- Looking for a low-cost
hearing aid that is better and cheaper than most online hearing aids? Well, you're in luck, because
in this video I'm reviewing the earVenture ReVel
Hearing Aid coming up. (upbeat rhythmic music) Hi guys, Cliff Olson, doctor
of audiology and founder of Applied Hearing Solutions in
Anthem, Arizona, and on this channel I cover a bunch of
hearing related information to help make you a better informed
consumer, so if you're into that, consider hitting
the subscribe button. The rise of online hear aids
has provided individuals with hearing loss an alternative
to hearing aids traditionally purchased in a clinic, and
while you can get these online hearing aids at a cheaper cost
than ones that you would get in a clinic, you are gonna
sacrifice some basic features that will help you hear better,
and you can't custom program a hearing aid purchased online to your hearing loss prescription. In light of this, a relatively
new hearing aid manufacturer called earVenture set out to change this. EarVenture manufactures FDA
registered, low-cost hearing devices, and you can get
these hearing aids inside of a traditional hearing aid
clinic, and they can be custom programmed, which is
something you can't do with an online hearing aid. EarVenture has several different
models of hearing aids to choose from, including the
FaVor and the SaVvy, but in this video, I'm gonna be reviewing
the earVenture ReVel behind-the-ear hearing
aid, so let's go ahead and get tot the unboxing. Alright, let's check out the
earVenture ReVel hearing aids. First and foremost, you have
the user manual that shows you some different functions of
the hearing aid, like the program changing, the volume changing, and how to change the battery. Let's put that off to the
side and get into the exciting stuff, which is the actual hearing aids. First and foremost, these
hearing aids, at the price point that they're at, they are
definitely more sleek looking than hearing aids that you can
get at that price point, so that's really nice to have. Here at the bottom you have the
volume adjustment so you can increase volume, decrease volume. You have the program changing button. You'll end up finding out
that these have four different programs that can be
customized by your hearing care professional, and probably
the coolest feature of these hearing aids, particularly at
this price point, is that they have dual microphones, which
is extremely important when you start dealing with
background noise situations. So you have the rear
microphone right there. Don't know if you can see
it, it's pretty small. And then you have the front
microphone right here, and to have dual microphones on a
hearing aid at a price point like this one will likely be at for
you is substantially better than other hearing aids that
you can typically buy online at that price point. Those hearing aids typically
come with only one microphone, which puts you at a significant
disadvantage, compared to a hearing aid like this. What we have coupled onto it
right now is Slim-Tube, so this is your most invisible
option that you have. This will go down into your
ear, and it has a dome on it and a little retention filament
to keep that inside of your ear, but you also could
use any different type of attachment at the tip
here to make sure you get a better customized fit. You can even have a custom
ear mold done to have a custom tip put on the end of this Slim-Tube. It's really good if you wanna
control the amount of sound that goes into your ear from
the hearing aid to make it more of a customizable device. And you could also, if you
have more of a severe type of hearing loss, or rather a
moderate-severe type of hearing loss, you could get a size
13 tube with an ear hook that goes down into an ear mold
that you have made for your ear by your hearing care professional. This will allow you to get
more amplification than you can if you just go with the
Slim-Tube, so it's an important consideration and one that
should be discussed or determined by your hearing care professional. The case here has a little
battery compartment so you can keep your batteries. These devices happen to use
the size 312 battery that uses the brown color code to indicate that. And the only other thing
inside of the case here is the cleaning tool, so yo have a
pretty standard cleaning tool here with a brush, a magnet to
remove batteries, and a pick on the end that you can use to
pick ear wax out of your ear mold if necessary. So that is it for the unboxing
of the earVenture ReVel. Let's check the devices out
and see how they perform. So now that you know what the
hearing aid looks like, let's go ahead and get into the
pros of the earVenture ReVel, and pro number one is,
of course, the cost. One ReVel hearing aid will
likely only set you back around $400, depending on where
you go to get it, which is significantly lower in cost
than most name brand hearing aids, and even lower in cost
