Hearing aid batteries are a vital part of the hearing aid itself. None of the electronic parts will work without being powered by the battery. In fact, they’re so important that a lot of people who wear a hearing aid keep a hearing aid battery tester handy. It makes it easy to know when the battery is running low on power. Then they can be prepared with spare batteries when it needs to be replaced.
The length of time that hearing aid batteries will last depends on the style of hearing aid being worn. 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 combination of the zinc contained inside the battery along with oxygen present outside the battery. The resulting reaction gives power to the battery. They last approximately twice as long as the old mercury batteries.
You’ll find that zinc hearing aid batteries have a color coded tab. 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. So it’s important that you don’t pull off the tab before you need to start using the battery. You don’t want it to start losing life before it’s even in use.
Most hearing aids today use one of four different sizes of batteries that are readily available. Every size of hearing aid has a certain size of battery that fits it. The smallest size is color coded with yellow and is labeled a ten. The blue labels indicate the largest size available, which is 675. Digital hearing aids that fit inside the ear canal typically use the smaller sizes. The large sizes are used for the behind the ear hearing aids.
The larger sizes are longer lasting since there is room to hold more zinc inside the battery. 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.
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