Hi Virgie, have you had an opportunity to try the two units you are considering with earphones rather than listening through the built in speaker. I find this speech much better.The headphones I am using happen to come from my Creative Labs MuVo. They are nothing special, in fact people don't use them with their muvo because they want better quality for their music. But I find them more clear and better defined for voice than other speakers I've got around the house. All I can read on them is the CREATIVE logo, but I might be able to find out more in the manual. Perhaps you could get several different headphones and try them with the devices somewehre and see if that even comes close to helping you at all.
My difficulty is that this speech is too soft as in not emphasized on the final sounds so I cannot hear the end of the words. This means that similar words sound alike. There is a hiss in the background when the speaker is running that makes it a bit hard to hear clearly as well. But I'm wandering if noise blocking headphones might block that out. So far I can manage with the Function key + L to spell out words I don't understand, but I"m concerned about the future as my hearing gets worse.
