Lily has been testing out the Phonak Pen for a month now. We're impressed!
The primary objective in purchasing the pen was to try the omni-directional mic in the lunchroom for a better listening experience. Lily has always struggled in this noisy environment and nothing except sitting in a different room helps. The omni-directional mic, which is incorporated in the pen, seems to be a great improvement over the traditional directional mic of a Phonak Inspiro in this situation, and allows Lily to hear multiple kids at the same time in different directions.
The challenge in the lunchroom comes when the students get too loud and instead of being able to figure out what voice to amplify, the pen amplifies everything including dishes clanking and voices from other tables that are not involved in the primary conversation. At this point, the pen needs to become a traditional directional mic to be useful. However, the pen's small and light profile makes it less intrusive to hang around someone's neck and truly feels and looks like a pen.
Lily is also using the pen on the playground. The pen's capacity to "beam" when pointed at someone, gives Lily increased hearing advantages. On the playground, she either wears the pen on her neck, keeps it in her hand to beam or hangs it on another kid if they are running around. The disadvantage here is that the range for the pen is much shorter than the Phonak Inspiro, but Lily is use to staying fairly close to her peers to hear the conversation.
We have not been able to try the new Phonak Inspiro Touchscreen which incorporates the microphone into the transmitter (eliminating the long cord and small microphone that gets tangled on everything) and also has an omni-directional microphone when set flat. This is a great improvement for the Inspiro. Unfortunately, the pen doesn't network with the Phonak Inspiro, which is a major disappointment for these different use cases, but it does network with other pens. The pen also doesn't network with the classroom media hub. Lily must connect with each device as she changes between them and while this isn't hard, it does require a little time and knowhow.
As for durability, the Inspiro feels slightly heavier, like it could withstand more abuse, but so far we haven't had any problems with the durability of the pen. The pen does come with a lanyard which cleverly attaches to the pen's clip.
Another time that Lily uses the pen is in her reading group. Again Lily uses the omni-directional feature to hear the kids around a table and if needed, she or the teacher will slide the pen on the table closer to the quieter students. Lily prefers this set up to having additional large student microphones around a table.
Phonak has also come out with a flat low-profile table microphone, which looks ideal in this "reading group" situation but it has a fairly high price point, so we haven't had the opportunity to try it.
Overall the Phonak Pen has been a great addition to our hearing technology tools.
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