Phonic Sky Q sp, q70 vs. q90?

W

Whittuck

New Member
Joined
Nov 17, 2014
Messages
13
Reaction score
0
Dear All,

I'm the father of a 2 year old who has had hearing aids for just over a year now. She's made great progress with the Nios S H2o III's that she's had, but just now we've been told she needs some more powerful aids. The old centre where we've been going since she was diagnosed Suggested The Phonak Sky Q q50, but luckily our insurance covers up to the Q90. The New centre we're going to (finally she'll have silicone moulds, the old centre still uses hard moulds?) said we should get as good as we can afford, but the old centre says the q70's are more than enough for a two year old.

Any thoughts?

We could also get Naida q70's for the same budget, but I can't immediately see the difference for the extra cash if the q90's are more advanced? Perhaps the Naida have better water resistance? Basically we feel the best we can get will give her better sound quality and the extra features will compliment her hearing experience, Should we just get the Phonak Sky Q q90's?

Our insurance lets us upgrade every 2 years so by 2016 she could have new ones if there had been significant changes. Perhaps she would be fine with the q70's and we could get the roger fm foot for them as well? She already has the roger school microphone and but i've heard the fm foot gives better sound than the round the neck loop...

Many thanks for any views and advice,

Cheers,

Charlie
 
If insurance pays for the SkyQ 90's and you can replace in two years, there is no reason not to get the Q90.
 
Hi Bottesini,

Thanks for your quick reply. Sounds like a good idea, do you think she will notice a big difference from the Nios S III's if we get her the q90's? For sure they are already more powerful but we're hoping the sound will be better in diverse environments.

She doesn't use her Roger mic that much yet as she's not in school at the moment, maybe the fm shoe wouldn't make much difference to her occasional use?
 
Whittuck said:
Hi Bottesini,

Thanks for your quick reply. Sounds like a good idea, do you think she will notice a big difference from the Nios S III's if we get her the q90's? For sure they are already more powerful but we're hoping the sound will be better in diverse environments.

She doesn't use her Roger mic that much yet as she's not in school at the moment, maybe the fm shoe wouldn't make much difference to her occasional use?
Click to expand...

Yes, I am certain she will. Technology advances and it is usually better than the previous generation.

I don't have too much opinion on the Roger mic as I am old, and too deaf to really use it.
 
I don't have the Sky Q range but I have the Bolero Q range.
I have Q90 and it is very advanced, many channels can be added and features too. Very good in wind/noisy environment and I can actually hear someone from behind me (if we are in the same room/area). I have my "environment changes" set to automatic, which seems to do well.
I also have the Roger Pen, useful as when I'm in noisy environment it decreases background noise (not entirely but most of it) and increases speakers voice. To me it seems clear.
Hope that helps a bit!
 
Hi Bottesini and DoctorStarkidPotter,

Yes it seems like the higher you go up the 'q' scale, 30,50,70,90 etc, the more software additions you get, I had a read of the additional features and they seemed quite good in theory, like the speech in wind one as you mention and the auto stereo zoom etc.

I think we'll go for the q90's.

@DoctorStarkidPotter,

Do you use the hearing loop necklace for the Roger pen or do you have the Roger receiver? Any preference or opinions on the two?

Thanks again.
 
I have the Roger Pen, and receiver. But as of tomorrow, I'm not sure if I will have receivers intergrated or just the receiver itself. I will keep you updated!
 
I would get the Sky Q90. I trailed the Sky Q90 UP and found the speech in wind feature very good.

At the moment, I use Phonak Naida S IX UPs and have integrated receivers and I love having the integrated receivers rather then the universal receivers because it means I can just forget about them and it also means my hearing aids stay as water resistant which you'll loose if you use universal receivers.
 
Hi NaidaUp,

Thanks for your reply. We managed to get Phonak to take back the Nios 3's my daughter had been trailing for 13 months! We were lucky they did. Our Audi was unsure for all that time, then we went to see another centre and they instantly recommended the SkyQ90's. We got them last week and we're off to get them programmed now! We're psyched for her and hope she'll get good use from them.

I don't know if our old centre was a bit old fashioned? My daughter had hard moulds for the first year and a bit of her hearing aids... now we got nice new silicone ones. Does anyone use the hard ones any more or is it just that our old centre is ridiculously out of touch?

