Hearing loss is very personal so my advice to you Madwoman11 is to get a referral from your GP to the Audiology department at your local hospital where you will go into a soundproof booth. However, the aids you will receive will be NHS funded and whilst the NHS did supply me with Phonak during the pandemic and the Specsaver audiologist I subsequently went to see told me that they were indeed top of the range for the NHS, they weren't sufficiently advanced for my hearing loss. I actually went to Specsaver because a friend of mine who has two deaf parents and is both partially deaf and works on TV in an environment where hearing is really important, recommended I do that since she had recently upgraded hers and couldn't speak any more highly of them. I went and bought a pair of Phonak (yes, the same manufacturer as the NHS ones), at a cost of £2,000 each. They come in a container that links to the USB port on my computer when they need charging. There was a four year guarantee but I only needed that once when our new puppy managed to run off with one and damage it but the store replaced it with no problem. I have an app that the aids connect to - all singing all dancing hearing aids that definitely do the job. The issue for me is that I feel there's too much going on behind my ears with specs as well as aids so having an aid inside the ear may be useful but my experience with my mother was that however much she paid, there was always feedback because the nature of the mould was hard plastic that couldn't account for jaw changes (like when she ate or yawned) and as she aged and the cartilage in her ears deteriorated so too her ear cavity changed shape so she was constantly having to renew to avoid the feedback whistle. Good luck.
