Amazon Echo Frames (3rd Gen) | 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!

So I love these I can set appointments on my calendar as soon as I make them. I use these when I am at the Dr.s office and when in uber at times. So these are easy out of the box download Alexa app on your phone and connect it to your account, than turn on glasses and connect with bluetooth or try Alexa app didn't work for me that way but I did end up having it connect properly after doing it through blue tooth. I love the sound quality I can sit anywhere when using them and they can switch flawlessly between movie and phone call. The fit definitely is nice to the fat headed ones like myself. I have 7 5/8 hat size usually depending on the company and these fit pretty nice for me. Battery life is as advertised although charging them is something you need to get used to they go in 1 way only so learn it and do it.

I was exited to get these to have something that can easily be used to talk on the phone, listen to the radio, and quickly ask Alexa questions, all while being right there on my head since I've needed prescription glasses since I was a child, but have been very disappointed with them overall.One issue they have is how difficult it is to get them to charge. I'll place them on the charger numerous times, adjusting the angle it's inside it ever so slightly until it's at the perfect spot where it gives me the indication that it's charging. It seems to need to be perfect, as a twitch of a millimeter puts it off the charge, so I need to sit and watch it for a minute or so to verify that it will remain charging. Even after that, I have come back to it hours later to see that it settled and moved out of place, so it stopped charging long before it got anywhere near the charge it needed.Another issue that I had was that it is not designed well enough to stay on my face. It was sliding down constantly, and following the directions to adjust the arm bands didn't help much, as it takes a lot of effort to get them to adjust at all, and it felt like I was going to break the glasses if I put in anymore effort - and I really needed to adjust things a lot to try out different bends to find if there was one that worked for me. I spent long enough trying this without getting the desired results until I finally gave in and bought some extra attachments from a third party that slide and stick onto the glasses as rubber stoppers to help keep them in place instead.The tech portion of the glasses leaves a lot to be desired as well. About half the time, they lose connectivity with my phone, and are incapable of providing me with any value tech-wise, so they might as well just be normal glasses. The battery doesn't last nearly as long as advertised either. With what I would consider minimal usage, it didn't even last the length of a normal day (when starting with a full charge) before it shut down due to a dead battery. I would understand that if I was using them all day long, but I had only used them to listen to the radio for maybe an hour, and ask Alexa a few random questions. If the battery is this bad when they're brand new, I can only imagine how much worse it's going to get after I've used them for a few months.Things have been bad enough with these glasses, that I find myself using my old glasses with the old prescription more often that I use these new ones.