Amazon Echo Frames: First Practical Impressions

No company has managed to make smart glasses that an average person would want to buy. Amazon's Echo Frames could change this by making its Alexa digital assistant accessible from anywhere your smartphone has Internet access. I consulted them at the event yesterday on Amazon devices in Seattle and I left impressed.

The $ 180 Echo Frames are one of two devices advertised by Amazon as "Day 1 Editions". If you want to buy a pair (or the Echo Loop smart ring, with which I did not have a chance to play), you need to request an invitation. Like Echo Buds announced yesterday, Frames depends on your smartphone to access the Internet. The common factor with these three new mobile devices is that they avoid you having to take your smartphone out of your pocket or purse to appeal to Alexa. This easily mitigates one of the key benefits of Google Assistant and Apple's Siri on Alexa.

Amazon

The frames look like ordinary glasses – if not particularly fashionable – with spring arms slightly thicker. Springs relieve frames when you put them on and remove them, like most high quality eyeglass frames). Amazon provides them with clear plastic lenses, but the package contains instructions that you can provide to your optometrist for prescription lenses. Unlike other efforts to create smart glasses, such as Google Glass, Echo Frames does not have a built-in camera or screen.

What they have is two tiny speakers on each arm and a built-in microphone to summon Alexa, ask questions, and give him orders. The speakers are designed so that the sound reaches the wearer's ears, but are not powerful enough for people in the vicinity to hear. The room where the protests were held was quite noisy, but I could not hear the speakers while other reporters attended their Frames demonstrations.

Michael Brown / IDG

There are three buttons on the right arm of the frame: the button closest to the hinge mutes the microphone, the one behind (for your ear) increases the volume and the third decreases it. By tapping on the outside of the right arm, you pause any music that can be played via your phone's Bluetooth connection.

In addition to listening to music and managing Alexa, you can also use the frames for hands-free phone calls and for sending and receiving text messages. Executives will alert you to incoming texts and read them aloud. To avoid being flooded with unimportant notifications, the Frames application will allow you to create a VIP filter that will only notify you when messages from whitelisted people or apps arrive. You can choose to ask her to recite text messages from your family, your boss and the home security system, for example, but ignore something else. Ignored messages will stay in your inbox, of course; their arrival will simply not be announced in your ear.

An Amazon product manager said that executives had to offer 14-hour battery life with mixed-use (phone calls, Alexa chat, and streaming music) at a 60% volume level. They will come with a magnetic charging cable that connects to a contact located on the right arm. I've been impressed by the lightness of the mounts, but that will obviously change if you equip them with corrective lenses, depending on the thickness of your lenses.