These manufacturer figures should be taken lightly and not used as the sole criteria when selecting a hearing aid battery.īatteries should be from a reputable brand, but after that, pricing should be the primary determiner for most people. A set of batteries that claims to have a service life of 560 hours has similar performance to a set of batteries that claims to have a service life of 110 hours. What this study does indicate is that comparing the manufacturer’s service life for each set of batteries is not helpful. In addition, there is no requirement that they use the same methodology across each type of battery. Given that the power draw between different hearing aids can vary wildly, manufacturers can essentially use any reasonable power draw conditions to paint their products in the best light possible. The only stipulation is that the results must be reproducible and that they should be useful to consumers. These figures do tell us that manufacturer’s figures are not consistent, and that’s primarily down to the ways in which battery life can be tested.Įssentially, manufacturers can make up any testing method that “correspond as closely as possible to the performance results as experienced by consumers when using the product in practice.” This is according to Annex G of IEC 60086-1. Creating a suitably rigorous study should involve 20 or 30 batteries, at the very least, all from different batches. This means that individual performance was being tested, not the overall manufacturing performance of each battery. Humidity, in particular, can significantly affect batteries’ efficiency.Įven worse, the study only tested two batteries for each set of figures, and they were from the same batch. This is relevant because zinc-air batteries rely on absorbing oxygen from the air to create a current. It was restricted by geographical location, so only batteries available in Brazil were tested, and the laboratory was not strictly temperature and humidity controlled, so there were significant fluctuations on a day-to-day basis. More significantly, the study itself was limited. So the figures may well have moved on since then. Even something as simple as a change in factory - something that is quite common in the business world - can yield significantly different results. While zinc-air technology has not moved on that much, changes in manufacturing processes and chemistry can have a significant difference to the end result. These Figures Are Not That Usefulįirst, the study was published in 2013. Duracell again is the top brand for size 312 batteries, but Rayovac wins for size 10 batteries.īut there is a major caveat: The study has significant limitations. It came up with the following results:įor size 675 batteries, the winner is Duracell, while for size 13 batteries, Renata comes in first. The study tested hearing aid batteries and calculated the number of hours each set of batteries lasted.
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