Amazon’s Echo Frames update just might make you finally wear smart glasses

As an early adopter of smart glasses, I can say with some authority that they’re generally terrible, or at least so heavy and cumbersome that you’ll wear them once and quickly forget about them.

Amazon’s latest Echo Frames could well break this pattern. At its Amazon devices event on September 20, the retail and devices giant revealed these and a host of smart products, including the Amazon Echo Show 8 (3rd generation), the new Echo Dots for Kids, 4K FireTV Sticks and a new Fire TV soundbar. , FireHD tablets, Ring, Blink and Eero devices, plus an exciting new Alexa powered by LLM.

For me to consider smart glasses to be not terrible, they must meet some basic criteria: they must not be too heavy, they must not require touching (although they can adapt to it), they must look like normal glasses and they should be smart. – otherwise, what’s the point?

Amazon Echo Frames

(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)

Based on my admittedly short experience with them, I’d say the Amazon Echo Frames meet most of these criteria. Amazon moved all the technology off the front of the frames, making that crucial part look more normal, and moved it to the stems.