The Hearing Aid as Fashion Statement - Continued

Richard Bennett, 60, a banker who lives in Punta Gorda, Fla., is one of those customers. He hesitated before the purchase. “It was four months of soul searching,” he said. “I felt I couldn’t possibly be old enough to need a hearing aid.”

He finally bought a pair of Deltas at Audiology Consultants of Southwest Florida in Cape Coral, and left its office with them on. “I could hear the keys in my pocket making noise,” he said. His color of choice was gray, to match his hair. “I wouldn’t choose alligator skin,” he said. “That’s not me.”

He now wears the devices morning to night. “I put them in a little before sunrise, before I walk the dog, so that I can listen to the birds,” he said.

The hearing aid must be working fairly well: Mr. Bennett was speaking on a cellphone when being interviewed, and though the connection was poor, he had no difficulties.

OTHER companies make unobtrusive, behind-the-ear hearing aids with the same underlying approach, called open-fit. These devices leave most of the ear canal open, avoiding the “bottled in” feeling of hearing aids that cover the canal. Phonak, a Swiss company, includes among its products the microSavia, a tiny open-fit aid that has its instrumentation behind the ear, bringing the sound into the ear through a slim tube.

The Delta, though also a behind-the-ear device, separates the tiny speaker from the main unit behind the ear and tucks it instead into a small portion of the ear canal. But putting the speaker there could lead to problems if users removed the speakers from their ears and then handled them carelessly, said David A. Fabry, vice president for professional relations and education at Phonak’s United States headquarters in Warrenville, Ill. “If they stick them in a pocket, they could be damaged.”

On the contrary, Mr. Wilson said, the speakers are designed to be extremely robust. “You can stretch and bend them,” he said. “They are tough.”

Todd A. Ricketts, an associate professor at Vanderbilt University who does research on hearing aids, says open-fit devices have become extremely popular in the past few years. But, he cautioned, the devices should be worn primarily by people with high-frequency loss. “The potential negative,” he said, “is overselling this technology to people who have hearing loss in the low pitches or frequencies.”

The Oticon devices may be expensive, but Robert Gamble of Cloquet, Minn., is pleased with them. “I never thought I’d pay $6,000, but that’s what I’ve done and it’s well worth it,” he said.

He also got an additional benefit from the Deltas: “I graduated from Princeton. The colors there are orange and black, and I made it a point to choose orange” for the devices, he said. “People do notice. I’m enjoying that.”