Phonak Marvel: Easy to pair, easy to hear, Music to your (and your client’s) ears!

There’s an old saying that ‘Life isn’t meant to be easy’. Phonak Marvel asks Why not? Certainly ease of use helps support satisfaction with hearing aids¹. And a recent field-trial indicates that Phonak Marvel is not only easy to pair with both Android and iOS smartphones, its ability to support true hands free calls and deliver both phone and audio directly into both ears makes phone calls easy and rated sound quality high. Music to your (and your client’s) ears? Read on ….

What is Satisfaction?

Satisfaction can be defined as the good feeling one has when one achieves something or when something that one wanted to happen does happen.² The opposite? – The first time I tried to pair my Smartphone to a hands-free car kit! After multiple attempts taking more than 10 minutes (and perhaps a little colorful language), I finally managed to get the system working. Was I satisfied? At the end result – Yes. At the process – absolutely not!

Fast forward over a decade to my first experience pairing my smartphone to Phonak Marvel. It was like night and day, taking a mere 30 seconds! But how about for others? And once paired, what is the sound experience?

During our Marvel launch activities in New Zealand we invited a number of people working in the hearing healthcare industry to gain hands-on experience with Phonak Marvel and provide feedback on how it went. This included timing how long it took to pair Phonak Marvel to their own smartphones as well as ratings on the ease of phone calls and the quality of streamed music.

A sneak peek at some of the results…

Pairing

Three quarters of participants paired Phonak Marvel to their smartphone in less than one minute! (The median time was only 41 Sec!). iOS and Android platforms were no different in terms of both pairing time or rated ease, with 92% rating pairing as either ‘very easy’ or ‘easy’ .

Who you gonna call? …

Phonak Marvel offers true hands-free calls, where the phone can be answered by a press on the hearing aid button and the hearing aid microphones pick up the wearers voice. 89% of participants rated answering the call by pressing the hearing aid button as either ‘very easy’ or ‘easy’, and hearing the person at the far end was rated as either ‘very easy’ or ‘easy’ by 95% of people. Phone calls are a two way conversation, and 80% of people at the far end rated the Marvel wearers voice as either ‘very easy’ or ‘easy’ to hear.

The music’s …. not over!

93% rated the sound quality for music as either ‘excellent’ or ‘good’, and for those who had previously experienced listening to music through hearing aids, 90% rated the streamed music quality for Audéo M as either ‘much better’ or ‘better’ than what they have heard before.

Phonak Marvel – Truly Marvelous!

So with direct connectivity to both iOS and Android phones that takes less than 1 minute to set up, provision of true hands free calls and high quality binaural streaming of both the phone and audio signal, Phonak Marvel really is music to your (client’s) ears!

 

Click here for access to the full article published in the July edition of the Hearing Review.

 

References

1. Kochkin, S. (2010). MarkeTrak VIII: Consumer satisfaction with hearing aids is slowly increasing. The Hearing Journal, Vol. 63(1), 19-27. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5bd6/99d0627b34c388430f1578e77083d60b27f3.pdf
2. Wong, L. L. N., Hickson, L., & McPherson, B. (2003) Hearing Aid Satisfaction: What Does Research from the Past 20 Years Say? Trends in Amplification, Vol. 7(4), 117-161.