Amazon Echo Frames, an Alexa device (newest model), Smart glasses with Alexa, Modern Rectangle frames in Charcoal Gray with prescription ready lenses

UPDATES: I want to return these glasses; if I cant then i'll just ebay them. After several months of use, I have determined they are pretty useless and do not provide me with anything I can actually use. The audio quality is fine, as long as you are in a quiet area, which I am usually never in. They range from not being able to hear the people I talk to, to others around me being able to listen in on my conversations. The phone aspect is failing to be useful rapidly. As for the Alexa integration, well lets just say I don't use it as I do not need it. Outside of my home Alexa is a very useless function. I am going to return to using my Plantronics Legend headset, which works perfectly for me. If these glasses had some sort of video viewing/recording function, it might be useful, but for now its just an expensive toy.... Lets begin this with the background: I was an early adopter of the Original Echo Frames, and could not use them, as they were apparently only made for children; The frames were too tight on my head and could not be adjusted for fear of damage. I skipped the V2 of the frames completely until now. The V3 frames actually came in a WIDE version (grey only) which actually does fit very well on my face. So I bought them, tested the fit and committed to having the lenses made for them. Now that I have been using them for a while, Here are my thoughts... FIT: The frames are vastly improved for fit in many ways. First there are no connections inside the frames themselves, only the temple arms contain all the electronics now, including the tiny LED that indicates activity. This leaves the actual frames themselves able to be fit better when installing lenses, no fear of breaking the function. Likewise the temple tips can be freely bent and adjusted for your perfect fit as well. The tips are actually not an integral part of the arms, they are a separate part attached and have no electronics in them either. Feel free to bend them however you like for ear comfort. However the nose bridge is comprised of the simple fixed plastic, which you cannot modify. Unfortunately this tends to allow the glasses to slide down your nose over time. I was able to add on self-stick silicone pads to them and now they grip the nose very well and don't move at all. Maybe the next version could have the wire adjustable type. The temple tips adjustments worked fine, however I had to add silicone sleeves to cover them as they were digging into the back of my ears too much and would be painful to wear all day. The sleeves make the area of the tips wider as the tips are rather narrow, making all the pressure condensed to a small spot. Please be mindful that the tips issue is just ME, and how I am sensitive to the glasses; most people do not have this issue at all. Function: The Alexa functions are the same as any Alexa you have at home, there is no difference in most of it, so I will touch on the functions of how Alexa works with your phone APP. The frames will allow communication on the phone, but it feels a little wonky trying to control it. For starters when a phone call comes in, you HAVE to push the forward right button to answer it. I wish there was a hands free way of telling Alexa to answer, but that does not work. Likewise to hang up you have to hit the right rear button. I really miss the finger slide feature of the original Frames, that was so much easier than fumbling around with micro buttons. Each time you touch your frames you subtly shift them, so you end up having to re-place them in position. For most glasses wearers, you do this automatically without thinking about it. But going totally hands free would be a much better option. There is also a lack of feedback indicating a call was picked up or dropped off. When you hit the button to do either function you have no idea if it was completed or not. This is most annoying when hanging up as you have no indication that the caller was actually disconnected. Even a tiny 'blip' noise would work for this. A feature that should be there, is not. I am very used to my Plantronics headset announcing the Caller ID then waiting for me to "answer/Ignore" the call (all handsfree). The Frames do not integrate with the Caller ID, all I get is the ring tone. So to see who is calling I am forced to pull out my phone and look. This should be a function of the Frames. Charging: I do not use the frames to listen to music or stream, just phone calls and the occasional Alexa interaction, so the charge lasts all day for me. I will note that compared to the V1 Frames this is a vast improvement, as the V1 would only run for about 4 hours then just die off. I had some trepidation about using the improved charging stand, as lots of other people have listed having issues getting it to work properly. I have not had any issues; I just plop the frames onto the stand and it starts charging every time. No need to play with how the glasses are oriented. The charging does not take long to complete, however it makes no difference to me as I only put them up at bedtime. These Frames are my Daily wear glasses, so it is important for them to be operable all day, which so far they are. Noted that I like the inductive charging stand as it makes the frames much more water resistant than having exposed charging port. Also Noted that this design is because the temple arms each have their own independent battery, due to no connection between them. Overall: The lacking functions aside, I am quite happy with these Echo Frames, and highly recommend them to anyone. UPDATES to the review- Now that I have been using them for a while, I want to share a few issues I have been having actually using the Frames. 