than most online hearing aids. Pro number two is that it has
digital noise reduction, and this is something that I actually
test with any hearing aid that I'm reviewing, just to see how much it can reduce background noise. Basically how I do this test
is I put the hearing aid in my ear, and I play noise to it,
and I see how much I can reduce that noise with the hear aid. So let's take a look at those
measurements that I did. So first I'm gonna test the
hearing aid that has a size 13 tube with custom ear mold, and
what we wanna see is that red line move further away from
that solid purple line. Basically I'm playing noise
to the hearing aids and seeing how much of that noise it is
reducing, and now when we look at the differences between
the two lines, we see that there's about a nine decibel
reduction in background noise, which is very good. And let's go ahead and test
the left ear that we have the Slim-Tube and open dome on,
and as you can see here, again, we're looking for that red
line to drop further away from that purple line, which indicates
to us that we are having measurable noise reduction
happening with this hearing aid when we're playing noise to
the hearing aid, and we can see that there is a 10 decibel
reduction in noise with the Slim-Tube and open dome,
which is also very good. As you can see, the amount of
noise reduction that the ReVel hearing aid has is impressive. In fact, it's better than
other hearing aids that I've reviewed at this price point,
and it's even better than other hearing aids that I've
reviewed that are significantly higher than this price point. And the other great thing about
it is that your hearing care professional can customize
the amount of digital noise reduction that best suits you. Pro number three is the
ReVel's programming features. There are a ton of adjustments
that you can make inside of these hearing aids that you
just flat out cannot make with an online hearing aid. Not only can you adjust the
noise reduction, but you can adjust the microphone configuration. You can activate the feedback suppression. You can add a variety of
different custom programs like a normal program, a noise
program, a music program, a mute program. You can even activate the
telecoil inside of it, which other hearing aids at this price
point generally do not have. Pro number four is dual microphones. Just like I covered in the
unboxing, each ReVel hearing aid has two microphones per device,
which is extremely important when you want to be able to
hear better in background noise. Imagine if you're in a
restaurant and you wanna hear the person in front of you. If you have two microphones,
that hearing aid can determine which direction the important
speech is coming from, so it doesn't over amplify certain
noises that are behind you into the sides of you. Pro number five is that
the ReVel hearing aid is custom programmable. Perhaps the biggest downfall
of hearing aids bought online is they can't be custom programmed to your hearing loss prescription. Now, when I say custom
programmable, I don't mean sending off a hearing test and
having that hearing aid come back pre-programmed. That is not custom programmed. The only way to custom program
a hearing aid is to have real ear measures performed on them. So I wanted to go ahead and
do real ear measures on these devices and see how well they did. To see how close these hearing
aids can get to a hearing loss prescription, I'm going
to be checking the left ear, which is the blues Xs, and
it is going to be a normal, sloping to a moderate hearing
loss, so I'm gonna fit that type of hearing loss with
the Slim-Tube and open dome, and in the right ear I'm trying
to fit a flat, moderate to severe, to severe hearing loss,
and see if we can hit those targets with a size 13 tube
ear hook and custom ear mold. As I start the test here, what
we're trying to accomplish is get that solid purple line,
which is the amplification coming out of the hearing
aid, to overlap with the hash mark line, which is the
prescription for this type of hearing loss, and as you can
see, we're getting pretty close to the prescriptive target,
but this is after making some additional changes in the hearing aid. I wasn't quite able to get
it all the way up to a severe hearing loss prescription in
those high frequencies, and this is, of course, me testing
the hearing aid inside my ear, so if may be a little different for another person's ear. And here we are switching
over to the left ear to see if we can hit some normal, sloping
to moderate hearing loss prescriptive targets, which
again, the prescription is in the hash mark line, and the
sound coming out of the hearing aid is in the purple solid line. And as you can see here, we
are not quite on those targets, but I'm gonna make some
adjustments in that hearing aid and try it again. And here we are. These are the recordings that
are taking inside of my ear canal to see if we are meeting
