Lively Hearing Reviews

The overall experience was excellent - Lively communicated via email at every step in the order process and set me up with a Zoom appointment with an audiologist before my new hearing aids even arrived. To get them programmed before shipping, you can either do a hearing test using their excellent iPhone app, or email in your audiogram (which is what I did). The new hearing aids came nicely packaged with a sturdy high quality charger, and lots of accessories including extra ear tips in many sizes and shapes, wax guards, cleaning cloths, etc. Getting them set up and running was easy with the clear and helpful instructions, but that's where I ran into my first problem - the hearing aids squealed and squeaked like crazy. I was able to reach someone at Lively right away but they only suggested resetting the hearing aids and told me that I would have to wait until I "saw" the audiologist to further investigate.

The Zoom call with the audiologist a few days later went well and she fixed the squealing problem quickly and got everything working. From then the hearing aids worked fine and I was happy with the sound quality and their app was excellent for switching programs and offered lots of adjustments (although any adjustments you make don't "stick" when you power off the hearing aids - permanent adjustments have to be made by the audiologist). But I eventually ran into a problem that caused me to return them. The sound quality when streaming or calling was very tinny, much worse than what I got when streaming and calling from my Rexton BiCore hearing aids. Additionally people on the other end of phone calls said it sounded like I wasn't close enough to the phone (when the hearing aids were supposed to be acting as a microphone).

I could improve the sound in streaming and calls somewhat by adjusting things in the Lively app, but I had to do it every time I powered them on. I checked with the audiologist via email and got a response within hours, she said that there wasn't any way to make a permanent adjustment specific only to streaming and calling. So ultimately that's why I returned them - the sound when streaming and calling just wasn't up to par. I know I can't expect hearing aids to sound as good as real headphones or earbuds in these situations, but the Rextons did a far better job and so did my several year older KS 8.0 hearing aids. Oh, and returning them was also painless, I just emailed and said I wanted to return them and they immediately sent me a Fedex return label, no hard sell to try to convince me to keep them. Overall because of the pricing and support and the great app, I still highly recommend Lively hearing aids to anyone who doesn't need to stream audio from their phone.

P.S. Here's my quick comparison between the Lively 2 Pro and the Costco Rexton Bi Core hearing aids:

Pricing: Comparable if Lively is on sale.
Sound quality: Comparable except Rexton is better when streaming or calling.
Programs: Lively has more of them.
Telecoil: Rexton has this built-in, but with Lively it's an extra cost accessory.
Charger: Rexton's is smaller but Lively's is more solid and better made.
App: Lively is easier to use and offers many more adjustments.

Support: Comparable, Lively does a great job with email and Zoom, Costco is more in-person oriented.