We have looked at the receiver, as she's only 2.9 years old, we thought they might be a bit over the top as she doesn't use her Roger mic all that often at the moment. Her kindergarten is quite small and calm so we're hoping she doesn't really need one of the staff to use the mic all the time? We could do though if you (or any other readers) thought it's a good idea. In addition, as she's quite small so we thought it'd be nice not to have more hearing aid behind her ears than necessary.

When she's a little bigger and goes to school then i'm sure we'll get them. As you say the integrated ones do seem really nice from a practicality perspective over the universal ones.

We'd also be in another insurance pay out period (in 15 months or so) so perhaps there will have been some developments in size or what have you by then? She's already getting used to having larger aids from the old ones (Nios III) to the Naida V they lent us.

Sorry for the long post! It's great to get some feedback from real users as a 2 year old can't really interact with some of these issues yet,

Cheers. Charlie
 
Whittuck said:
Hi NaidaUp,

Thanks for your reply. We managed to get Phonak to take back the Nios 3's my daughter had been trailing for 13 months! We were lucky they did. Our Audi was unsure for all that time, then we went to see another centre and they instantly recommended the SkyQ90's. We got them last week and we're off to get them programmed now! We're psyched for her and hope she'll get good use from them.

I don't know if our old centre was a bit old fashioned? My daughter had hard moulds for the first year and a bit of her hearing aids... now we got nice new silicone ones. Does anyone use the hard ones any more or is it just that our old centre is ridiculously out of touch?

We have looked at the receiver, as she's only 2.9 years old, we thought they might be a bit over the top as she doesn't use her Roger mic all that often at the moment. Her kindergarten is quite small and calm so we're hoping she doesn't really need one of the staff to use the mic all the time? We could do though if you (or any other readers) thought it's a good idea. In addition, as she's quite small so we thought it'd be nice not to have more hearing aid behind her ears than necessary.

When she's a little bigger and goes to school then i'm sure we'll get them. As you say the integrated ones do seem really nice from a practicality perspective over the universal ones.

We'd also be in another insurance pay out period (in 15 months or so) so perhaps there will have been some developments in size or what have you by then? She's already getting used to having larger aids from the old ones (Nios III) to the Naida V they lent us.

Sorry for the long post! It's great to get some feedback from real users as a 2 year old can't really interact with some of these issues yet,

Cheers. Charlie
Click to expand...
Hard moulds usually don't work well for deeper losses, so it is likely her loss now requires the soft mould.
 
Bottesini said:
Hard moulds usually don't work well for deeper losses, so it is likely her loss now requires the soft mould.
Click to expand...

That's what I've been told too, but last year I kept having problems with feedback with my soft moulds (same as I have been getting for years) and my audi was advised to try a hard mould. They've been working fine. Well, the left one (profound in the low freq) does give some humming feedback, but I was getting that with the soft moulds too, so I'm just living with it (it's not constant). What I like is that, hopefully, I won't have to replace these as often. :)
 
LoveBlue said:
That's what I've been told too, but last year I kept having problems with feedback with my soft moulds (same as I have been getting for years) and my audi was advised to try a hard mould. They've been working fine. Well, the left one (profound in the low freq) does give some humming feedback, but I was getting that with the soft moulds too, so I'm just living with it (it's not constant). What I like is that, hopefully, I won't have to replace these as often. :)
Click to expand...

Interesting you say that actually, as I've just been told this and now have on order hard earmolds :)
 
Whittuck said:
Hi NaidaUp,

Thanks for your reply. We managed to get Phonak to take back the Nios 3's my daughter had been trailing for 13 months! We were lucky they did. Our Audi was unsure for all that time, then we went to see another centre and they instantly recommended the SkyQ90's. We got them last week and we're off to get them programmed now! We're psyched for her and hope she'll get good use from them.

I don't know if our old centre was a bit old fashioned? My daughter had hard moulds for the first year and a bit of her hearing aids... now we got nice new silicone ones. Does anyone use the hard ones any more or is it just that our old centre is ridiculously out of touch?

We have looked at the receiver, as she's only 2.9 years old, we thought they might be a bit over the top as she doesn't use her Roger mic all that often at the moment. Her kindergarten is quite small and calm so we're hoping she doesn't really need one of the staff to use the mic all the time? We could do though if you (or any other readers) thought it's a good idea. In addition, as she's quite small so we thought it'd be nice not to have more hearing aid behind her ears than necessary.

When she's a little bigger and goes to school then i'm sure we'll get them. As you say the integrated ones do seem really nice from a practicality perspective over the universal ones.

We'd also be in another insurance pay out period (in 15 months or so) so perhaps there will have been some developments in size or what have you by then? She's already getting used to having larger aids from the old ones (Nios III) to the Naida V they lent us.

