With the maturity of micro-speakers, wireless transmission and other technologies, smart glasses open the third possibility of accompanying music experience.

Last month, EyeWear, a smart glasses jointly built by Huawei and Gentle Monster, was officially launched in China, and it was launched seconds later. Almost at the same time, Bose Frames went on sale in China, Amazon released Echo Frames, and the emerging independent brand represented by Mutrics began to expand its smart glasses market from Europe to Asia.

the smart glasses market is slowly warming up.

it took us more than a month to deeply experience three kinds of glasses: Bose Frames, Huawei Eyewear and Mutrics. We have tried on other glasses, such as North Forcals, the prototype of Echo Frames, which appeared at the beginning of the year, Vue Glasses, a crowdfunding star in the early years, and some brands that have emerged in optical shops, so I won't expand them here.

in the past articles, we have made a multi-dimensional in-depth analysis of the wearability, audibility, privacy, intelligence and even business intention of this kind of products. Today, we hope to make an unprecedented comparison of three representative products through this article, and discuss with you the evolution direction of smart glasses and the possibility of future market growth.

Part 1 Smart Glasses Inventory Product # 1: Bose Frames

In the exhibition of SXSW in March 218, Bose exhibited the prototype of this glasses for the first time, and successfully circled with the novel concept of "sunglasses+Bluetooth headset+voice AR".

Product # 2: Mutricks Sunglasses

Mutricks Sunglasses first appeared at CES in 219, and its core team came from AAC. The product realizes the near-field surround sound effect through the modular design of special sound cavity and dual micro-speakers, and supports Siri and Google Assistant.

product # 3: Gentle Monster X Huawei Eyewear

Eyewear is jointly produced by Huawei and Gentle Monster. The body has no physical buttons at all, and the glasses have a built-in touchpad and sensors, which support touch interaction and can monitor the wearing state of users.

More glasses: Echo Frames, bone conduction glasses, etc.

In addition to the above three products, Amazon also launched Echo Frames smart glasses at the end of last month. The glasses adopt a more general design of flat/optical glasses, and users can wake Alexa directly with voice.

in addition, there is a kind of audio smart glasses with bone conduction technology on the market, such as Vue, an overseas crowdfunding star product we introduced earlier. However, due to the inherent disadvantages of bone conduction technology, there is no typical case of this category for the time being.

aspect ratio of p>Part 2 smart glasses

#1 Wearability: Huawei Eyewear > Mutrix > Bose Frames

For the glasses that need to be put on the face, it is most important to look good. Among these three glasses, Huawei Eyewear backed by Gentle Monster is not as fashionable as an electronic product.

From the appearance, the biggest difference between smart glasses and ordinary glasses is "big thick legs". Because the speakers, switches, electronics and other modules of glasses are placed on both temples, the temples of smart glasses are all larger than ordinary glasses.

In order to reduce the disharmony caused by "thick legs", we can see that the current smart glasses mostly adopt the frame design of large frame plates.

from left to right: Huawei Eyewear, Mutrics, Bose Frames

Huawei Eyewear has adopted a very typical frame design of Gentle Monster, with slender temples, and the physical buttons and charging ports on the fuselage have been replaced by touchpad and wireless charging. The only speaker opening is also hidden in the lower part of the back side of the temple, and the opening is very small. In the words of our office sister, "Just punch the frame design of Gentle Monster.

Huawei Eyewear

There is a touch pad on both sides of the legs of Huawei Eyewear. The right side can be used to play/receive calls, and the left side can wake up the voice assistant on Huawei's mobile phone. It is worth noting that although the touchpad is exquisite, it reduces the accuracy of operation to a certain extent. In the initial stage, every time a phone calls in, I have to touch it for half a day to successfully connect.

Huawei Eyewear temple design

Similar to Eyewear's charging box, it looks good, but its portability is very poor.

charging box of Huawei Eyewear

In comparison, Bose Frames and Mutrics not only have much thicker glasses legs, but also the buttons and charging ports are directly exposed, so the smell of electronic products is still very obvious. Especially Bose Frames, due to material problems, the plastic feeling of Bose Frames is very obvious, and even the internal circuit wiring can be clearly seen under strong light.

you can clearly see the wires inside Bose Frames glasses under strong light

The metal button under the right temple of Bose Frames is responsible for all physical interactions. Press power on once in the off state, play once in the on state, cut songs twice, and long press to wake up the voice assistant of the mobile phone. As far as personal experience is concerned, this physical button feels uncomfortable. In addition, the volume adjustment still needs to be operated on the mobile phone.

the charging port on the legs of p>Bose Frames is particularly conspicuous

Compared with the above two glasses, the shape of Mutrix sunglasses is the most exaggerated. Mutrix sunglasses use lenses with more flamboyant and colorful films and a larger square frame, which makes the visual effect of the whole machine very harmonious and the face effect cool.

Mutricks sunglasses for Asia are available in white and orange besides black

But the operation of Mutricks sunglasses is much more direct than the above two products. The three buttons on the right temple of Mutrics sunglasses are arranged in the shape of "O-one-one". Click "O" to answer/cut songs, and press and hold the switch on and off. In addition, this button can also be used to wake up Siri and Google Assistant, and "One-one" is the volume button.

in terms of the weight of the temples of Mutricks sunglasses

, the weight of these glasses is controlled within 5g, including Bose Frames 45g, Huawei Eyewear 45.6g and Mutricks sunglasses 5g. If it is not worn for a long time, this weight is basically within the acceptable range. As a reference, we randomly searched for several new plate sunglasses from Tyrannosaurus Rex, Gentle Monster and other brands in 219, and the weight was basically between 3 and 4g.

