EssilorLuxottica has announced a new version of its Nuance Audio glasses, which are designed to work as discreet over-the-counter hearing aids. The company, which Meta partnered with for its Ray-Ban smart glasses, calls the new model the Nuance Audio Plus. It keeps the FDA cleared hearing aid technology inside temple arms that are not much thicker than those on a standard pair of glasses.
The Nuance Audio Plus is now available in the US in three frame styles: Square, Pathos, and Upturn. Buyers can choose from five colors: shiny black, shiny burgundy, deep blue, amber, and olive green. Pricing starts at $829, though the company says customers should expect to pay more when ordering the glasses with prescription lenses. The standard Nuance Audio smart glasses will remain on sale alongside the new model and start at $699.
The main upgrades in the Plus model are improved audio amplification, including better speech clarity in noisy environments, along with more on-device controls and up to 10 hours of battery life. Through a companion mobile app, users can switch between two modes. Frontal is built to pick up and amplify the voice of the person being spoken to during face-to-face conversations, while All-Around raises the volume of everything happening around the wearer. The app also offers four pre-configured amplification settings and three levels of noise reduction so users can adjust how much background noise they hear.
To reduce reliance on pulling out a phone and opening the app, the Nuance Audio Plus adds on-frame controls, including a dedicated power slider and separate volume controls. Folding the temple arms puts the powered-on glasses into sleep mode to extend battery life, and unfolding them quickly powers the glasses back up. The glasses can also be used to answer incoming voice calls directly without reaching for a phone first, but only when paired with an iPhone. That feature is not supported with Android.
The announcement was made by EssilorLuxottica, the same company behind the Ray-Ban smart glasses it developed with Meta. The Nuance Audio line is aimed at users who want hearing assistance in frames that look like ordinary eyewear rather than traditional hearing aids. The Plus model arrives as the latest addition to that lineup, with the original Nuance Audio glasses still offered at a lower starting price.
More hardware news from TechManNews.
