I knew my hearing wasn’t what it used to be long before I did anything about it.
Nothing dramatic happened. That was almost the problem.
I just started turning the television up another notch. Asking “what was that?” a little more often. Missing the first half of a joke and laughing when everyone else did. At dinner, I sometimes found myself watching people’s faces because it was easier than admitting I hadn’t caught every word.
I could still hear. I just had to work harder at it.
And if I’m being truthful, that wasn’t the only reason I kept putting hearing aids off.
Whenever I pictured a hearing aid, I pictured the traditional device sitting behind the ear.
Perfectly sensible. Probably helpful. But it didn’t feel like me.
I worried people would notice it before they noticed me. I wondered whether friends would look at me differently. Whether I’d suddenly become “the one with the hearing aids”.
Maybe nobody else would have cared. In fact, people who already wear hearing aids often say others barely notice them at all.
But I cared.
And when you’re the person putting something on every morning, that matters.
I Looked At The Obvious Option First
Living in the UK, the obvious place to start was the NHS.
The hearing aids were free.
And for a moment, I thought that should make the decision easy.
But when I looked at the traditional behind-the-ear style, I hesitated.
I knew they could help my hearing. I just couldn’t picture myself wearing them every day.
Maybe that sounds silly.
But I’d already spent months pretending my hearing wasn’t changing.
The last thing I wanted was to put something behind my ear that made me feel like everyone else could suddenly see it too.
I wanted to hear my wife without asking her to repeat herself.
I wanted to follow conversations at dinner.
I wanted to stop turning the television up.
I just didn’t want to feel older every time I looked in the mirror.
So I kept looking.
That was the frustrating part.
I wasn’t refusing help with my hearing. I just hadn’t found a hearing aid that felt like me.
Then I Realised The Hearing Aids I Actually Wanted Did Exist
I started looking at the smaller options.
The kind that sit discreetly inside your ear instead of wrapping around it.
They looked completely different.
Smaller. Cleaner. Modern.
More like the technology I already used every day, and less like the hearing aids I’d spent years picturing in my head.
It made me wonder why I’d accepted that hearing aids had to look a certain way in the first place.
My television doesn’t look like it did twenty years ago.
Neither does my phone. Or my watch. Or my headphones.
So why should hearing aids?
I didn’t want to hide from hearing aids. I wanted hearing aids I didn’t feel I had to hide.
There was just one problem.
The discreet options I found privately could cost hundreds — sometimes thousands — of pounds.
I wasn’t prepared to spend that much either.
So now I felt stuck between two choices:
That’s when I came across Volerto 2.0.
The first thing I noticed wasn’t the technology.
It was how small they were.
They sat inside the ear. No large piece wrapping behind it. No look I’d spent years associating with getting older.
For the first time, I looked at a pair of hearing aids and thought:
“I could actually see myself wearing those.”
Looking Modern Got My Attention. But It Still Had To Help Me Hear.
I wasn’t going to buy something just because it was smaller.
Once the design had removed the reason I kept avoiding hearing aids, I still needed a reason to trust what was inside.
This was probably my biggest practical hesitation.
Cheap “hearing devices” are everywhere online. Many simply make everything louder — the person talking to you, the clatter behind them, the chair moving across the floor.
That is not what I wanted.
What interested me about Volerto was that the design focused on the parts of everyday hearing that actually matter.
What I found when I looked closer
1. It wasn’t only about volume.
What interested me most was the idea of making speech easier to pick out rather than simply making every sound around me louder.
2. The microphones were directional.
That mattered to me because my hardest moments were usually conversations — especially when other sounds were happening around us.
3. They were designed to control feedback.
I had always associated small hearing devices with that sharp squealing sound, so this was one of the things I checked before ordering.
4. And everything fitted inside the ear.
This was still the part I cared about most. I wanted hearing help, but I wanted it in a form I could genuinely see myself wearing.
The Real Test Wasn’t “Can I Hear More?” It Was “Will I Actually Wear Them?”