1. The frames actually make you LESS hands free that I wanted. Whenever I get into my car, the Frames refuse to operate as long as my phone is connected to the car's systems. I think this is due to my car having built in Alexa. So now to use the functions I am forced to press buttons on my dashboard, making the hands free part a joke when i am driving, where MORE hands free would be safer rather than LESS. 2. I can tell the frames to make a call, but the Frames + APP force the call through some sort of odd Alexa system rather than using the Phone's native calling system like my car does. This alternate method of calling people has yet to actually work; it just sits on a weird calling screen with a message of 'Connecting' forever. You cannot cancel this once started, the only way to get back control of your phone is to actually kill the Alexa Task completely. I stopped asking Alexa to make calls and just manually dial the phone myself and talk with the frames. (Again, LESS hands free issues) 3. The APP and Frames seem to do a LOT of background communication when you are not using them. While the frames do not seem to lose battery fast, all the excessive communication IS causing my phone to drain the battery 2x faster than normal. If my phone is NOT connected to WiFi, then it gets really hot, indicating a TON of cellular communication that never ends. Putting the phone to talk WiFi alleviates that issue, as WiFi does not heat up the transmitter like cellular does. 4. Actually talking on the phone via Frames does sound good, but only if you are in a quiet environment. When I am at work I cannot make/receive phone calls reliably as I cannot hear the person on the other end due to the standard area background noise I am in. I actually have to leave the area to a quieter location to conduct my calls. My callers have reported that they can hear way too much from my background AND my lips moving, and its very disconcerting to them. On the Flip side, if I am in a quiet area near other people, they can clearly hear my caller due to the open ear system just throwing out audio. 5. Adding people to my VIP works, but I am still forced to press a button just to hear SMS or notifications, this should be settable to always read or at least allow me to say 'accept'. (again, LESS hands free) 6. I need to add nose pads to keep the Frames in place, which should be easy to do, however I have to keep replacing the pads every three days as they refuse to stick to the acetate frames for very long. I have to setup an auto-subscription to the pads as I am using up 10 pairs a month!

Just received the glasses today. Cool. I decided to charge them before the big learning curve. After many many tries, I finally got the orange charging lite. Yay! Don't Touch! Came back a few hours later it was the red flashing lite and they hadn't charged at all. I watched "helpful" videos on how to deal with the charger, to no avail. I was excited to send them in to have prescription lenses installed; now, after all this frustration I will be returning them to Amazon unless a miracle happens and I can get the charger to actually work. Edit: I finally got the charger to work last nite,..and had the green "fully charged" lite this morn,..so, I'm going to take a leap of faith and send them off to an online site (boomerang) to get the prescription lenses made. The fact that they finally charged gives me optimism that I can figure out how to replicate this success from here on. When I get the glasses back I will update on the charging aspect. Other than that, I did pair with my phone and the music and audible books sound really good. I think they used the same sound tech on my Meta Quest 3 VR headset, as you don't know where the sound comes from, but it sounds pretty darn awesome. a new edit: just got them back and Boomerang made perfect progressive lenses. I haven't tried charging again as the app says 72% charge. They sound so good,..oooh the rain is falling, ELO, this is some magic speaker tech. Hope the charging goes well tonight. final edit: I upped my score to 5 stars as I finally made peace with the charger; but I'll still buy a more user-friendly charger if/when a 3rd party makes one. 5 Stars is for the delightfully good sound, I can't say enough about it. I let people at work put them on and they're astonished how good they sound. The AI is in the stone age compared to chatGPT which I hope Amazon is working on. I own a lab, so having timers "in my head" is extremely useful. If you need stealth earbuds, this is it! It's uncanny how you can be listening to, say, an audible book, and people next to you have no idea. Overall, I have a ton to learn about the various uses; heck, I don't even know what the buttons do since the booklet got lost while waiting the two weeks for the lenses to get made. I can see these would be fabulous for dementia patients, for making lists...it's easy and always right with you.

