About and methodology

HearingGearGuide publishes reference charts and buying guidance for over the counter hearing aids and hearing gear. It exists because the numbers in this category are genuinely confusing, the product listings are genuinely misleading, and the two problems compound each other.

What we do and do not do

We research. We do not test. Everything here is compiled from published standards, regulatory classifications, manufacturer specification sheets and the recurring themes in verified owner reviews. We do not test hearing devices in person and we never claim to. That is not modesty: a hearing device is fitted to one person's ears and one reviewer's experience of one would tell you very little about yours.

We make no claim about outcomes. Nothing on this site states how much any device will improve anybody's hearing, because that is a fact about a person rather than a property of a product. Nobody selling one can honestly tell you either.

We never diagnose. The charts explain what an audiogram shows. They do not tell a reader what they have. Nothing here can measure hearing, and no web page, video or phone application performs a diagnostic hearing test: that requires calibrated equipment in a controlled acoustic environment administered by a licensed professional.

Three kinds of number, labelled separately

Every table on this site carries a badge saying where its figures come from, because a reader cannot tell a legal exposure limit from a trade rule of thumb once both are printed as numbers in a grid.

• Published figure. From a named standards body, regulator or professional classification. The NIOSH recommended exposure limit of 85 dBA over eight hours with a 3 decibel exchange rate, the separate and more permissive OSHA enforceable limit of 90 dBA with a 5 decibel exchange rate, the World Health Organization 2021 grades of hearing impairment, the IEC battery designations and universal tab colours, the 1.45 volt zinc-air nominal voltage, the audiogram symbol conventions, and the FDA device classifications.
• Trade convention. Taught everywhere in the clinic and the trade, published as a standard by nobody. The severity categories used in routine United States audiology practice, the battery capacity and life ranges, dome and wax guard intervals, receiver power ranges, and the hearing range by age bands.
• Manufacturer figure. One maker's published rating for one model, never generalised across a category.

The clinical convention and the WHO grades disagree, and we say so wherever a boundary is printed. A threshold of 20 dB HL is normal on the first and mild on the second. Quoting one without naming it is the commonest error in consumer writing about audiograms.

Where a published figure does not exist, we say so rather than estimating one. There is no published standard for hearing aid battery capacity. Dome sizes and receiver power labels are manufacturer specific and are not comparable between brands. No product in this catalog carries a gain, bandwidth, output or battery life specification unless its manufacturer publishes it, which is why the marketplace claims of "50dB gain" and "35dB louder" appear nowhere here.

How the product catalog was built

Forty searches against the Amazon Creators API returned 296 unique products. 118 were kept: 21 FDA regulated over the counter hearing aids, 7 honestly labelled personal sound amplifiers, and the rest accessories. Every retained ASIN was verified live and every returned title was read against the product the page claims it is.

43 products were rejected for being unbranded marketplace amplifiers titled as over the counter hearing aids. This is the central integrity problem in the category. An over the counter hearing aid is an FDA regulated medical device for adults 18 and over with perceived mild to moderate hearing loss. A personal sound amplification product is consumer electronics, is not a medical device, and the FDA states plainly that it is not intended to compensate for impaired hearing. Both are legitimate; only one is a hearing aid.

Further rejections covered products whose stated brand and title disagreed, open-ear sport headphones returned by hearing searches, duplicate listings of a single model, products with no clean published price, and every "tinnitus sound therapy" device found, because those make a therapeutic claim we are not in a position to evaluate or repeat.

Honest personal amplifiers are carried, in a separate catalog that hearing aid roundups cannot draw from, and every one of their cards says in words that it is a sound amplifier rather than a hearing aid.

When to close this site and call somebody

Some findings are not shopping questions. Hearing loss that came on suddenly is treated as urgent and the window in which treatment is usually attempted is measured in days. Loss or a marked difference in one ear only, ear pain, drainage from the ear, dizziness or vertigo, and ringing accompanied by weakness, numbness or facial changes all belong to a doctor. So does anyone under 18, for whom over the counter devices are never appropriate and prescription devices fitted by a paediatric audiologist are the only route.

How we are paid

Through the Amazon Associates programme, on qualifying purchases made through links on this site. It never changes which product we recommend, and it is why the rejected products above are listed publicly: the ones we refused to carry are the clearest evidence of how the ones we do carry were chosen. See our affiliate disclosure.

Questions about the site, corrections to a figure, or a specification we have got wrong: contact us. We cannot answer questions about your own hearing, recommend a device for a specific person, or interpret an audiogram.