If there is one thing I didn’t know I needed in my life, it was audio sunglasses. Well, JBL decided they were a thing with the new JBL Soundgear Audio Glasses, and now that I have experienced them, I certainly have a slot for them in my life.
What even are audio sunglasses?
The short answer is sunglasses with speakers in them. The longer answer is they are a pair of sunglasses equipped with a little speaker in each of the glasses arms. This means you can enjoy your jams on the go. Of course you can currently do this with earbuds or headphones, but there are people that hate wearing them. Well, this may be the solution you need if that’s you.
The other use case that this makes sense for is if you want to be able to listen to some music while still hearing your surroundings. Let me walk you through a totally hypothetical example. Let’s say you were driving your car on a long trip. and for the 40th time you have been listening to Truck Tunes on the car radio to keep a toddler from flipping his nut. Now let’s say hypothetically, you are only mm’s away from having a tantrum yourself from listening to the excavator song again. Ear buds may help, but they also drown out the sounds of the car that you actually need, like knowing if your toddler is about to get car sick again. Well, these can let you listen to your music or a live sports game, keeping your sanity and your ability to focus on your surroundings in place. Totally hypothetical….
How do they perform?
One big question I had was the battery life. They were advertised to go for eight hours, and that felt right with my experience. When you close the arms, they turn off, which means they won’t drain in a day when you are taking them on and off, which is great. They advertised that 10 minutes of charge will get you two hours, and again, this felt accurate.
The only drawback is that they have two charging ports for two mini batteries. The box comes with a cool dual USB-C cable to charge both at once, but you better not lose that cable, or you’ll be having to charge one side at a time, or both with two wall ports.
But then there is the sound. They are open-air speakers, which makes things different from something like a pair of earbuds or headphones. As such, the bass isn’t fantastic, but this is much expected. If it blasted bass through them, they would be vibrating the glasses off your face. In the end, they sat where I hoped they would: decent quality sound, but not exceptional. If you are wearing the glasses, you have to crank them up for people around you to hear them a lot, but a comfortable sound level makes them pretty quiet for people around you.
What about style?
Style is super subjective. They offer a square and round shape option with three colours for the transparent plastic. I was given the round Onyx ones for testing. Normally, I tend to wear square sunglasses, I didn’t hate the round shape as much as I expected. Both of the shapes are nice and stylish, without leaning too much into a style that may turn too many people off. They have that simple, beachy, timeless style about them.
The colour choices are Onyx, Amber, or Pearl. If you are wondering what these might mean, they are the fancy way of saying, black, brown, or white. The colour choices with the transparent plastic are distinct enough to look good but subtle enough to fit most people’s preferences. These glasses scream to be worn around the pool; the risk is I wouldn’t take them in the pool as they aren’t waterproof, and they have exposed USB-C ports. It’s an odd choice here, as I wanted to wear them in the water so much.
Should you get them?
At $200 a pair, these are shockingly good value. If you want to listen to some jams as you hike in the forest and still want to hear nature, these are much better than blasting a portable speaker to upset the birds. The use cases for these are endless, and if the style fits you, then they are an absolute heap of fun.
If you want to look cool, keep your ears free, and enjoy some jams, I can't recommend these enough.
Just be aware of the sound limitations.