Sorry for the long post! It's great to get some feedback from real users as a 2 year old can't really interact with some of these issues yet,

Cheers. Charlie
Click to expand...

Sounds like you are already and know what you want for your daughter. I'm sure your daughter will love her new hearing aids.

The most important question ;) What color HAs did you choose?
 
Dear all,

Thanks very much for your responses

@Bottesini, that was interesting to know. She seems to get on well with her new silicone ones. With the new aids (q90's) we perceive there to be almost no feedback. When she hugs us or has a large jacket on etc. Which is great.

@NaidaUp She 'chose' the Royal blue transparent, or at least that was the best we could divine she wanted from her many responses. We think she's hearing lots more and is very excited in general to be more a part of some activities (she was already pretty excitable!)

Next dilemma... sorry guys. There is a charity in Belgium (we live in Brussels) that funds receivers and transmitters. So we've been trailing a Roger Inspiro and Mylink neck receiver. They seem good but Audrey fiddles with the Mylink quite a lot, so our old audi was saying we could apply to have the integrated ones with an Inspiro instead? The Mylink has a quite long wire (the round the neck bit) It's occasionally tucked into her pants!

@DoctorStarkidPotter what do you think? I'm sure we'd use the Inspiro more out and about if she had integrated fm (perhaps it'd be less annoying for her?). That said her aids would be a like 8mm bigger than what she's getting used to now.

Any experience from other users who might have grown up with larger aids? Would you have preferred smaller for when you had smaller ears? Or is that not really relevant?

Also the Mylink is surely cheaper than the integrated fm so we could always buy that later if we thought that two systems might complimentary? Our new audi said she'd happily show us how to remove the integrated ones if we wanted to change around a bit.

The charity only funds new systems every 5 years so it'd be good to make a future appropriate choice now if possible. Although you never can tell, as things change quite quickly.

Ho hum ho hum :) Thanks to all who've read and replied. Me and Audrey thank you!
 
The problem with the myLink is the awful interference you can get with it. It works on telecoil where's the receivers itself work on a FM program.

Also having slightly bigger HAs will be much better for her and it means she can play safely without having something dangling around her neck.

I personally would go for the receivers as the sound quality would be so much better and that's worth it alone for me.

I would get the integrated receivers rather then universal receivers because then they'll be smaller on her ears.
 
Forgot to say that I use the Inspiro and love it myself.

Has your daughter got the Sky Q90 SPs or Sky Q90 UPs?

Here's a picture showing what an integrated receiver and a universal receiver will look like on the UPs. See the difference in length?

I wear the purple ones all the time and the black and silver ones are my spare HAs.
 

Attachments

  • image.jpg
    image.jpg
    98.9 KB · Views: 15
Hey NaidaUP,

Thanks for your reply. They're sp's, forgot to mention. What's the difference between sp and up?

Hmmm, sounds like the telecoil will be less and less used over time as proper digital signals increase. I think we'll ask for the integrated fm. Good idea. Probably with time there will be more apps and wearables that will be able to sync with the fm's as well? I've already seen some new 'indigogo' and 'kickstarter' bits that look promising.

Why would "having slightly bigger HAs be much better for her"? I agree having that thing round her neck will just be a pain.

Thanks for the pic!
 
Whittuck said:
Hey NaidaUP,

Thanks for your reply. They're sp's, forgot to mention. What's the difference between sp and up?

Hmmm, sounds like the telecoil will be less and less used over time as proper digital signals increase. I think we'll ask for the integrated fm. Good idea. Probably with time there will be more apps and wearables that will be able to sync with the fm's as well? I've already seen some new 'indigogo' and 'kickstarter' bits that look promising.

Why would "having slightly bigger HAs be much better for her"? I agree having that thing round her neck will just be a pain.

Thanks for the pic!
Click to expand...

I was meaning, slightly bigger HAs with the added integrated receivers would be better then having something around the neck bouncing around and getting in away of a very active 2 year old.

The difference between the SP and UP is the UP uses a bigger battery and is slightly more powerful but only slightly more powerful. A lot of people get the UPs because of the bigger batteries and longer battery life. The difference in size between the SP and UP is tiny!
 
Ok yes I agree. The integrated ones looked cool actually. Not to big. We'll apply to the fund and see where we get to.

I was wondering if it was something like that with the UP. Maybe next time.

Thanks very much for all your replies. Have a good Sunday!
 
Back
Top