Amazon Echo Frames (3rd Gen) Review: Looking For The Right Fit
- Easy setup
- Long battery life
- Seamless Alexa integration
- Poor audio quality
- High perimeter volume
- Few features for price
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Since Amazon began expanding beyond selling books online and into an online retailer of general merchandise, it has grown into the biggest e-commerce site in the world. It has since brought products to the market that integrate Amazon services into our daily routines, and its Alexa AI provides seamless integration through Amazon Echo devices. The range of devices supporting Alexa is ever-expanding and includes a range of genuinely useful products for automating and monitoring your home and life in general.
In a bid to further integrate Alexa very directly into your day, Amazon released Echo Frames, eyewear with Bluetooth connectivity and audio built-in. The first iteration of Echo Frames came in 2020 and the third generation has recently been released. With everything so interconnected these days, it can be hard to determine which AI-powered product is best for you, if any at all. Therefore, we have a pair of the latest third-generation Echo Frames, provided by Amazon for this review — to test and provide some honest feedback to help you decide if they are a right fit for you.
Product Overview
Amazon calls Echo Frames smart glasses. They are currently available directly from Amazon.com in a variety of styles. Amazon offers both Echo Frames and Carrera Smart Glasses, made in partnership with Carrera Eyewear, which is not being covered by this review. Echo Frames are available in five different styles: black, traditional brown tortoiseshell, blue tortoiseshell, or a translucent charcoal gray frame. Lens options include prescription-ready, which means they are simply clear lenses ready to be replaced by corrective lenses, blue light filtering, or polarized sunglasses.
Echo Frames are made from durable acetate and feature spring-loaded hinges. The electronic bits are completely housed within the temples, or arms, making them slightly thicker than on ordinary glasses but not so much that they are intrusive or awkward. An LED indicator is located discreetly on the inner side of the right temple, obscured to those around you but may be visible out of the corner of your eye. The overall feel of these glasses is typical of quality prescription frames and the electronics do not add substantially to the weight. Even with the additional weight from the electronics, Echo Frames feel like any ordinary pair of glasses. Aside from the thick temples, they look and feel similar to the same spectacles from your optician as well.
Functional eyewear
The Echo Frames provided for this review are called the black Rectangle style with blue light filtering lenses. As our reviewer does not wear prescription glasses ordinarily, he gave these a go as though they were our prescription glasses and tried to keep them on throughout the day for a thorough examination.
Echo Frames come in robust packaging with Amazon's typical minimalist graphics and inside the box were the glasses, a stand that also functions as the charger, and a unique collapsible carrying case. The case forms a triangle to hold the glasses and collapses flat when not in use. The Echo Frames required an initial setup including downloading the Alexa app and connecting the glasses to Bluetooth. As these function to make and receive phone calls, permissions had to be granted for access to audio recording and a contact list — our reviewer performed this with a Google Pixel 6 with Android 14 installed, although it is available for all the latest Android and iPhone devices.
The right temple has two buttons on its underside and the left temple also has one, though it is set up like one long rocker with separate functions at each end. Small holes on the bottom are the microphones while small cutouts toward the rear of the temples show the outputs for the tiny speakers. The rest of the Echo Frames are ordinary glasses.
Operation and features
Once connected, Echo Frames can operate just as any ordinary Bluetooth headphones or earbuds but add the functionality of Alexa and its connection to any automated devices you have in your home or office. For example, if you have smart lighting, Ring security, or a thermostat integrated with Alexa, you can make commands and check the status anywhere you are wearing Echo Frames and have a connection to the internet. Furthermore, if you want to play music, simply ask Alexa to do so and it will play in your ears just as it would do at home using your Echo device. Some controls using voice can be accessed with Echo Frames, although the list of apps connected to Alexa is limited. Sometimes, the buttons were required. For example, when listening to YouTube music, the buttons were necessary for volume control or skipping tracks. Voice control is integrated using the Amazon Music app.
Functionally, the Alexa voice control features are convenient. Should you want to know, for example, the capital of The Gambia, say "Alexa," wait for the tone and ask away. If you are in your living room and are cold, ask Alexa to raise the temperature a degree or two. However, if you do not already use Alexa for home automation products, you may find less functionality with the Echo Frames. Alexa is a handy tool but may not be as useful to everyone, potentially limiting who would benefit from these glasses. It does integrate with products other than those created by Amazon, so you might need to check on what you already use or buy new products that list Alexa integration as a feature.
When you are not wearing the Echo Frames, a handy stand is supplied for holding them. This is also the charger, handling charging duties wirelessly. This is ideal for those who wear prescription glasses and can simply keep this on their nightstand to wake up with fully charged Echo Frames every day. However, should a long day at work keep you away for too long, no other charging options exist.