#2 Audibility: Bose Frames＞Mutrics＞ > Huawei Eyewear

Smart glasses bring a wonderful open surround sound experience, in which Bose Frames is the most comfortable and Huawei Eyewear is like boiled water.

Because of their similar functions, many people will compare smart glasses with Bluetooth headsets, but if you have experienced smart glasses, you will know that the music experience of smart glasses is completely different from that of Bluetooth headsets. Smart glasses bring a very wonderful open surround sound, which is a kind of music experience closer to home stereo.

this wonderful music experience comes from the unique speaker structure of smart glasses. Bose Frames, Huawei Eyewear and Mutrics basically adopt the lateral sounding structure. The speaker is placed in the middle of the temple, aiming at the back of the temple, while the speaker hole is opened at the back of the temple. This structure can not only make the sound form a directional beam, but also make the sound ready to be transmitted to the wearer's ear, reduce the sound leakage and realize the surround sound effect.

Bose Frames speaker

in addition, due to the different components on both sides of the temples, there may be a slight gap in the sound cavity structure of the temples on both sides of the glasses, which may easily lead to sound imbalance on both sides. To this end, Mutrics reserved an independent cavity for the speaker in a narrow temple.

Mutricks speaker structure

As far as the three glasses I have at hand are concerned, they can basically achieve the above-mentioned open surround sound, but the overall low-frequency performance is weak.

the overall musical experience of p>Bose Frames is the most comfortable, and the details are more delicate. Mutrics, on the other hand, has a better balance of ears because of its independent sound cavity design, but the feeling of sound post-processing is more obvious when playing music with relatively dense drums. In contrast, Huawei Eyewear sound field is farther back, and the volume is small, and the sound quality is very dull.

Huawei Eyewear Speaker Structure #2 Privacy: Mutrics＞Bose Frames＞ > Huawei Eyewear

Compared with metaphysical issues such as sound quality, audio smart glasses are more important to balance the volume and leakage. Compared with the three, Mutrics has the best comprehensive performance, and Huawei has a serious sound leakage.

although the open speaker feels comfortable, it is inevitable to miss the sound. However, as a personalized audio device, the practical value of audio smart glasses will be greatly reduced if the sound leakage problem of glasses is too serious.

Take Huawei Eyewear as an example. In the selection of product face value and wearability, Huawei Eyewear has become the first in the eyes of our young lady with its fashionable design. However, this product is never the first choice for everyone to use when going out. The reason is very simple. The listening experience of Huawei Eyewear is not good, but the volume of Huawei Eyewear is obviously small, but the sound leakage is quite serious.

Especially when walking outdoors, Huawei Eyewear walks outdoors. I need to adjust the volume of my glasses to at least 8% to hear the music clearly, but this volume is not enough for me to really enjoy the music. When I answer the phone indoors, the volume can make the whole office hear my conversation.

in contrast, Mutrics has a very good balance between volume and sound leakage. In indoor scenes, 3% of the system volume can make you hear music clearly, and less than 5% of the system volume basically don't worry about people around you hearing the sound; In the outdoor scene, with the cover of ambient sound, 8% of the system volume still maintains good privacy.

in outdoor scenes, 7%~8% of the system volume can basically be heard clearly, and the two issues of not disturbing will reach a relatively balanced state.

#4 Intelligentization: Jarvis on glasses is still a little green, but it can be expected in the future

In terms of intelligent experience, the services provided by audio smart glasses are not much different from the current headphones, and information and services are obtained by triggering the AI assistant on the mobile phone.

Among them, Huawei Eyewear is deeply bundled with Huawei EMUI system to support Huawei Xiaoyi; Bose and Mutrics both support Google Assistant and Siri.

Huawei Eyewear can wake up Xiaoyi by double-clicking the left temple

On this basis, Bose Frames also carries Bose's ambition and exploration in the AR field. Based on the sensor in glasses and the mobile computing platform of mobile phone, Bose AR platform can also provide users with pure voice location services.

bosear

mutics supports third-party applications such as Google Translation, Text to Speech and Track Activities.

Part 3 Present and Future

#1: Audio smart glasses go into battle lightly, which makes it easier to knock on the door of the consumer market

Smart glasses have always been a very special product on the smart wearable track.

in p>212, Google Glass launched the first year of smart wearable products, and in the following seven years, it gathered many giants such as Google, Microsoft, Intel and Amazon, bearing our expectations for the next computing terminal. However, in the past seven years, smart bracelets, smart watches, smart headphones and other wearable products have exploded one after another, but smart glasses have always been outside the door of the consumer market.

Until the appearance of Bose Frames, the audio smart glasses with the visual interaction function deleted came into our lives in a lighter way, which brought a brand-new experience and value to traditional glasses, a third kind of accompanying listening experience to users, and a brand-new entrance for accompanying AI.

This transformation makes us see the possibility of smart glasses entering the consumer market, which makes us particularly excited.

#2: highly personalized smart glasses are hard to sell like AirPods.

They are also smart wearable products. Compared with bracelets, watches, headphones and other products, the biggest difference of smart glasses is that they are always a "face-looking" product, and their wearability and personalization are much higher than the first three. In other words, it is unlikely that smart glasses will be sold like AirPods.

for a simple example, even though products such as Bose Frames and Huawei Eyewear offer a variety of models and styles of frames to choose from, due to the width of glasses frames and the length of temples, there are still many people with small faces who miss these products.

Just as we are more accustomed to optometry, fitting and buying glasses in stores, smart glasses also need to go through such a process. Perhaps in the future, we will be more likely to buy in buy buy, an optical shop such as Gentle Monster, than in Huawei and other smart hardware stores.

#3: Sunglasses will limit the use of the scene, and the next step of smart glasses is to wear them everyday

Because of the frequency of use.