffic and car mechanical noise. Ditto in restaurants and anywhere where there is lots of background noise. Sometimes even difficult to hear someone sitting right next to me when the environment is buzzing with extraneous sounds.

The audiologist recommended a few options, all expensive and all digital. So, decided on the resound linx hearing aid as you are able to connect to an iphone or ipad through Bluetooth - see cnn review and review from uk. The hearing aid can then be adjusted to suit different conditions – outdoors, restaurant etc. Audio from the phone can sent directly to the hearing aid and the phone can also act as a microphone. So the techie in me decided to shell out the $$ and become part of the wearable computer brigade.

There is a $1022 subsidy from the NZ Ministry of Health which is helpful and one is eligible for the subsidy every six years after making the first claim. Technology in the hearing aid field must move quickly as friends of mind who have had hearing aids ‘installed’ all have different models which all claim to be the best at the time. So six years is quite a long time to wait between hearing aids. It will be interesting to observe how the wearable computer trend develops with regards to hearing aids.

During the first two weeks, I found out how much I was missing out on with regards to sound!! However, noisy meetings / places were very intimidating as the hearing aid magnifies all sound and my brain had to try to learn again, how to filter out the things I needed to hear and everything else. I persevered by having the hearing aids on at last 10 to 14 hours a day and only by the end of about a month, did the noise level become manageable. Even then, I turn off my hearing aid at scrabble tournaments where I only need to have one on one conversations and do not need to be distracted by other noise.

Connection of the hearing aids via Bluetooth to an ipad mini was straight forward. Especially handy to have music / audio books etc. beamed directly into the hearing aid as you cannot also use ear buds when the hearing aids are in. Adjustments to the hearing aid can then be made via the resound linx app. So, all in, this aspect works well. Have now listened to a backlog of podcasts and a couple of audio books while gardening or walking the dog. Bluetooth has to be turned off during flights, so still need to bring ear buds to watch videos on the ipad mini.

iPad mini 2 - review

Purchased an ipad mini (32G Wifi model)while in Oz for a family wedding a few weeks ago. Last week, all the Ascilite notes were taken using the ipad mini with no peripheral keyboard. So this is a brief review of use to date. I agree with isource.com about typing on the ipad mini. At first, I was a little hesitant as to how the small screen would cope. However, being blessed with small fingers means typing on the ipad mini has not been difficult. I used the notetaking app and copied across via blogger app. All straightforward. As usual, good to follow up a week or so after a conference to tidy up the conference blogs as it leads to actions lists and other connections that arise from various presentations.

On the way back from Perth, I flew Virgin Pacific. There were signs in the waiting room to download the Virgin Pacific app which I dutifully did. On the plane, it was just a matter of opening the app and selecting what you wanted to watch. Screen was a tad small for watching video and you need to ensure you have your ear plugs or similar with you. However, beats not having any video to watch at all when on a flight and you have not paid for seat that comes with entertainment.

One of the reasons for the purchase of the mini was to run the resound linx hearing aid app (more on this next week) and the Bluetooth pairing worked without any hassles. All sound from the ipad mini is now bluetoothed to hearing aids, which is great when I am out walking the dog or catching up with gardening. Over the last three weeks, have been able to catch up with a backlog of podcasts and audiobooks.

So overall, happy with the ipad mini. Its lightness and size are a real advantage compared to the acerswitch 10 or the surface pro. iOS is still superior in terms of user friendliness. The real advantage being the way all apps work in a similar way and ease of use. On signing up for the itunes account on unwrapping and powering up the mini, all the apps, music, books etc. from my previous ipad was ported across. I just had to select the ones I wanted to access on the mini and download of the selected items was straightforward. Ditto for kindle app, Seamlessness just has to be the way to go when you move from an older device to another. 

Access to the cloud is especially important as ipads have no usb port. The ability to link easily to dropbox similar is essential, along with the function of downloading files from the cloud to reside on the ipad so there is access to files when there is no WiFi. All in, happy with the small size of the mini. It is perhaps not the ideal device for a business road warrior but works well enough for those who need a device to surf the web, take notes, upload photos and read.