Performance
Amazon claims that the Echo Frames will last 6 hours with continued use. Our reviewer was unable to use the frames for longer than a couple of hours — more on that later — but we do find this battery life claim to be reasonable. In testing the battery life, our pair remained at about 75% charge after using them for about two hours with moderate use listening to music. Based on this experience, all-day battery life is certainly feasible.
The audio is crisp and clear. Phone calls sound great and those on the other end had no problems hearing audio at an "at least satisfactory" level. Our reviewer ended up using Bluetooth for listening to music and videos far more than for any phone calls so that part of the experience holds much more weight. It is also where the frames fall a bit short. The bass response is almost non-existent. With the speakers sitting just over and in front of the ears, they are incapable of delivering the low sounds of bass and drums that earbuds put directly into your eardrum. Furthermore, the volume is lacking. At the top range, a busy room could easily drown out what you hear, especially since there is nothing to block the sound in the way headphones or earbuds can do.
Perhaps our biggest complaint regarding audio is that it is far too easy for others to hear your Echo Frames. With the exposed nature of the little speakers, the sound travels all around you, making it possible for others to hear exactly what you hear, including phone conversations. This could be rather annoying to fellow passengers on the train or in line at the grocery store. Furthermore, it can compromise privacy in conversations in close quarters, especially with little background noise.
Comfort
As a wearable device, comfort is paramount to a positive experience. Amazon recommends having a professional fitting with your optometrist after receiving them for the best results. They are available in three sizes, including narrow, medium, and wide. The Amazon mobile app offers a Virtual Try-On using your camera to help select the right style for your face, but only a true fitting can help you determine how comfortable they might be. Amazon also has partner optical stores listed on the website where you can go and see them in person before buying, however, these are only in the biggest of American cities, such as New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago.
Echo Frames are covered by the same generous return policy as other Amazon products. This is crucial for something so important as prescription eyeglasses, lest you have the problems our reviewer did during our review. Our reviewer generally uses prescription glasses for reading only — and found this latest edition of Amazon Echo Frames to be very uncomfortable initially. After tweaking the Echo Frames' temples a bit, comfort improved, but our reviewer still developed a headache after wearing them for an extended time.
Only after experiencing this did our reviewer notice that the Echo Frames he'd received were a Narrow Rectangle style. Our reviewer would likely have been more comfortable working with the Wide Rectangle frames for a more proper fit. As such, we recommend that you use this as a warning to ensure you have sized yourself properly before ordering yours. Working with your optician and ordering the correct glasses will surely prepare you for a more pleasant experience.
Overall Experience
I can see how these frames could be a great product for someone, especially if they require prescription glasses or live wear sunglasses are useful year-round. As a person who is not immersed in the world of Amazon devices, these glasses largely served as substitutes for our reviewer's usual Bluetooth earbuds. However, they were poor substitutes. Being too loud to those around the wearer in many situations — and not loud enough in the wearer's ears for others — Amazon's Echo Frames fall a bit short for everyday use. There may be benefits from the blue filtering lenses but are likely too subtle to notice after wearing them for only a week or so.
The battery life is as advertised and more than adequate for most users, and the temples and general shape of the glasses are not overbearing or heavy, which is what you want from a product like this. They just do not seem to offer a bevy of benefits for the average person, unless they already buy and frequently use Alexa-connected devices.
Comparisons and conclusion
While the space for smart glasses is not a crowded one, Amazon's Echo Frames do have some competition. Perhaps the most prominent model from a well-known brand is the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses. However, these glasses, which retail for $329, differ significantly in that they incorporate a camera that works with Meta apps to create videos, a wholly different purpose. Others use heads-up display tech to create augmented reality lenses but can be costly. This leaves the Echo Frames in a class by itself. The current price of the latest edition of Amazon's Echo Frames directly from Amazon is $194 for prescription-ready lenses, while the polarized sunglasses run $254. Both of those prices reflect a roughly 25% discount off what Amazon suggests is their full list price.
Amazon lovers whose lives are immersed in Echo and Alexa-driven products and also require prescription glasses are well-suited to take advantage of the Echo Frames, although prescription lenses are an additional cost. For anyone else, the benefits lay on shakier ground. For Bluetooth audio, countless options run the gamut on quality, and your local optician has orders of magnitude more than five styles of glasses to choose from. Perhaps this relatively new product will find its legs and fill a niche as the market for smart glasses matures. But for now, it is difficult to see its widespread appeal.