Costco is great if they're a good fit for you. The Rexton Reach is great, and I have those, and in comparison my Audiologist led with the Oticon Intent 1 as the model they suggested. The price was of course very different. The Rexton Reach is the same hearing aid as the Signia Charge & Go IX 7, in all but branding. They're both brands of WS Audiology who also makes the Widex brand. Oticon's sister product at Costco is the Philips Hearlink 9050. Although the 9050 is similar to the Intent, it's not identical with some slight changes in features. It is probably fair to say that Oticon reserved the slightly better model for Audiologists. Do note that hearing aids come in technology levels and technology levels matter-- Premium is the fully featured model and then they start dropping features as brands go down 1-5 different levels. Your audiologist pricing may reflect different technology level options. Costco only sells Premium tier. Keep that in mind with price as well. That Philips that might not *quite* be as good as an Oticon Intent 1 (Premium)? It might be better than an Oticon Intent at one level lower technology (Advanced) and is _certainly_ better than the lowest technology levels (Basic, Essential). Both are roughly comparable to one another, but I think the Reach was a better choice for me as it is absolutely excellent at removing your own voice from amplification, and tends to have a very natural sound with a very wide frequency range for a hearing aid. It has okay speech-in-noise characteristics, and can track multiple speakers. Speech in noise is hard for every hearing aid, but it's always better to have the option than not. The Jabra Enhance pro 20 is also sold at Costco and it favors punching up speech slightly to increase intelligibility over naturalness. That said they're the smallest hearing aids Costco has if that's a benefit. Some select regions sell a 4th model, the Sennheiser Sonite which bears further explanation if that's an option for you in your region. When I purchased, only the Jabra was $1600 USD, and all other models were $1500. It looks like the Philips is now $1600, but the Rexton is holding steady on price for now. Some high cost of living areas do put a surcharge on that, but I'm in a fairly high CoL area and my hearing aid centers sell them at the nationwide price. My understanding is that some states charge sales tax on these, but medical devices are tax exempt for me, so it was truly $1,499 out the door. All of these will pair to your phone via an app which you can use to control the various modes and the volume. All of these are capable of streaming to/from phones* but the details depend very heavily on what phone you have and there are some fairly recent phones that do not support streaming (Motorola mostly in the US.) All of these are also rechargeable and come with a charger in the price. *There are lots of gotchas streaming to any other device that's not a phone. Sometimes it's possible, and sometimes it requires extra equipment be purchased. More on reddit.com

I've been very happy with Costco. The quality of the hearing aids themselves are the same. The 'issue' is really audiologist vs Costco technician. Every technician varies, but every audiologist also varies. I've been happy with my Costco techs. More on reddit.com

Try them out and see for yourself. You're not going to be able to take them to an audiologist for adjustment but the people fitting there will be qualified to fit them. I would do a trial of them and then revisit the $6000 pair and see if the price difference is worth it to you. More on reddit.com

Disclaimer: I have the Rexton Reach from Costco Super short version: There are six companies that dominate the hearing aid market, and your audiologist probably wanted to fit you with one of those brands: Phonak, Starkey, Oticon, Signia, Widex or ReSound. $8,000 is on the high end for all of those brands, even the latest AI models. Most people with mild to moderate hearing loss do best with an RIC style, which is what Costco sells in the $1500-1600 range. You'll see different brands at Costco.... but they are all sub-brands of the major brands. Costco selling some of the less common sub-brands is a concession to all parties so that nobody is forced to price-match. If your audiologist talked about technology levels, Costco only sell the highest technology level. These prices are inclusive of that. The Rexton Reach is the same thing as the Signia Charge & GO IX 7(in virtually all ways identical except branding, and the app's branding.) The Signia IX is their current top tier hearing aid, latest generation. The Philips Hearlink 9050 is a mix of features from the Oticon Intent 1 (the company's current flagship) and features from one of their other sub-brands so it's not quite as directly comparable as the Rexton, Jabra (and Sonite) but it's very similar to the Oticon Intent 1 and a perfectly good hearing aid overall. It's roughly equivalent to current generation, top of the line. The Jabra Enhance Pro 20 is the same thing as the ReSound Nexia (again except for branding.) The Nexia was the latest generation until 2 weeks ago when they announced a new generation with an option for an AI chip, the Vivia. That does mean that the Jabra is one generation behind for now, but it's not ancient tech. Some stores on the coasts carry a 4th brand, the Sennheiser Sonite. The Sonite is equivalent to the Phonak Lumity 90, which *is* a generation behind. The current AI leader is the Phonak Infinio Sphere, and those command a high price. Phonak still wants to make top dollar off of their AI tech for now. It's also not ancient technology, being top-tier until about 6 months ago. All of them will work with an iPhone for streaming. The top three talk "MFi", Apple's proprietary protocol. You can also pair those with iPads manually, and some Apple Silicon MacBook Pros, but the more esoteric devices like an Apple TV box would require an adapter. The Sonite uses a different technology, Classic Bluetooth, which means they can pair with anything but are not quite as seamless with iPhone specifically. Generally speaking you'd want to leave them paired to the phone most of the time. Be aware that they're an amazingly convenient option for streaming but streaming won't get to the same quality as good headphones-- especially with your hearing correction applied. You should use the accessibility features in your iPhone to tune audio output if you do wear headphones instead from time to time. More on reddit.com