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Consumer Intent Oticon Product Tester Review

Intent 1 Tested! (West Yorkshire)

By
on
July 17, 2024

Oticon Intent 1 re-chargeable

Oticon say this about their Intent hearing aids:

Sensor driven BrainHearing technology uses your movements, the environment, and the conversation around you to recognise what you want and need to listen to, adapting seamlessly to deliver truly personalised support. Letting you stay focused on the moments that matter.

With the introduction of our new premium hearing aid Oticon Intent, we incorporate information from head and body movement, conversation activity and the acoustic environment into the world’s first 4D Sensor technology.

Really? Are they any good?

Comfort and Fit

Oticon Intent rechargeable aids are slightly smaller than the Real rechargeables. They have changed the shape. The aids have an extension above the ears, so that the top microphones are pointing forwards.

The aids sat comfortably behind my ears. Their width at the top meant that there was a tendency for the aids to make contact with the arms of one of my pairs of spectacles, causing a slight rustling noise. My other glasses weren’t affected. Fortunately, Intent aids have excellent handling noise suppression which minimises interference from this source. I soon got used to wearing the aids and forgot that I was wearing them.

Charger and Charging

The charger is compact and with no lid. Power to the charger is supplied by a USB C PSU with a captive lead.

The aids are not powered by induction. They have contacts. This enables them to charge up relatively quickly.

Inserting and removing the aids into the charger is easy enough. The absence of a lid means that the lights on the aids are exposed. The lights are not particularly bright, but they might be a nuisance on a bedside table at night.

Ease of use

Full control of the aids is possible using the Oticon Companion app on a smartphone. It is easy to use and has a comprehensive set of functions, including program and volume change, a graphic equaliser, find my hearing aids, mute, speech booster and battery level.

Volume and program changes can be made using the buttons on the aids. The buttons are of the single push type, with right for up and left for down. I prefer this type of arrangement to up/down rocker buttons, which I find fiddly to use.

Notification of changes is made is by a series of beeps. The volume change beeps make a different sound to indicate the central position.

Program identification is made by remembering how many beeps are associated with each program, which can be confusing. Instead of beeps, Widex aids have a female voice announcing the name of each program

Programs

The General program worked well. I used it most of the time. I also used the MyMusic program. Other programs are available including Speech in Noise, Lecture and Comfort.

Sound Quality

The sound of the Intent aids is excellent. Sounds are natural and clear. Speech sounds natural, and other sounds such as cutlery chinking on a plate, or a toilet flushing, are as expected. Sounds such as a robin singing are bright and clear.

Speech remained clear in noisy environments, such as a busy supermarket or a restaurant.

The sound of my own voice was natural.

I felt that the Intent hearing aids supported my hearing in all different environments. They just sat there behind my ears and did their job well. I quickly forgot that I was wearing them.

In the open, the sound of wind on the aids is well supressed. I could hear the Wind Stabiliser cutting in and out with each gust, but it isn’t an issue.

The Feedback Manager is very effective. There was no feedback at all in normal listening situations.

Listening to music

The sound of music with the Intents set to their General program was good. Set to the MyMusic program it sounded better, but with a slight smearing of the treble when listening using hi-fi speakers. I prefer the sound of the MyMusic program with the Feedback manager turned off, which improves the clarity in the upper frequencies. With this setting the aids have a tendency to feed back, but it is minimal. Feedback might be an issue if your audiological prescription requires a lot of gain.

In the MyMusic program, the default setting of the Feedback Manager is Low. There is greater clarity in the treble if the Feedback Manager is turned off:

Streaming

Intents will stream from iPhones and Android phones. I paired the aids with my Android phone. Pairing via the app was simple enough. There was a low level of background hiss when streaming.

Hands-free phone calls are possible. Calls can be answered by a double tap on your ear. The system worked well

The streaming feature was useful for taking calls, but I was particularly interested in how the aids would sound with streamed music.

I listened to several hi-resolution tracks using the Qobuz music streaming app. The sound of streamed music was very good. The mid-band was clear and detailed. Female vocals sounded excellent. The bottom end was lacking though. Most people would be very happy with the sound, but possibly not fans of AC/DC or Led Zeppelin.

LE Audio

Oticon Intent hearing aids have a feature called LE Audio, which is a streaming technology based on Bluetooth Low Energy radio. It is available on some recent Android phones. On my phone it is labelled as experimental.

I tried streaming some music tracks using LE Audio, but I couldn’t detect any improvement in the sound quality compared with tracks streamed using standard Bluetooth Low Energy.

LE Audio is included in the latest Windows 11 release, but few computers have Bluetooth adapters that can use it. The aids paired with my computer. It recognised that they were LE Audio capable devices, but it didn’t work.

The LE Audio specification includes a one-to many technology called Auracast. Several, or many, people wearing LE Audio equipped devices are able to receive audio from a single source. It is pencilled in to replace telecoil technology, but it will have other uses as well. For instance, people wearing LE Audio devices will be able to hear railway station announcements made from a single Auracast source.

LE Audio technology isn’t being developed just for hearing aids. It is intended for use in earphones and earbuds that rely on battery power. Creative labs have released headphones that use it. An LE Audio capable Bluetooth dongle is included with the headphones and Creative have said that the dongle will be made available separately

TV Adapter

I connected the aids to a TV using the optical socket on a TV adapter 3. The sound quality was good. I tried listening in two ways, firstly with the TV speakers off and then with them on.

