An essential component of a hearing aid is the hearing aid batteries. None of the electronic parts will work without being powered by the battery. In fact, they’re so important that a lot of people who wear a hearing aid keep a hearing aid battery tester handy. That way they can tell when the battery is beginning to run out of power. Then they will know to have other batteries on hand to replace it.

The life span of hearing aid batteries will depend on what kind of device you’re using. The batteries for those small hearing aids that go inside the ear canal don’t last as long. The reason is that these are smaller batteries and don’t have as much of the power producing components.

Older styles of hearing aid batteries used mercury to power the device. But there are newer zinc batteries that are much more effective and therefore more commonly used.

Zinc batteries utilize zinc air. This is a mixture of oxygen in the air along with the zinc present inside the battery. This produces a reaction that powers the battery. They last approximately twice as long as the old mercury batteries.

You’ll find that zinc hearing aid batteries have a color coded tab. One purpose for this is to be able to tell what size the battery is. But it also keeps the air out of the battery until it is time to use it.

Once the tab is removed, the oxygen in the air is allowed into the battery. The battery will activate once the zinc and oxygen combine. So it’s important that you don’t pull off the tab before you need to start using the battery. You don’t want it to start losing life before it’s even in use.

Most hearing aids today use one of four different sizes of batteries that are readily available. There’s a specific size of battery for every type of hearing aid out there. The smallest size is color coded with yellow and is labeled a ten. The blue labels indicate the largest size available, which is 675. The small sizes are most commonly used for the smaller digital hearing aids that go into the ear canal. The behind the ear devices will use the larger sized batteries. You can buy hearing aid batteries just about anywhere where they sell hearing aids online.

The bigger sizes can contain a greater amount of zinc inside them, and therefore last longer. But they do take up a lot more space. For some people, it’s more important that their hearing aid is discreet than it is to change the battery less frequently.

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