I hope they improve upon this version. I took mine in to get my prescription lenses so had to wait another week to wear them. I spent just under $500 all in on these and was pretty excited for them. It is nice to have headphones built into the frame. I can listen to my audiobook while my kid plays her games. I can talk on the phone hands free. Alexa can be accessed too so I can get the weather or ask Alexa questions. The speakers are not silent to nearby persons. So you won’t get away with magic tricks or cheating on a school test with these. The issue is that charging is inconvenient. These don’t plug in, they nestle into a proprietary frame that I cannot see being travel friendly. The fit in the charging port needs to be exact and is hard to fit correctly if you are not really paying attention. You may need to readjust it until the light tells you it is in position. I have to swap the criss-cross of the arms sometimes. The glasses themselves only hold four or so hours of continuous use on one charge. So my dream glasses are not so dreamy as I need to swap to my low tech glasses a couple times a day. My frames fit ok but the nose piece is a built in acrylic ridge that slides down my nose. I’m a patient med tech so work with my hands. I need to prop these up continuously and it is inconvenient. I’m imagining affixing some sort of rubber padding to the nose brackets to keep them on my face. So my wishlist for the next gen of this is: 1)develop a plug or clip charger that can be portable. 2)Include rubber cover/coating for the nose bridge. 3)make a more feminine design that doesn’t look like 1960’s NASA scientists. 4) sell these models at optitions’ so that we can try them on before we invest $500 in a hope that they fit 5) can we add in a camera? I know it takes up room but we are getting better at making tiny tech. Maybe down the road we can add that

I have never ever been so totally disappointed by a product and and then the "customer service" that was supposed to support the product and the sale of the frames. For simplicity sake I will go down the list! 1, Two charging stations and the frames finally arrived! Yippie ! I was able to place the frames in the charging stations and receive a positive result. I did not pare to the phone, etc. since I still had to have my prescription lenses put in and I didn't have my eye appointment scheduled yet. I was able to charge the frames, pair with my phone and use all of the functions of the frames once the lenses were installed. And when I say "once" I do mean literally ONCE. One time. Never to be charged again. However, at this point, the lenses are in put the glasses and the frames do not work as advertised. They do not work at all! I can see, but the glasses do not stay up like they should. I've have tried every little sticky do-dads just to hold my glasses up so that I can see. AND they worked until the charge ran out and then totally unable to charge again....either charger!!!!!!!!!!!! But this is not the major problem!!!!!!!! 2. I posted an honest review (even held back a bit) about my concern over these glasses. Now, granted, I managed to find a sale on the frames on Amazon but should that make a difference in the function of these frames? or is this Walmart or Second Hand Sam's? I DID RECEIVE A RESPONSE!!!!!!!!!! 3. I returned the call to the phone number that was given by the Amazon employee. This was NOT the person that left the voice mail! Person leaving the phone number was male, the person answering was female. 4. Keep in mind that I had gone through (at least 10 times) the instructions sheets that came with the frames, the info on the Amazon site, etc. I did everything to get these phones to work! 5. I really wish that I had a recording of this call!!! It would have been a great starter for a SNL skit. Having trained Customer Service for almost 50 years (I'm 71) I have never experienced such an abomination of customer service and and absolutely ZERO listening skills We reviewed everything that I have done to this point - all was correct. The solution was send that glasses back - with $400.00 of lenses. ARE YOU KIDDING Then the solution was send the frames back minus the lenses....those lenses were cut and ground for that specific pair or eyeglasses. OH..................and the frames are on back order with no ETA. I usually don't get this mouthy buy the more I think about this the more I see this as an AMAZON just can't stay in it's lane. What AMAZON did they did well. As they branch out to skilled products such as eyeglasses (are Pacemakers next?) concentration on competence instead of sales should become a PRIORITY. Next steps...... Here is what I expect from AMAZON at this point: I would like a phone call to the number that is on my account between the hours or 10AM-12PM central daylight time on Tuesday 15, 2024. I will do everything in my power to be available for your call. If I do not answer please DO NOT leave a return phone number. We know that does not work. Please continue to try to contact me directly. I have never, ever been so extremely disappointed with a product and transaction. I look forward to coming to a solution to this problem

