Very affordable price and it works great!
I bought a pair of Empower for my mom who does not think she had a hearing problem. She now loves them and said she didn't know what she was missing. Best of all, she can understand what her grandchildren are saying.
After initial adjustment it is amazing!!
I do not have terrible hearing, was just having trouble hearing the TV at a normal volume so I mainly got this to use at home and have not yet tried it out in public places. I've had it a month now. When I first put it on I was distressed at all the new sounds I was hearing and thought this would never work, I could hear myself breathing, the sound of my arm rubbing against my clothing, and my dog playing with his ball; all these things interfered with actually being able to hear the TV.
Since Empower company had sent me an email to check and see if I had any questions (which was awesome customer service!), I explained my concerns. The rep explained that at first you will hear lots of sounds because your brain will need time to learn to filter those sounds out but to keep using it and over time it will improve. It did!
After about 2 weeks of using the product for maybe 2 hours a night I noticed a big difference, and now it is amazing. I would not have believed you could retrain your brain to learn to hear differently but you can. I am going to start testing this out in public and will update my review later, but for now this is awesome in the home.
I may wind up getting one for my other ear because I've noticed when I have the one in my left ear it makes my right ear feel stopped up' like it can't hear or can't hear very well. This, too, got better over time, but I can see why they say 2 of these is ideal, one for each ear.
Lastly: you have to play with the ratio of volume on your tv and your Empower; at first I had the TV down really low and the Empower up high and this amplified background noises, and I discovered the TV was too low, even my husband couldn't hear it. So, turning up the TV and turning down the Empower was the perfect balance, it minimized background noises further yet still kept the TV volume at a normal level for others.
I was drawn to this by all the great reviews and the affordability. I am so impressed both with the product and the customer service.