Home Tech Starkey’s Edge AI Prescription Hearing Aids Are Phenomenal and Annoyingly Expensive

Starkey’s Edge AI Prescription Hearing Aids Are Phenomenal and Annoyingly Expensive

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Starkey Edge AI RIC RT headphones with brown surface Brown receiver in headphones with transparent ear pads

When the US The Food and Drug Administration opened the door to over-the-counter hearing aid sales in 2022, and I was all for it. Prescription hearing aids are criminally expensive, and several over-the-counter models have proven that you don’t have to visit a mall hearing aid store to get a product that does the job. I have tried 38 hearing aids to date and 29 were available without a prescription. All of my favorite hearing aid products have been over-the-counter models. Until now.

Starkey is a main name in the hearing aid business, and is not a white label company that puts a logo on someone else’s product (an epidemic in this industry). Starkey has been around since 1967, and while it no longer designs or manufactures its own digital signal processing chips, it is intimately involved in hearing aid development and boasts of having equipped everyone from Ronald Reagan to Mother Teresa with its hearing aids.

Now, with its new Edge AI RIC RT headphones, Starkey takes a position at the top in product quality and performance thanks in large part to a new audio processor that includes an integrated neural processing unit, just like our laptops and phones. Starkey says this is the only line of headphones on the market that works with NPU.

Channel Receiver

There’s nothing particularly inventive about the look of the Edge AI RIC RT (which stands for “in-canal receiver, rechargeable with telecoil”), built on the classic teardrop-shaped behind-the-ear design, although it’s available in your choice. of seven colors. Each hearing aid weighs 2.62 grams, which is competitive for a behind-the-ear hearing aid. (For comparison, the Jabra Enhance Select 500 weighs 2.56 grams.) A single button on the back of each earbud controls the volume: down on the left earbud, up on the right earbud.

Photography: Christopher Null

Since these are prescription devices, you will need an audiologist to fit and adjust them. Instead of sending me to a local doctor, Starkey took the unusual step of bringing his hearing health director, Dave Fabry, to my home to complete this task. Fabry brought a suitcase full of equipment to recreate what the doctor’s office experience would normally be like, only at my dining room table. He then gave me a training session on AIDS and walked me through the My Starkey Applike a standard audiologist.

Fabry also fitted me with custom ear tips molded to fit the exact shape of my ear canals. (This type of service will be at the discretion of your audiologist.) This is a simple process that involves inserting putty into your ears and waiting for it to harden. This putty can then be used to create a custom-made eartip that fits perfectly, although the box also includes the usual collection of open and closed eartips in various sizes.

Photography: Christopher Null

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