If you’ve seen signs advertising hearing aid shops while driving around town, you might be lulled into thinking these specialized storefronts are the only way to buy them. Not so. In 2022, the US Food and Drug Administration paved the way for hearing aids to be sold over the counter, which means consumers now have a wide variety of outlets from which they can purchase these devices.
If you do choose to visit a retail audiology center—whether it’s a small storefront in a strip mall or a more official medical office—you’ll begin the process with a medical examination wherein the audiology will physically check your ears and then test your hearing in a specialized room. This hearing test takes about 15 minutes and involves listening to pings played at different frequencies and volumes. Once complete, the audiologist uses this to create a map of your hearing called an audiogram, which in turn is used to program the prescription hearing aids that, ostensibly, the audiologist will subsequently sell to you. The audiologist can later adjust the hearing aids’ settings over time if you need additional support.
If you choose to forgo this process and purchase high-end hearing aids from a retail channel, you’ll miss out on the physical exam, but you will likely still have access to a hearing test, delivered either online or through an app. With these tests, you first purchase your selected hearing aids. Once you have them fitted in your ears, you run through a similar kind of testing to program them, with the pings delivered through the aids you’ve just bought. The resulting audiogram is often surprisingly accurate in comparison to one created by an audiologist. And like prescription aids, hearing aid companies often have an audiologist on staff who can tweak settings over time remotely.
Many less expensive hearing aids—under the $300 price level—usually do not include hearing test technology like this, or if they do, it can exist in a more limited fashion. The user is left to their own devices to program them to their liking.