You can own the most advanced hearing aid in the world. It doesn’t help much if it spends most of its life in a drawer because you don’t feel like yourself wearing it.
That was the part I finally understood.
I wanted something I could put in before lunch, a family visit or a walk into town and then stop thinking about.
Not because hearing aids are something to be ashamed of. They aren’t.
But because I wanted people to talk to me, not to my hearing aids.
And interestingly, the more I read from people who already wore hearing aids, the more I realised how much of the fear existed in my own head. Many said friends and colleagues hardly noticed their devices at all.
That reassured me. The goal wasn’t to become invisible. It was to feel normal enough that I stopped thinking about what was in my ears.
And Then There Was The Other Reason I Wanted Help: Social Situations Were Becoming Work.
Quiet rooms were rarely the moment that bothered me most.
It was dinner.
The person opposite me would be talking, but so would the table behind them. There’d be cutlery, music, chairs moving, somebody laughing near the bar.
Sometimes I could hear all of it — and still miss the sentence I actually cared about.
That experience comes up again and again among hearing-aid wearers. No hearing device can magically erase a crowded restaurant, and I wouldn’t trust one that promised it could.
But it made features like directional listening and speech-focused processing much more meaningful to me. They weren’t abstract technology anymore. They were trying to address the exact moment when I most hated having hearing loss: being with people I wanted to hear and feeling slightly outside the conversation.
What Other People Said After Trying Them
I started reading reviews looking for one thing: comments from people who sounded like me.
“My daughter noticed I wasn’t asking her to repeat herself before she even noticed I had anything in my ears.”
James P. · Leeds · Verified buyer“Restaurants were the test for me. I still hear the room, obviously, but following the person opposite me feels much less exhausting.”
Susan M. · Bristol · Verified buyer“I had been putting off hearing aids because I didn’t want the traditional look. These finally felt like something I would actually wear.”
Brian K. · Sheffield · Verified buyer
How Difficult Are They To Use?
I did not want another gadget I needed a manual beside me to operate.
The routine is intentionally simple:
What I did was very simple.
First, I tried the different ear domes until I found the one that felt secure without feeling tight.
Then, I put the hearing aids in and started the volume low.
Finally, I adjusted each side until voices felt comfortable. I resisted the temptation to turn them up too much on the first day.
What Should You Expect During The First Few Days?
This is one area where I think hearing-aid advertising can be unrealistic.
Putting hearing aids in does not mean your brain instantly forgets years of adapting to reduced hearing.
Sounds you have not noticed for a while may feel unusually obvious at first.
The first few minutes were strange. Sounds I had gradually stopped noticing were suddenly there again.
Over the first few days, that became less distracting. I stopped analysing every little noise and started paying more attention to conversations again.
The important part is giving yourself time to adapt instead of judging everything from the first five minutes.
4 Things I Believed About Hearing Aids Before Trying A Smaller Design
“If They’re Small, They Can’t Do Much.”
Modern electronics have become dramatically smaller. Size alone does not tell you whether a device is sophisticated or basic.
“Affordable Hearing Aids Just Make Everything Louder.”
That may be true of simple amplifiers. Volerto is designed around speech clarity, directional listening and multiple listening modes rather than raw amplification alone.
“Proper Hearing Help Has To Mean An Expensive Private Clinic.”
Some people absolutely need or prefer professional clinic care. Others are primarily looking for a practical, discreet hearing solution they can try at home.
“Once I Wear Hearing Aids, People Will See Me Differently.”
This was the fear I felt most strongly. But people who already wear hearing aids repeatedly say something surprising: other people often notice far less than the wearer expects. Volerto’s in-ear design simply made taking that first step feel easier for me.
The Three Choices I Kept Coming Back To
I ended up writing the three choices down for myself.
The NHS: free, but the style I was looking at wasn’t what I wanted to wear.
Private discreet hearing aids: much closer to what I wanted, but the prices I found were difficult for me to justify.