I bought the EchoFrames Gen 3 on a Black Friday sale at a significant discount. What I didn't know was, for prescription glasses people, getting lenses for these would be much more difficult than I thought - at significant more cost. If you think you'll be able to save money and get custom (prescription) EchoFrame lenses at a discount store such as Costco or Walmart, think again. You'll have to go to Lenscrafters, or other high-priced places, and the cost of your lenses are going to be at least double (in my case triple) of what you paid for your lenses. In the end - even with a Black Friday special, these ended up costing me over $600. If you would have told me that ahead of time, I would have passed. But nothing like sinking more money after lost :) In any case, now for my thoughts. I like them. It's very convenient to be able to talk on the phone without putting earbuds in or using a phone conventionally with one hand. I like using it for MS Teams meetings. I like using it for podcasts. It's nice while traveling in an unknown city for directions. Now for the "gotchas" - most of which are already covered by many other reviewers. Sound quality is mediocre - especially compared to Ray Bans and others. But I much prefer the Amazon ecosystem over FaceBooks, so that was a non-starter for me. And in my line of work, in many places cameras are not allowed and thus I'd have to remove them. For me, these are not a fashion statement; they are imperative. Audio-only ends up being a plus. For me, these do not replace earbuds for listening to music. If you grew up in the 50's and think "talkies" (movies with sound) is a fad, or are fine with listening to music on your AM radio, you might be OK with the sound quality for music. Otherwise, think of these as voice-only devices. For me, that's OK. Others might balk at this. Yes, the charging doc is M'eh with a capital M. I took 3 of us engineers to figure out how they should sit in the thing to charge. And yes, it's finicky. You carefully put it on the doc and then anxiously wait to see if you get an orange light - as if you were going to win a prize. I think it has to do with which of the arms you fold in first. If you're not getting the orange charge light, maybe reverse the way you fold in the arms and try it again. But I can see why others have mentioned it's not great. The Ray Ban team figured out it's much easier to put your glasses in a normal-looking glasses case and then charging the case. Who knows - maybe they have a patent on that, so Amazon had to come up with it's current cumbersome design. To be honest, after reading other reviews, it's not as bad as I had braced myself with. It's worked for me for the past few weeks. I'll update this review if this reverses course. The thing that surprised me most was battery life. These are now my primary glasses (at $600, they better be). In daily use, with typical phone calls and a few short meetings, I get the "low battery" warning voice before the end of the work day. This is not good. And of course, you have to take them off to charge (which takes 2+ hours to charge fully). At night, this is a no-brainer. But I wouldn't be able to see if I had to charge them during the day. So, much like broken escalators that simply become stairs when they don't work, these glasses relinquish their magical powers and simply become "glasses" when their juice is up. And after getting used to them, you're going to be annoyed to have to (gasp) lift up your hand and talk INTO the phone when they are dead. Crazy person. This is what people around you are going to think to themselves when you are on the phone and talking to yourself. I've become accustom to seeing earbuds in people's ears and chatting away, but not yet when someone appears to be sans-tech. But when others see you jabbering/arguing with yourself in stylish glasses, they might give you wide berth. Who knows, maybe that's a good thing. I'm an earlier adopter for many technologies, and as such, I'm quite happy with these in general. Do I wish they had Terminator-style HUD displays that tell me who to avoid or has bad breath? Yes I do. In fact, $600 now sounds like a bargain. But as of going into 2025, these voice-only, slightly underpowered stylish glasses will have to suffice. As a side note, these are Gen 3 (newest at the time) and in the box it comes with a nice card to give the people who are going to replaces the frames for you with a handy QR code on it. That QR code is dead; it goes to a 404 error puppy page on Amazon. Another small sign of failure that the Amazon design team on these was not the "A" team.

I use to love the Echo Frames, now I like them. I started with the prototype/1st generation. Then ordered the 2nd and 3rd. Hopefully the reliability last longer on the latest release. They pair well with my Alexa account via a bluetooth connection through my cell phone. This pairing makes it easy to use the 150+ connected devices in my smart home. I do have one HUGE complaint and that is Amazon doesn't have a way to repair these frames. I damaged my first pair. The second pair just stopped suddenly working inexplicably. Amazon offered a "promotional credit" so that I could order the 3rd generation but BEWARE, the Black rectangular frames are too small for an average man's head. Amazon has no way to facilitate an exchange on frames. So they'll process a refund. However, I LOST the $100 promotional credit. I tried so hard to plea with Customer Service and it was escalated to a so-called Leader. But he was a bit sarcastic and unpleasant and refused to help me replace the small pair with a larger pair. I just wanted to be whole and use the promotional credit I used. But he absolutely refused. I continued to plea until he ended the call without being provoked. He was simply tired of saying no while I was hopeful I could compell him. So now I have to pay extra for the frames and Amazon customer services doesn't seem to care. So they are good, but some run small and there is no process for exchanges or repairs. If you get a promotional credit as a refund, MAKE SURE you know you will not have to return that product because they will essentially fraud you and keep that credit. Very disappointed on the customer service aspect of Echo Frames. I had to add this to my review: They have better sound BUT they downgraded some features. The battery life is longer but it is much more annoying to charge. I am a Flight Attendant and on the road most of the month. Now I have to carry a magnetic stand and the previous wire doesn't work with the new frames. Also, the travel case is of poor quality. They are not sturdy like the previous case. Unfortunately they took away the touch pad interface on the side of the frames. I can't understand why this feature is removed! It was such a useful feature. I hate writing such a poor review for something that I like. But the truth is, I loved the first two generations more. They wen't backwards on too many things.

