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The following is excerpted with permission from the book Hear & Beyond: Live Skillfully with Hearing Loss.

Putting a price on hearing is impossible, but the purchase of hearing aids often forces us to do exactly that.

If you thought deciding to get a hearing aid was the hardest part of the whole process, it probably was! But now you need to focus on which one to get.

Before deciding where to spend your resources, you need to understand what hearing aids can and cannot do. Hearing aids are modern miracle devices, but they are not a silver bullet.

Moderate your expectations

People often expect hearing aids to “cure” their hearing problems, to correct hearing loss in the way that wearing glasses corrects vision. With these expectations, many people get a rude shock.

Success with hearing aid technology depends on many factors, including the degree and type of hearing loss, the presence of other hearing-related issues such as tinnitus, and the use of additional technical and non-technical communication strategies. Just as influential are personality, lifestyle and attitude.

Hearing aids cannot replicate the body’s natural, perfect hearing ability. Because of this, they cannot:

• deliver sounds as sharply as heard by the natural ear
• read your mind — they amplify all sounds rather than just those you want to hear
• distinguish among numerous simultaneous speakers
• block out all unwanted background noise

Hearing aids can:

• improve speech comprehension, especially in a quiet environment
• reduce (but not eliminate) listening effort and fatigue
• improve personal speech clarity and volume (because you hear yourself better)
• assist with sound localization
• mask or reduce the effects of tinnitus
• connect to other devices to enhance communication
• combine with non-technical strategies, such as lipreading, to improve speech comprehension

Hearing aids vary in size, shape, color and how they fit in the ear. Decades of research and technological developments have gone into creating sleek and sophisticated devices that provide an increasingly improved sound experience. (Two must-have features in hearing aids are telecoils and streaming capability via Bluetooth, for instance.)

This ongoing and innovative research is part of what makes the devices so expensive.

Do your research

Choosing a hearing aid is like any serious, major purchase — what’s right for me might not be right for you. Although you will discuss the decision with an expert — your hearing care professional — doing some outside research is a good idea as well.

Visit hearing aid review websites that show the full feature comparisons of different models and their accessories, and see what users are saying about the pros and cons of different devices.

Reach out to your hearing loss peers or visit online social media groups to learn what features are most critical to other users. (Ignore the Negative Nelly types and focus on relevant feedback.)

Then think about your lifestyle and the situations where enhanced hearing is most important to you. The intersection of these two is your sweet spot. Discuss your findings with your hearing professional — and together you can pick a winner!

Hear & Beyond: Live Skillfully with Hearing Loss, by Shari Eberts and Gael Hannan, is available in bookstores and on Amazon. For more information, visit livingwithhearingloss.com/hearandbeyond.