by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
A lady asked,
Now that I have to buy my own hearing aid batteries, I’m getting confused by what’s available. One brand claims to be the ‘Longest Lasting’ on their package. Are any of them really any better than the others? Where should I go to get the best deal? How much should I pay? I have never ordered batteries online. Are the expiration dates comparable to the ones purchased in stores?
Good questions. When added up over the course of a year, the cost of hearing aid batteries can be significant. If you shop around, you’ll find that the price of hearing aid batteries varies greatly depending on where you purchase them. For example, a quick look on the Internet revealed that some hearing aid batteries sell for as much as $1.12 each. I’m sure they cost even more in some stores. However, you should never have to pay that much. You can get them for significantly less.
Hearing aid batteries are basically all zinc-air batteries. One of the characteristics of zinc-air batteries is that they begin to lose their capacity the moment you remove the plastic tab in order to activate them. At that point, whether you use them or not, they rapidly lose their charge over a period of a couple of weeks or so.
Therefore, your best bet is to buy based on price, not on capacity or longevity. I’ve found that the ZeniPower zinc-air batteries combine good batteries with a great price—namely 18 cents each. I buy a box of 60 batteries at a time for just $10.95 plus shipping.
There are a number of places that give you good prices on hearing aid batteries. As of this writing, the best price that I’ve found is at Premium Batteries. You can buy from them online via Amazon.com here.
You can get whichever size of batteries you need—675, 13, 312 or 10—all at the same great price.
What kind of shelf life can you expect? The last package of batteries I ordered was back in December, 2008 and the expiry date is still in the future—January, 2013. That’s 5 years in the future from the date of purchase. You probably can’t beat that in any physical store.
When you buy your batteries from a firm that just sells batteries, you can expect the freshest batteries because they sell so many and consequently have to continually renew their stock. In addition, you often get the best prices as well as the freshest batteries, so you can’t beat that.
One Internet list I am on has recommended the ZeniPower HP batteries for years as being the the best batteries for the best price. I can’t argue with that. That has been my experience too.
Leave a Reply