The Hearphones have a 10 hour battery life and don't have replaceable batteries. My hearing aids have a 3 day battery life and have replaceable batteries I can carry around on my keychain. They really aren't useful for the same things at all.
What's the cost of your hearing aids?
How many 'hearphones' could you have for, say, 50% of that cost.
10 hour of hearing seems close enough to a day's usage, perhaps a bit shy but probably not by much. Certainly two recharged pairs should see you through a day.
How much charge do they need - or rather, what's the size of a recharge battery pack, and how would you compare the cap-ex of your hearing aids versus the cost /convenience trade-offs of an alternative?
These are pricey though (around 200 EUR), but definitely cheaper than hearing loss.
Etymotic https://amzn.com/dp/B0015WJQ7A
I wasn't suggesting that people only be allowed to hear for ten hours out of every twenty-four.
As noted in the sentence that followed that one you reacted to, I went on to write:
"Certainly two recharged pairs should see you through a day."
TFA, and parent, is about how danged expensive hearing aids <tm> are -- while parent is all about the alternative of 'hearphones' that are around US$500 (about 1/6th of what hearing aids cost in Australia).
(I worry that the smartphone / bluetooth connectivity is too complicated for tech-averse elderly, and that the inline volume controls are too small for arthritic hands. But I like the idea and I love my own QC25s.)
Rather, the problem is that people are currently going without because hearing aids can cost as much as a used car. And the batteries - which do last longer, yes - are one-time-use instead of rechargeable.
Given the choice between recharging something in the middle of the day that costs $20 to a few hundred dollars, or theoretically having multi-day battery life with hearing aids that you can't afford, the former is an easy sacrifice to make.
The great thing about my hearing aids is I put them in and I can ignore them. Unless I'm swapping batteries, which is infrequent enough, I don't even notice I'm wearing them.
Yeah, my hearing aids were expensive. Yes, insurance doesn't usually pitch in at all for hearing aids unless there's surgery required (BAHA, cochlear, etc). It's worth it. The alternatives are toys that get in the way of just going about your normal life.
> Unless I'm swapping batteries, which is infrequent enough, I don't even notice I'm wearing them.
Presumably when you're swapping batteries, you're not actually wearing them, no?
Anyway, I think you have missed the points being made. For people who can't afford, or don't have access to the services around, hearing aids, consultancy, replacement batteries, and so on, there's an alternative.
A more exaggerated example: Someone who is nearsighted using their smartphone to look at more distant objects. Sure, it works, but it's not exactly practical.
The fact that they are cheaper means that they are a substitute for hearing aids.
They may not be quite as good right now ... but we've been over the affordability aspect already.
For people without access to USD $5k for hearing aids, a 'poor substitute' may be a perfectly reasonable alternative.