Volerto: £210 when I bought mine, small and in-ear, rechargeable, and something I could try in my own day-to-day life.
On paper, the free option should have won.
But I knew myself well enough by then. If I didn’t feel comfortable wearing them, there was a good chance they would end up sitting in a drawer.
That was why I kept coming back to Volerto.
At £210, they weren’t cheap enough to be an impulse buy. I thought about it for a few days.
But they were small enough that I felt comfortable wearing them, simple enough to try in my normal life, and nowhere near the private prices that had made me stop looking before.
Why Not Just Buy A £30 Amplifier Online?
I considered that too.
The appeal is obvious: it is cheap, it arrives quickly and, on the product page, it can look almost identical.
But hearing is not simply a question of making sound louder.
If the person opposite you gets louder and the plates, traffic, television and voices behind them all get louder at the same time, you may not have solved the problem that bothered you in the first place.
For me, paying more than the cheapest amplifier only made sense if the device was trying to improve the listening experience rather than simply increasing volume.
Why I Eventually Paid £210
I kept coming back to the same question: if I buy them, will I actually wear them?
That mattered more to me than finding the absolute cheapest option.
At £210, Volerto was still a considered purchase for me. But compared with the discreet private options I had been looking at, it finally felt like an amount I could justify.
So I ordered them at the full £210.
And, annoyingly for me, that brings me to the price they’re offering now.
Update
I Paid £210. They’re Currently £135.
I noticed Volerto are currently running a limited-time promotion. The same pair I paid £210 for is showing at £135 at the time of writing.
That’s £75 less than I paid.
I can’t say how long they’ll keep that price, but if you were already considering them, it’s obviously a much better time to try them than when I bought mine.
The Questions I Had Before I Ordered
Would people be able to see them?
That was probably my biggest question. They sit inside the ear rather than wrapping around it. Of course, no hearing aid is literally invisible from every angle, but they were much closer to what I had been hoping for.
Were they just little sound amplifiers?
I worried about that too. I had seen cheap devices online that seemed to make everything louder. What interested me here was the attempt to focus on speech, direction and feedback rather than treating volume as the whole solution.
What about restaurants?
Restaurants are still difficult listening environments. I don’t expect any hearing aid to make the room disappear. What I wanted was to spend less effort trying to follow the person sitting in front of me.
What if one ear is worse than the other?
I liked that I could adjust each side independently rather than being stuck with exactly the same level in both ears.
Why pay when NHS hearing aids are free?
I asked myself this more than once. In the end, I knew that appearance mattered to me more than I wanted to admit. I wanted something I would actually put in every morning rather than something I might avoid wearing.
What if I didn’t get on with them?
This made ordering easier for me. Volerto advertised a 90-day trial, which meant I could use them in my actual life rather than deciding from a few minutes at home.
I Wish I’d Realised Earlier That Getting Help With My Hearing Didn’t Have To Change Who I Was.
For too long, I treated hearing aids as though they represented some line I wasn’t ready to cross.
On one side was me.
On the other was “someone who wears hearing aids”.
But I was already living with hearing loss. I was already turning the television up. Already missing words. Already working harder at dinner. Already asking people to repeat themselves.
A hearing aid wasn’t going to create that problem. It was simply an attempt to do something about it.
Volerto appealed to me because it made that step feel smaller.
I could still dress like myself. Go out like myself. Sit with friends like myself. The device didn’t have to become the centre of the story.
I just wanted to catch more of the story being told around me.
Not perfect hearing. Not a promise to turn back time.
Just fewer moments where I smiled, nodded… and hoped I hadn’t missed something important.
P.S. I bought mine for £210. When I checked while putting this together, Volerto had reduced them to £135 for a limited promotion — £75 less than I paid.
If the reason you’ve been putting hearing aids off is anything like mine, that may be worth a look.
GET THE ORIGINAL VOLERTO™ HEARING AIDS FOR £135 — WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!
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