Choosing a pair of hearing aids can be a difficult task if you haven’t gone through the process before. There are several factors to consider and you’d be surprised at just how many choices there are when you speak to your audiologist during the selection process.

The best hearing aid for your needs will largely depend on your lifestyle and level of hearing loss. Once you have chosen the right style of device, consider some of the following features to get more out of your listening experience.

Sound masking

Those with hearing loss also might have accompanying tinnitus. It’s caused by a number of factors that are closely related to hearing loss, which is why the two are so connected. If you have tinnitus, then it’s a good idea to consider purchasing a hearing aid that offers a masking feature to combat the sounds of tinnitus. If you suspect that you may actually have tinnitus then it’s a good idea to speak to your audiologist about it.

Audio input

When people think about wearing hearing aids, they might not realize it can change the way they listen to music. To remedy this, some hearing aids come with direct audio input features which allows you to feed audio signals from phones and stereo devices directly into your hearing aids.

Profile settings

Another common feature that people typically ask for when they purchase a hearing aid is profile switching. This essentially allows you to create different hearing profiles for different situations. One could be used for when you’re at home watching television while another could be used for when you’re outside and have to walk through crowds of people that could be talking loudly. This is a great feature if you use your hearing aids in a variety of different situations.

Wireless functionality

A lot of technology nowadays comes with wireless functionality such as Bluetooth. Bluetooth hearing aids can be paired with compatible technology and streamed directly to your devices. This can be helpful when listening to the television or radio, which enables you to adjust volumes through your hearing aids instead of the device itself.

These aren’t all the features that are available on hearing aids, but it should give you a good idea of what you should look for. Once again, it really just depends on your personal circumstances and lifestyle, but your audiologist will certainly be able to give you a hand in picking the right hearing aid based on their features.