The five best hearing aids in 2024. Story by Tom Horton • 10mo. I n the U.S., hearing loss affects around 30 million people over the age of 12 each year.

Hearing aids - those two words alone may conjure up images of unattractive, beige devices that your father or grandmother once wore before finally throwing them in a drawer, never to be seen again.

This new category of hearing aids was approved by the FDA in August, five years after Congress passed legislation requiring federal regulators to do so. Since then, tech companies have rushed to ...

Here's what you should know, from people with hearing aids. ... "When people find out they have a hearing loss, it often progresses, and they wait five to seven years before they get hearing aids.

And since hearing aids have a three- to five-year life span, Dr. Lin said, users will eventually need to go through the process again, perhaps several times.

But, because of the high price of hearing aids, as few as only one in five people who could benefit from them use one. Hearing aids are expensive, and those who need them often can't afford them ...

Self-fitting O.T.C. aids that perform well are now widely available for about $1,000 a pair; prescription hearing aids purchased through audiologists cost several times more.

Hearing aids could be available over the counter as soon as October The Food ... We've had this very constrained market where essentially you have five manufacturers that control about 95% of the ...