Hearing aid batteries are a vital part of the hearing aid itself. Without power from the battery, the whole device is essentially useless. They’re so essential that many individuals who have a hearing aid will also buy a hearing aid battery tester. That way they can tell when the battery is beginning to run out of power. Then they can be prepared with spare batteries when it needs to be replaced.
The life span of hearing aid batteries will depend on what kind of device you’re using. The smaller hearing aids that fit into the ear canal have a shorter battery life. The reason is that these are smaller batteries and don’t have as much of the power producing components.
The older, more traditional kind of hearing aids utilized mercury batteries to keep them going. These batteries are much less effective than the newer zinc batteries that are popular these days.
Zinc batteries utilize zinc air. This is a mixture of oxygen in the air along with the zinc present inside the battery. This produces a reaction that powers the battery. They have about twice the life of the conventional mercury batteries.
Zinc hearing aid batteries come with a color coded tab on them. One of the reasons for this is so you can know the size of the battery. But it also keeps the air out of the battery until it is time to use it.
Once the tab is removed, the oxygen in the air is allowed into the battery. The battery will activate once the zinc and oxygen combine. For this reason the tab should not be removed until you’re ready to use it so it doesn’t start losing power.
Most hearing aids today use one of four different sizes of batteries that are readily available. There’s a specific size of battery for every type of hearing aid out there. A number 10 battery with a yellow color code is the smallest you can purchase. The blue labels indicate the largest size available, which is 675. The small sizes are most commonly used for the smaller digital hearing aids that go into the ear canal. The large sizes are used for the behind the ear hearing aids. You can buy hearing aid batteries just about anywhere where they sell hearing aids online.
The bigger sizes can contain a greater amount of zinc inside them, and therefore last longer. But they do take up a lot more space. For some people, it’s more important that their hearing aid is discreet than it is to change the battery less frequently.
