Bose Eyeglasses?

by philg

“That’s how you show that you’re a douchebag if you can’t afford a Tesla,” said a friend regarding Apple’s AirPods.

At Oshkosh, Bose was demonstrating its old aviation headsets and its new eyeglass frames, which can supposedly play Bluetooth music (or a lecture on tape) for “up to 3.5 hours”. One annoying issue is that they require a custom charging adapter, so it is one more thing to lose when traveling.

Comment from a customer on the Bose site:

Yesterday I was on a long conversation outside of the office tower I work at. I joked with who I was talking to, “I wonder if someone is going to think I’m just talking to myself.”

Well, 45 minutes later a police car pulls up and an officer approaches me. Very nicely he explains that someone called reporting that someone had been pacing around the building talking to themselves for a while. I showed him my glasses and we both got a good laugh. He tried them on and liked them too! He then went on his way.

Do they work for those of us who need prescription lenses? The company says yes and that Costco can put in custom lenses.

Has anyone tried these? We played around with them for a few minutes and were favorably impressed. They seem good for walking the dog while listening to Audible and simultaneously being able to hear important sounds in the ambient environment. Main concern: I hate the idea of being tasked with something additional to charge daily.

Reviewers on Amazon are lukewarm (4 stars). Here’s a cruel, but presumably honest, one:

it looks like no effort was put into making them capable as a pair of sunglasses – the glare reflected on the inside makes them almost unusable. I’ve had $20 walmart fishing sunglasses outperform these.
But seriously, if you’re buying Bose sunglasses, you don’t care about the sunglasses part right? The styling alone is enough to drive away anyone who actually wants them as sunglasses. You want overpriced audio products that have poor bass, overdriven mids, and a logo that you can point out to all the lesser beings you meet. And these deliver on almost every one of those points.

But maybe still good enough for spoken word content from Audible? It seems that they’re not loud enough to be used in loud environments (like the coding pens of Silicon Valley?). And they’re not very high quality, but what would we expect for $200?

I love the idea of enhancing something that many of us are already required to wear, rather than adding more clutter to put on when leaving the house. I wonder if this is yet another example of something that would be awesome if battery technology were 10X better. Imagine if the entire frame were a 98 percent efficient solar cell charging a battery with gasoline-like power density.

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6 thoughts on “Bose Eyeglasses?”

  1. Been a tough decade in the smart glasses department, but they keep coming back in new forms. Every time they come back, lions only see a bunch of executives saying “Maybe this time, Facebook will buy us out”.

  2. Just get Airpods, they work great and nowadays don’t look strange anymore, because everyone uses them .

    After reading the article I irrationally want to buy the glasses, but realistically using them will be exercise in frustration.

  4. Moving around; whether you are driving, biking or walking; while listening to headphones, is a good way to hasten accidental death. Enviromental sounds warn one of danger as a compliment to sight.

    I don’t know how that applies with flying. Presumably you won’t hear anything approaching over the engines. Does one’s sense of sound help one with sensing the mechanical fitness of the plane and to give one a better sense of movement?

  5. Unfortunately I missed the fun at OSH this year; weather and flooded parking made me pass on the trek. While you were smart to take the 121 tubes and bypass the weather/arrival headaches, I can’t imagine it’s the same as camping by the plane. Funny aside, my reading of this post was interrupted by the postman knocking on my door to deliver Bose A20 parts. Strange timing.

    -Tony

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