Another "Smartglasses" opportunity with Amazon Echo Glasses - guess I will be missing some moments

My chance for a third experience owning a "smartglasses" product has come and gone, for now at least

When Amazon Echo Frames were announced in September 2019, with limited availability, I couldn't resist getting on the waiting list with hopes of being "invited" to buy them sometime in the hopefully near future. I was teeing up a third experience for me with so-called "smartglasses", and with their built-in Alexa capabilities, the promise of Frames seemed to also play well with my ever-growing usage of Amazon's digital assistant/smart speaker technology around home. I was hoping to give these a try by pulling the trigger on the invitation when it came in March of this year.

In terms of my high interest in wearable computing and specifically eyeware, nothing has changed much since the day I tweeted out my Google Glass "application" in 2012. Then, I ended up getting back a qualifying tweet in the Spring and picking them up in August 2013 at Google offices in San Francisco. With fitting and a little training session thrown in, I was out $1500, plus travel expenses, but I fully enjoyed experimenting and being part of the legion of "Glass Explorers". I should add that as a professor of marketing, I was very impressed with Google's ability to craft a beta test program with so much cachet that it could be a money-maker on its own!

I wrote about my Google Glass experiences in a post to this blog back in 2017, and overall, it was worthwhile and enlightening being a #GlassExplorer (that's the hashtag we were encouraged to use as we shared Glass experiences on social media). Their novelty did eventually wear off though, so I resold the gadget on eBay for a reasonable price, and waited for my next wearable opportunity.

Me in my Snapchat Spectacles

That came in the form of Snapchat Spectacles, which I gave a try a few years later. They were an interesting product that offered another memorable marketing rollout, sharing that with Google Glass. Their product's usage model diverged, with Glass being more of an always-on information application with its imaging capability only part of the feature set. Snapchat's product was based on sunglasses, and could be simply described as "sunglasses that take photos". This simplified concept was matched by a much lower price (in the single-digit hundreds rather than the single-digit thousands). I jumped in, but the novelty wore off almost before it began,  for me especially as a  normally infrequent wearer of sunglasses,and I was in and out of Spectacles ownership quite quickly, again with some help from eBay.


It seemed I might be ready for another run at this category, and as already mentioned, my invitation for Echo Frames came through a few weeks ago. Now it was on me to decide if I would take the $180 plunge, in a somewhat urgent fashion - the invitation would expire soon. Part of the decision meant thinking back on my wearables "legacy", which I have briefly recounted here, and that much inspired me to move forward.

But...Echo Frames clearly are aimed at full-time glasses wearers which I am not. I already mentioned that my high interest in this category of products had not changed over the years, but one thing that had changed was a normal, slow downward trend in my eyes' "uncorrected" seeing abilities. I still remain a part-time glasses wearer, though, with off-the-shelf readers supplemented by prescription lenses for intermediate distances, i.e. desktop and laptop screens. 

Also...they are aimed at, and work with, Android phones, with no iOS (iPhone) compatibility. Show stopper for me!

Plus...messing around with getting the frames and then getting prescription lenses elsewhere, which would need more fiddling, and no doubt cost, for getting them installed, just wasn't sounding like a great prospect for me. Echo Frames would set me back $179.99 plus tax, to start, with who knows how much to follow.

I ended up spending under $100 and ordering a new pair of Warby Parkers with my "intermediate/computer" prescription, all "installed" and ready to go! Not "smartglasses", but no muss, no fuss, and very little learning curve!

And those missed moments in the post's title? That is just a play on Amazon's marketing tagline for Echo Frames. Actually, I think I am just fine missing a few, if it comes down to that!

Seems like something we're saying this a lot these days, but my whole little investigation here has led to more questions than answers. For example, what has my full history with Amazon Echo/Alexa and related technologies entailed? Can I find photo examples, specifically how do I search, effectively, for "camera of origin" in Google Photos? What about that "lifelogging" bodycam I tried - does that count? This is just a start, so stay tuned!