Trying Out Huawei X Gentle Monster Eyewear
A while back during my travels I had the chance to visit one of Huawei’s biggest flagship stores. With the current US trade ban and lack of Google Apps, the Mate 30 is unfortunately off my list for now. It’s unlikely to return either until a deal or viable workaround is made. Aside from phones, Huawei are an established tech brand that offer much more than just mobile phones. Accessories, computing and even household technology to make your life that much smarter. While trying out new tech kits, I came across their smart glasses display. As the name implies, they are glasses with embedded technology to apply ‘smart’ functions. The collaboration between Huawei and Gentle Monster was certainly eye catching and I had to have a look for myself.
Gentle Monster are a well-known glasses brand from Korea and their styles have had a number of fashionable collaboration over the years. You can check out their range here. Now you might be wondering how exactly your daily specs can or sunglasses be smart without AR tech. And truthfully, there isn’t much that can be done aside from audio functionality right now. The various frames will allow for prescription lenses and were surprisingly light weight, just under 50 grams. I picked up a pair that I found to my liking and decided to give them a spin. The rep came over and was helpful enough to walk me through the basic features and setup.
Frames come in black, silver and gold varieties. Bluetooth 5.0 is standard and handles music and calls just fine. You even have the option to store your music library in the device itself with an internal memory, though I wasn’t quite sure how much you could store internally. Don’t expect your entire library. With an IP67 rating, it’s best not to take these to the pool. The build quality felt sturdy to me during testing but as the tech side was my point of interest.
Once synced with my device, it was time to test the speakers. I expected the audio to be less than viable, each end of the frame houses a single driver. Playing a favourite song, I was pleasantly surprised to by the results. I could hear with relative clarity, given that it was a busy store in the middle of the day. I asked my friend if they could hear anything while standing next to me and they couldn’t. I suspect that cranking up the volume a little more in a quiet space may lead to sound leak so it’s best to really consider what you want to use the glasses for. A quick “Hey, Google” allowed me to access Google Assistant and carry out whatever tasks I needed. Phone call testing went smoothly too, the microphone worked adequately. I am still conscious of taking private calls with this device but more testing would be needed to make a conclusive decision.
With a battery life of about 20 hours standby and about 3 hours usage, it’s not all too impressive. Perhaps this is down to Bluetooth modules, weight considerations and other design challenges that come part of such a small factor. For what it is however, hands free microphone and audio access while wearing my daily eyewear is definitely a way forward in smart tech and I’ll be very interested to see how other products with AR functionality perform.
https://consumer.huawei.com/en/wearables/gentle-monster-eyewear/
