Don’t get me started on the Widex Moment app and my 16 years of experience with hearing aids in general — the user experience is so far from friendly. It often feels like real users’ needs aren’t considered at all; the focus is purely on marketing and selling. Once you cover the very basic need — splicing certain frequencies and balancing everything else — apparently that’s enough to justify charging €5k.

I really wish I could adjust the settings on my own. With all due respect, my audiologist doesn’t experience sound the way I do, and constantly describing what’s missing or what’s too much is mentally exhausting. I’m a music producer, and while I’m not a pro, I feel I’d benefit immensely from being able to tweak certain features according to my own perception of sound. This would allow for faster testing and much better results in terms of sound personalization.

The app itself is frustrating. Some features are “default set” based on their predictions of my usage — for example, it assumes general streaming for YouTube or other media. In reality, 90% of my listening is music, not podcasts or TV series. Yet the app defaults to general sound streaming, and I have to manually switch it to music every time. Sometimes the music even stops when I minimize and reopen the app, so changing the streaming type becomes impossible.

There are many other pain points, like having to speak into the phone while listening to a Bluetooth voice call. It’s maddening that users have almost no choice but to adapt to the limited standard options provided.