the prescription for this moderate hearing loss using a
Slim-Tube and open dome, and after making those adjustments,
you can see here that we are very close to the prescriptive
targets, which indicates we have have a really good
fit for this hearing aid for this type of hearing loss. Now, if you wanna know more
about real ear measurement, I highly recommend that you watch
my video that I will link in the card up here and in the
description below because it is the single most important thing
that you can have done to a hearing aid to ensure your success. And pro number six, the ReVel
Hearing Aid can be purchased from and fit by your local hearing clinic. Any state licensed hearing
care professional can get an account with earVenture
so they can dispense and adjust their products. Now, whether or not your hearing
care professional locally will want to work with
earVenture hearing aids is completely up to them, but
even if they choose not to dispense earVenture hearing
aids, if you happen to get a set of earVenture devices and take
them into your local hearing clinic, that clinic could
actually get the programming software for free from
earVenture, and they may even have cables laying around their office that can do the programming. If they don't have the cables,
they can request the cables from earVenture for a nominal fee. This means that you can get
hearing aids for about the same price as you would buy hearing
aids online, and you can have them adjusted and programmed by your local hearing care professional. Alright, that's it for the pros. Now let's get into the cons,
and con number one is that they only come in a Slim-Tube model
with a dome and a size 13 tube model with an ear mold. For the likely reason of wanting
to keep the cost as low as possible, they did not go
with the receiver in the canal style of hearing aid, which
is one of the most popular hearing aid styles on the
market, but that being said, you're not really limited
in terms of what you can fit with these styles of hearing aids. If you wanted to go with the
size 13 tube with the custom ear mold, you can basically
fit a wide range of hearing losses, all the way up to a
moderately severe hearing loss. The size 13 tubing has a
pretty good profile, basically similar to other type of hearing
aids that you would use a size 13 tubing for, and
then the Slim-Tube model is definitely the more discrete option. Just has that really
thin tube that goes down into your ears. I did have a little bit of
feedback issue with the Slim-Tube with the open dome, so depending
on the severity of hearing loss in your high frequencies,
you may need to close off the dome a little bit more. Con number two is the
limited color options. They basically only come
in three different colors. The first one is bronze, the
second one is metallic black, and the third one is charcoal. Now, I know I'm being picky,
especially since other brands of hearing aids that are sold
at this price point only come in generally the flesh tone
color, I'm used to using the big six hearing aid manufacturers'
hearing aids that come in a bunch of different colors
that let me customize it to an individual's hair color,
which basically makes those hearing aids disappear. Con number three is that it may
cost a little extra money in order to get it custom programmed. Now, I know I talked about one
of the benefits of the ReVel is it being custom programmable,
but generally, those services cost you extra money. When you buy a hearing aid
online or for a really low cost, it's generally because you
can't have it custom programmed or you're not having it custom
programmed, so in order to get the benefit out of it,
you need to spend a little bit of extra money in order to
make sure that it's custom programmed to your
hearing loss prescription. Con number four is that the
ReVel hearing aid is just not as good as a big six manufacturer
hearing aid, and not that I was really expecting it to be. Big six manufacturer hearing
aids are just in a completely different league, and have
options and features that the ReVel could only dream of. That being said, the ReVel
is a good, basic hearing aid. Just to be clear, I was extremely
impressed with the ReVel hearing aid, and even though
it can't compete with the big six hearing aid brands, it definitely exceeded my expectations. Ultimately, when considering
the value of a hearing aid, you have to look at what you're
getting for what cost, and with the ReVel hearing aid,
you are absolutely getting your money's worth, especially since
you can have a local hearing care professional custom
program it to your hearing loss prescription. That's it for this video. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments section below. If you liked the video, please
share it, and if you wanna see more videos just
like this one, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. I'll see you next time. (upbeat electronic music)
