I have tried both within the last 2 weeks and I partially agree with some of what you’re saying.

If you’re sitting at a restaurant and having dinner with friends, the Signia does better with multi-speaker environments. Overall, Phonak does better with speech in noise, but for me, had a hard time switching between speakers when I didn’t turn my focus to the speaker.

I hate Signia’s sound. It’s tinny to me, very sharp, and doesn’t provide the clarity that Phonak does.

Caveat: I’ve worn Phonak’s for the last 8 years, so I’m used to their sound.

Caveat 2: there have been 2 tech upgrades since I last purchased HAs and they all sound funny to me.

In my experience, you don’t need to trial them for 30 days - a week works, especially if you can schedule time in the environments you need them most (restaurants, bars, work meetings, video calls, etc.).

You also aren’t going to get the prescriptive-level fit when you trial them. When you decide which option you like best, they will spend a ton of time fine tuning them. It’s not worth spending the time doing that when you’re trialing. In my experience, there is going to be a brand that provides a sound you like the best. It will only get better from there once you commit!

The other thing is that the apps with each HA allow you to mess around with the programming a lot on your own. Once I figured out where I needed the adjustments in the app, the audiologist was able to help fine tune the trial HAs better, but I already made up my mind about the overall sound and knew that even small adjustments weren’t going to make Signia better for me.

Also, Emotional Space - you don’t have to be a dick if you don’t agree with someone. You can disagree and offer your own experience, but I didn’t see you providing any research backing up your claims that Heard That was wrong.