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?
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.
Despite this, the stems are 15% smaller than the latest Echo Frames, and as a result, they felt much more comfortable on my head. Granted, I’ve tried the most basic styles, the ones that look almost exactly like my classic Clark Kent-style frames. I didn’t put the larger, more expensive Carrera smart glasses with the Alexa Collection frames. The latter starts at $389, while the standard Echo Frames cost $269.99.
When I put the Echo Frames on, they were already playing audio. It was so clear that I initially thought someone was standing nearby and talking in my ear, but I quickly realized it was the new and improved sound from the Echo Frame . It’s stereo and quite clear, so much so that when I played music I initially thought the sound was playing throughout the room.
Since you’re not installing headphones and the sound has to travel the distance between the stems and your ears, there may be some audio leakage, but especially at higher volumes. When I turned the volume down to a level just loud enough for me (maybe a little quieter than I’d like), people nearby reported that they couldn’t hear it.
This volume level is important because Echo Frames are now designed to last six hours at 80% volume. I turned the volume up to maximum and found them too loud; in reality, you’ll probably play them at less than 80% level.
There are a few buttons to turn off Alexa and increase and decrease the volume of the Frames, but Amazon expects you to primarily use Alexa to control and interact with the Frames.
Amazon has improved the Alexa listening capabilities of Echo Frames by improving the microphones’ ability to cancel wind noise and hear your requests. We were in a difficult demo room environment with dozens of people talking at high volumes, but that didn’t seem to reduce the Echo Frames’ ability to hear me.
I asked Alexa to stop playing and she immediately obeyed. When I asked Alexa to turn the volume down, the sound changed just a moment later, and it worked the same way when I asked Alexa to turn the volume up.
When I asked Alexa for the weather, she responded, but with details about the weather in Santa Clara, California (we were in Virginia). It turned out that these frames were associated with a phone belonging to someone who had flown in from California for the event.
The Echo Frames offer a mostly hands-free experience – another one of my key criteria – and therefore don’t make you look too ridiculous when wearing and using them.
I couldn’t see anything while wearing the frames because obviously they didn’t have my prescription, but Echo frames come in seven stylish styles and will support subscription lenses, as well as sunglasses.
When I was finished with the frames I took them out and intentionally folded them because that’s how you automatically put them to sleep.
The new Amazon Echo Frames v 2 are still in their early stages (they’ll ship later this year) and I can’t really tell you if these are the smart frames that finally break the curse, the one that prevents majority of normal people wear glasses. such things in public.
Still, I applaud Amazon for doing what was necessary and perhaps just enough to make it an attractive option or at least a consideration when it’s time to buy your next pair of glasses.