Fauna has created the Designer Audio Glasses that give you not only a good looking pair of glasses, but also Bluetooth connectivity with both Audio speakers to listen to your music, movie, or audiobook as well as carry on a conversation through a phone call, or video chat. How well do they work? See what we thought below.
The Fauna Audio Glasses come in four styles to fit multiple peoples’ fashion.
The Fauna Audio Glasses are shipped with either Zeiss DuraVision BlueProtect Lenses or Carl Zeiss Vision Sun Lenses.
With the Fauna Audio Glasses you can have lenses made for your prescription. If you are in Europe, you can go through the website Mister Spex. If you are in the US or somewhere else, you can take the frames to your local optometrist and have them make lenses to fit the glasses. The Fauna website has a printable page that you can take with you so they know how to make the lens the correct size to fit.
The Fauna Audio Glasses use Bluetooth 5.0 for extended battery life. They battery will last for 4 hours of use, or 20 hours of standby time. They come with a charging case that will charge the glasses up to 4 times. The glasses have a 100 mAh battery built in. To charge the Fauna Glasses, you just need to place them into their case. The case is charged by a USB-C Charging cable that is included in the packaging.
There are no physical buttons on the Fauna Audio Glasses unlike the Echo Frames. This is achieved by using a tap or a slide on the frame of the glasses. Slide forward on the frame to turn volume up, Slide back for volume down. A Double Tap with either accept or end the call. The Double Tap also works to Play and Pause Music. If you want to skip a song, press the temple for 4 seconds. No need for buttons on these glasses.
While there isn’t much bass with these glasses (I didn’t really expect any with external speakers) The sound quality is great. In low background noise to medium amount of background noise, the audio is very clear and easy to hear. In high background noise surroundings, the audio was more difficult to hear. The Fauna Glasses feature a speaker for each ear so you can get true stereo sound. The speakers that are used in these glasses are USound MEMS Microspeakers for each ear and electrodynami woofers.
There are 2 built-in microphones for audio/video calls. The call audio is very clear and the person at the other end of the call (my wife in this case), said the audio for her was clear and easy to hear also.
The Fauna Audio Glasses also feature an app to compliment the glasses. Once you log in to the app, you can set up a feature called Whistles. These Whistles will give you a subtle alert for things such as you need to move (If you have been sitting still for more than the pre-determined time), Take a drink of water, remind you to take a break every so often from work, or play sound loops that fit your mood. The time settings can be custom set by you in the app.
Overall, I really like the Fauna Audio Glasses. While I feel this is still a niche market, they fit in it very well. They are also taking on Amazon and their Echo Frames. While I can’t just say Hey Alexa and have a smart assistant right in my ears, it’s not something I’m upset about. If I want to use my assistant, I only need to double tap on the frames, and my assistant is activated and ready to go. In my daily life, I don’t really have a need to have a smart assistant in my ear hands free. IMO, this is also a privacy/security benefit, as you know the glasses aren’t listening to your every word waiting for the wake word to activate. I like the fact that if I want to listen to some music, I can do it without having to break our earbuds, and I can take calls on the fly and be hands free, no matter where I am.
An issue I did run into when first setting up the glasses was I could only get the right side of the frames to connect to my phone. Luckily, Fauna has easy instructions to read to put the glasses back into pairing mode to solve that issue. Within a couple minutes and following the instructions, I had both speakers working.
The Fauna Audio Glasses cost $199.00 or 165.83 Euro and are cheaper than the Echo Frames. They also have more standby time than the Echo Frames.
You can pick up a set yourself at Wearfauna.com
