Watch and Listen

The makers of high-tech hearing aids that boast connectivity with your smartphones are now announcing compatibility with your smart watch too.

Starkey Hearing Technologies, the makers of the Halo hearing aid and the TruLink app have just announced that their hearing aid is now also compatible with the Apple Watch. Also recently announced was a similar app for Apple Watches from another hearing aid manufacturer called ReSound who offer their LiNX² hearing aids. They both believe that this should provide more ways to easily control and personalise the user’s experience of the hearing aid.

The new apps, currently only available for Apple Watches, allow users to control the volume of the hearing aid and quickly switch to memorised personal settings. For example you could save different settings for ‘Home’, ‘Work’ and ‘Restaurant’ that change how the audio is processed and which microphones are on/off then quickly switch between these profiles with a tap of your watch. It also offers the ability to switch off the hearing aid microphones to block out surround noise – for when you need a bit of peace and quiet.

​The Apple Watch (£479 - £949), released at the end of April hasn’t yet had as much of a huge launch as Apple was hoping but there have been some stories appearing about how it’s helping improve some lives already. One story in particular made the news recently about a young, deaf-blind girl who is now able to travel around more independently using the Maps app on her iPhone connected to her Apple Watch; the watch vibrates in specific patterns to let her know that she needs to turn right or left ahead.

The TruLink system from Starkey (iPhone/iPad/Android) allows you to steam music, video, phone calls and FaceTime calls directly to your Halo hearing aids. With the remote control screen you can quickly slide your finger left/right to change the volume of both hearing aids or you can adjust them individually. It also has a built-in ‘Find my hearing aids’ function which will tell you the most recent known location of them and what time that happened.

If you’d like to know more about either of these hearing aids you can visit TruLink and ReSound.