I've had all three generations of eco frames. I was very excited to see the different styles as I was looking for a little bit of a bigger size. The glasses fit me perfect they're much louder and I do think they sound better. I know some stuff is missing like the touchpad but that wasn't that big a deal because I didn't like the touchpad to begin with. For what I use the glasses for the missing features aren't really a big deal. What I'm very disappointed in it's how these glasses charge. Before we had a nice magnetic charger that snapped into place and was easy to carry when traveling. Now we have this docking station where if you adjust the temple bits at all you can barely fit it in there to the point where it feels like you're going to break it. And every night when I charge these glasses it takes me at least 15 to 20 tries to get that thing sitting in the dock correctly. It's beyond infuriating and they really need to come up with a better system. There is no reason why they couldn't come up with some kind of wireless charging pad that you place the glasses on and they just charge. Now when I have to travel I have to stick that horrific doc somewhere and risk it breaking or if I lose it right now I don't think there is a way to replace it. They really dropped the ball on this charging aspect to the point where if I didn't already order prescriptions I might have just returned the glasses and stick with my Gen 2 while I wait for the next generation. I hope someone comes up with an alternate way to charge these things because that doc is junk. It's so bad I had to take three stars off just because of that charger. I can see missing it once or twice but to take a good 5 plus minutes trying to fit My glasses in that stupid thing then waiting for that light to blink to only turn red is just wrong. Update: The frames stopped charging. No amount of placing it on the charger worked and a replacement charger did not work either. I was hoping for a replacement as I hadn't even had them for a year but was told that is not an option and I could return them for a full refund and I could buy them again. Problem is that I got them at the intro price so the replacement would cost me seventy dollars more Also they charged me a restock fee which I had to fight. That being said, at full price I was thirty dollars away from the ray ban metas so I just got those as the charger seems worlds better than the frames. They aren't as good with Alexa stuff but as smart glasses are far beyond better. I have old frames I've put sunglasses lens in so if I need to I can use those. Good riddance echo frames.

I bought the latest Alexa Echo Frames, and they're a whole new level of cool. I can't believe I'm just getting them now – really, it's a bit late. After many years, I finally bought a new piece of tech that surprised and delighted me. First off, the design is on point. I bought Round frames in Blue color after using the 'Try it on' feature on my phone. I wasn't sure how they would look in person, but they actually looked exactly the same, and even better. I laughed after trying the glasses in-person when they arrived because I usually spend hours at the optician trying new glasses and am never happy - I right now have Gucci red glasses and they make me look older than I am. But here I am, trying something for a few seconds and really liking it, very trendy – that's new for me. Another concern I had before buying was that they would be heavy and uncomfortable for me to wear for a long time. To my surprise, the slim temples and nice materials make them comfortable and stylish. But let's talk about the smart side of it. Alexa on the go is a game-changer. I can make calls, listen to notifications, and even start a playlist without getting out my phone. And they're water-resistant and scratch-resistant, so they can survive my normal rough and tough handling. Same as my glasses, I wear the Eco-Frames for the entire day, and the battery life is good all day. I have not faced any charging problems called out by a few other people. I actually like the charging stand as it lets me sit my Frames on it without worrying about entangled wires. It took me a second to figure out placement initially but now it works perfectly. I now take all my work Zoom calls through Eco-Frames, and that has been a game-changer because I don't need to carry my Airpods anymore and can listen to music. The biggest plus for me is that I can't lose Echo-Frames while walking, biking, or running – I've dropped three pairs of earphones so far, and they are expensive as we all know! Echo Frames have very clear sound, just like high-quality earphones, and switching to them means one less device for me to carry. And in case you lose your Echo Frames, then you can even ask, "Alexa, find my smart glasses," and it will do the job! Overall, I see the Eco Frames as comparable to smartphones – once you start using them, there's no turning back. I genuinely can't believe I didn't get them sooner!