With the TV speakers off the sound and video synchronisation was good. It would be a useful feature if you wanted to watch TV by yourself without disturbing others.

With the TV speakers on, the two sound sources were slightly out of sync. There was an echo effect that I couldn’t entirely eliminate. I found that the best setting was to have the TV box quieter than the TV speakers

Conclusion

I never cease to be amazed by the capabilities of modern hearing aids and Oticon Intent 1 rechargeables are no exception. They are excellent hearing aids. Their performance is at least as good as other brands in this sector of the market and the inclusion of LE Audio makes them futureproof. The longer I wore them, the more I liked them.

FHJ: Oticon Opn 1, Widex Beyond 440, Phonak P30 and L90R.                                 18/07/2024

The Oticon Intent 1 Re-chargeable hearing aids were provided for evaluation by Mr Robert Donnan, of RJD Hearing Care, Cleckheaton


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Consumer Oticon Product Tester Review

Oticon Connectline TV

By
on
February 8, 2024

Oticon TV Streamer (Connectline TV 3.0) Problem Solved

The Streamer – The Problem – The Solution

The Streamer
If you rely on hearing aids, then a TV streamer is highly recommended. You will hear the TV more clearly. One use is to hear the TV while it is muted for everybody else…


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Consumer Oticon Real

Oticon Real – Streaming of Audio – Android vs. IOS

By
on
January 16, 2024

Oticon and Android
Can the Oticon More (and Oticon Real) be used with an android phone? Well, yes, they can. A good Bluetooth connection to a phone is important to many people for steaming audio generally and for clarity of hearing during phone conversations. All this works fine on an Android phone with Oticon More. As an Android user I went ahead and chose Oticon More knowing they are “made for iPhone” hearing aids but I did so because after trying others these were by far the best at improving my hearing. The quality of hearing comes first for me.

The Oticon App – Oticon Companion
The Companion app is the same on both Android and iPhone. The first Bluetooth pairing of the aids with your phone must be done through the Companion app.

At first glance, it may seem a rather limited app. I moved over to Oticon from Phonak so my first impression was that the Oticon companion seems to offer far less functionality and control over the hearing aids than the Phonak app does. But because the Oticon hearing aids themselves are so very clever I found that I no longer needed to switch programs and settings in the way the Phonak app allows, settings such as for in a restaurant, or a car, or a crowded environment, etc. I came to realize the Oticon app simply doesn’t need all that level of control. Those settings and that functionality is just not needed in the app. Oticon More does so much automatically.

Android and iPhone – the difference
There is a big difference between how the aids integrate with Android and iPhone. Firstly, the Companion app works on Android phone in pretty much the same way it does on an iPhone. Once the aids are paired you must load or launch the app each time you want to use it, It will connect with the aids at each launch (might be a bit of a wait) and it will run in the background. On Android, as it’s running in the background, you will be offered a very small letterbox menu that you can get to by swiping down from the top of the screen. There you may choose from volume levels and the programs in your aids. It is a very minimal menu. When the Companion app is closed, and stops running, this very small letterbox shortcut is gone too.

iPhone
Although he Companion app works pretty much the same way in iPhone as in Android there is a huge difference in iPhone because even without launching the Companion app the hearing aids, once paired, are integrated and controls are always available whenever the aids are switched on. When users swipe down on the top right of an iPhone screen a menu of shortcuts is available. Here a shortcut for hearing aid controls is added. It is a box with the symbol of an ear in it (see the screenshot). This shortcut is always running without the Companion app needing to be launched.

 

Tapping the ear box opens up a full display of options for the hearing aids. There is information, background sounds and also of course the fantastic Listen Live function which only available on iPhone. None of that is available with the android phone. Listen Live turns the phone in to a remote microphone that can be placed at the centre of a table or held by somebody in a car when travelling in car or other noisy environment. So many uses!

To answer phone calls on an iPhone without taking the phone out of pocket of bag (not likely to get snatched then) a short press on any of the buttons on the aids does it and a longer press ends the call. To enable this function you to into the settings. See the screenshot. It is Setting/Accessibility/Touch/Call Audio Routing and in there you select Bluetooth headset” as that is what your aids are acting as then.

 

GH (product tester), Jan. 2024


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Consumer Oticon Real

Oticon Real 1R

By
on
December 11, 2023

Oticon Real 1 re-chargeable

Introduction

My first pair of hearing aids were Oticon Opn 1s, which I bought in 2016. I chose them over the Phonaks because I thought that the Opns were the more natural sounding of the two.

I took me a while to get used to them. I remember…


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Consumer Lumity Oticon Phonak Product Tester Review Real

Report on comparison trial with two pairs of hearing aids.

By
on
August 14, 2023

Oticon Real 1 R & Phonak Audeo Lumity 90 R

 

July 2023

Day one – 11th July

Phonak Audeo Lumity 90: At start sounded a little tinny compared with Oticon Real. However the speech is very clear. Face to face speaking not so good.

Changed to Oticon Real – more clear, not as…

Phonak Audeo Marvel

Unique Features: Interactive remote audiologist programming, Hands-free answering and ending of calls

Oticon Opn S 1

The superior quality ‘made for iPhone’ hearing aid.

Resound LiNX Quattro

Best remote control app. ‘Made for iPhone’ with remote audiologist programming app.