The device matters less than who sets it up.

Try before you buy, properly

Island Hearing Services offers low-cost, no-obligation demonstrations: devices programmed to your own hearing, worn in your own week. Not a listening booth, not a corridor, not a showroom — your kitchen, your car, the Stop & Shop on a Saturday, dinner with six people at a table.

That is the only environment that answers the actual question, which is never “can I hear this tone” but “can I follow my daughter-in-law across a noisy room.” A device that is impressive in an office and useless at the Ritz has failed, and you should find that out before money changes hands rather than after.

What a consultation covers

• Your audiogram, gone through properly — what the numbers mean and which sounds are actually affected
• How you spend your days. A retired fisherman on the water and someone who is mostly on the phone need very different things
• Technology levels — from simple and easy to advanced, with directional processing, Bluetooth to your phone and television, rechargeable batteries, and automatic programme switching
• Styles — behind-the-ear, in-the-canal, receiver-in-canal
• Budget, said out loud. There is a real range, and the most expensive device is not automatically the right one
• Listening through devices set to your own hearing profile

The fitting is the product

A hearing aid arrives from the manufacturer set to a generic first-fit — a rough guess based on your audiogram and an average ear canal. Left there it will be too sharp, or too quiet, or it will make your own voice sound like you are talking into a barrel, and it will end up in a drawer. A very large number of unworn hearing aids are unworn for exactly this reason.

At a fitting appointment:

• The devices are programmed against your audiometric results
• Comfort, sharpness and loudness are adjusted with you in the room, telling her what it sounds like
• You are taught to put them in, take them out, charge them, clean them and change the domes, until you can do it without thinking
• You come back. Hearing aids are tuned over several visits, because your brain adapts and what sounded right in week one will not in week four

Over-the-counter hearing aids

Since 2022 you have been able to buy hearing aids off a shelf without seeing anyone, and for some people with mild to moderate loss they are a legitimate option. Two honest caveats. They are self-fitted, which means the quality of the outcome depends on your own patience with an app. And they are not diagnostic — an OTC device will happily amplify away over a middle-ear problem, a perforation, or an asymmetry that should have been looked at.

Get the evaluation either way. If the answer is that an over-the-counter device suits you, you will be told that.

Already have hearing aids?

Bring them. Island Hearing Services adjusts, reprograms, cleans and repairs devices bought anywhere, including from a practice that has since closed. See repairs and reprogramming.

For what insurance does and does not do here, see insurance and costs.