Hearing aid accessory review: Phonak Roger On / Roger On IN

If you have trouble hearing in background noise and complex listening environments, then hearing aids can work incredibly well – especially if your speech discrimination is generally good.

However, hearing aids do have their limitations in extremely noisy and complex environments, especially if the source of what you want to hear is further away than what your hearing aids can pick up, or you have very poor speech discrimination.

This is where assistive listening devices come into play, and today we are going to be looking at one of the heavyweights in this division – the Phonak Roger On. Is this device worth it? Can it really help you hear better in background noise? Keep watching to find out!

Hi, my name’s Adam Bostock, I’m the senior audiologist and director at Alto Hearing & Tinnitus Specialists in Lutterworth, Leicestershire.

So, what is Phonak Roger technology? Simply put, Phonak Roger devices help hearing aid users hear in noisy environments and boost performance over distance.

Now you might say, hang on a minute… my audiologist told me my hearing aids have advanced directional microphones and excellent background noise reduction. Given the price of top end hearing aids, should they not do this already?

Well, advanced directional microphones [in hearing aids] do make an enormous difference in helping people hear in noise, and background noise reduction features can make noise a lot more comfortable. This technology is incredible and we are seeing performance in background noise improvements better than ever before with new devices such as ReSound Omnia, Widex MOMENT^TM, Phonak Lumity, and Starkey Evolv, etc.

This performance in background noise is always going to be limited though by what the microphones on the hearing aids can pick up. If the speech source is more than 6 feet away, the performance of hearing aids reduces, especially if there’s lots of noise present – even if that hearing aid has the most advanced features on the market.

This is where accessories come into their own, i.e., when there is lots of background noise, or the source of the speech you want to hear is far away. In these situations, accessories like the Roger On can help you hear, sometimes better than people with normal hearing, transmitting the speech sound you want to hear directly to your hearing aids.

What is the Phonak Roger On?

So, the Phonak Roger On has been out for a little while now, and it is a device or type of accessory that’s different to what you might have seen before.

In terms of accessories available on the marketplace, you have remote microphones, which you can clip onto a person and transmits their voice to your hearing aids; you have table mics, which you put in the centre of the table and it picks up voices from around that table with omnidirectional microphones; you have TV streamers, that send the sound of the television to your hearing aids; and then you have devices like the Roger Pen, which you can point towards people and use it as a directional microphone to pick up the speech source from wherever you’re pointing it.

The Roger On device is a combination of all four of these things – and more! You can clip it to a person and hear exactly what they are saying at distance; you can put it in the middle of a table to hear sounds from around it, just like a table mic; and you can point it at people to hear what they are saying with a superb directional microphone. Then the base also acts as a stereo TV streamer with an optical connection, which enables streaming of sound to your hearing aids; and the Roger On device also has a 3.5mm jack plug socket to connect to other devices. That’s an awful lot of tech in a small package.

A great feature is that the Roger On has a built in accelerometer, so it knows which feature you are using automatically. This makes it super easy to use, so if you are pointing it at someone to hear them and then place it in the middle of a table, it will switch modes without having to press anything. You do of course have the option to set it up as you want to, thereby locking in a particular mode, using the large button on the front of the device.

What’s it like to use?

What I really like about the Roger On is how simple it is. One thing that I’ve noticed with technology over the years for hearing aids is that it has become very good, but it can be incredibly complex to actually use in the real world.

It’s one thing trying to explain a complex solution to a patient in clinic, but another thing when they are out on their own trying to pair these devices and waiting to hear different beeps and pressing loads of different buttons.

I think it is important that assistive devices are intuitive, and this is exactly what the Roger On is. You take it out of the charger, turn it on, and start using it. Really simple.

That being said, you can pair it to the Phonak App and start getting really clever with it if you want and choose which direction you want the sound to come from and things like that, so it’s good for people who like to configure their tech too.

The sound quality, well that has to be heard to be believed! Most remote microphones and accessories transmit the sound from the device to the hearing aids in mono and it is a replication of whatever that microphone is picking up. With the Roger On, the sound is Dolby audio and in stereo, and, like a hearing device, it will reduce the background noise and pick out dominant speech signal. This means it sounds, well, unbelievable really. The mode where you point the Roger On at who you want to hear is particularly impressive as it is unlike any accessory I’ve seen at picking out the speech so accurately.

What are the downsides to the Phonak Roger on?

In terms of performance it’s hard to fault the Phonak Roger On to be honest, and with the patients we’ve demonstrated it to, the feedback has always been astonishment at how good the device really is. Like, true amazement. That being said, are there any downsides to it?

Well, the first big downside to the Roger On is the price. This will vary depending on where you purchase your Roger device, but they don’t come cheap. They are effectively priced like a digital hearing aid rather than an accessory, owing to the advanced technology inside with background noise reduction.

It is at least four or five times the price of the nearest comparable remote microphone technology from other manufacturers. Now, for many people the overall performance of this technology and the extra benefit it provides them makes the investment in it worthwhile; but the price is definitely a limiting factor in terms of making this product more accessible for people who would otherwise be able to gain huge benefit from it.

Secondly, to use your Roger On you’ll need one of the latest Phonak or Unitron hearing aids for it to work seamlessly. This isn’t a bad thing if you are buying new hearing aids, as these manufacturers are both excellent. But, if you have current hearing aids which aren’t Phonak or Unitron, it does work with other manufacturers too, but you will need the Roger X receivers, which will often require another additional accessory to connect them into.

Finally, some people just don’t want to use another device. Maybe they don’t want to be pointing this microphone at people, or asking people to wear it. It’s something else to charge up, something else to lose. That’s fair enough, and are all valid points, but honestly, if your hearing loss warrants using this, once you’ve tried this technology for yourself, you’ll understand the hype around it.

To buy or not to buy?

If you are someone who struggles to hear in noisy situations and are in those types of environments a lot, then the Roger On is definitely a device I would be considering, especially if your speech in noise testing shows that your brain finds it difficult to pick out speech in background noise.

For people who have an extremely high QuickSIN score, which indicates very poor understanding in noise, I will certainly be demonstrating this every time as it is a bit of a no brainer.

If you would like to experience the Roger On for yourself, then why not give us a call and book an AltoDiscover hearing assessment, where we would be absolutely delighted to demonstrate this technology to you.

Thanks for watching.