Smart glasses evaluation: Huawei, glasses, BoseFrames, Mutrics, which is better?

Besides headphones and portable speakers, do we have a third way to listen to music while walking?

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

Last month, the smart glasses weather jointly created by Huawei and Gentle Monster was officially launched in China, and it was opened in seconds. Almost at the same time, Bose frames were listed in China, Amazon released Echo frames, and emerging independent brands represented by Mutrics began to expand the smart glasses market from Europe to Asia.

The smart glasses market is slowly heating up.

It took us about a month to deeply experience three kinds of glasses: Bose frame, Huawei glasses and Mutrics. We have tried other glasses, such as the prototype North Forcals of Echo frames that appeared at the beginning of the year, the crowdfunding star Vue Glasses in the early years, and some brands that emerged in optical shops, so we won't start here.

In previous articles, we have made a multi-dimensional in-depth analysis of the wearability, audibility, privacy, intelligence and even commercial intention of such 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.

Parts 1 Smart Glasses Stock Product # 1: Bose Frame

On March 20 18 in SXSW, Bose exhibited the prototype of this pair of glasses for the first time, and successfully circled the powder with the novel concept of "sunglasses+Bluetooth headset+voice AR".

Product # 2: Mutricks sunglasses

Mutrics sunglasses first appeared at CES on 20 19, and its core team came from AAC. The product realizes 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 glasses

Glasses are jointly produced by Huawei and Gentle Monster. There are no physical buttons on the fuselage. The glasses have a built-in touchpad and sensor, which supports touch interaction and can monitor the wearing status of users.

More glasses: echo frame, bone conduction glasses, etc.

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

In addition, there is an audio smart glasses with bone conduction technology on the market, such as the overseas crowdfunding star product Vue we introduced earlier. However, due to the congenital deficiency of bone conduction technology, there is no such typical case for the time being.

The second part is the horizontal proportion of smart glasses

# 1 Wearability: Huawei glasses > Mutricks > Bose frame

Looking good is the most important thing to wear on your face. Among these three glasses, Huawei glasses backed by gentle monsters are not as fashionable as an electronic product.

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

In order to reduce the disharmony caused by "thick legs", we can see that most of the current smart glasses are designed with large frame plates.

From left to right: Huawei glasses, Mutrics and Bose frames.

Huawei glasses adopt a very typical frame design of gentle monsters. The slender temples, physical buttons and charging ports on the fuselage have also been replaced by touch pads and wireless charging. The only speaker opening is also hidden under the back side of the temple, and the opening is very small. In the words of our office lady, "I can pay for the frame design of the gentle monster."

Huawei glasses

There is a touch pad on both sides of the temples of Huawei glasses. The right side can be used to play/answer calls, and the left side can wake up the voice assistant on Huawei mobile phones. It is worth noting that although the touchpad is exquisite, it reduces the accuracy of operation to some extent. In the initial stage, every time a phone call comes in, I have to touch it for a long time before I can successfully connect.

Design of Huawei glasses temples

There is also a charging box for glasses, which looks good and has poor portability.

Huawei glasses charging box

In contrast, Bose frames and Mutrics not only have much thicker temples, but also the buttons and charging ports are directly exposed, so the taste of electronic products is still obvious. Especially the Bose frame, because of the material problem, the plastic feeling of the Bose frame is very obvious, and even the internal circuit wiring can be clearly seen under strong light.

Under strong light, you can clearly see the wires inside Bose frame glasses.

The metal button under the right temple of Bose frame is responsible for all physical interaction. Press power on once in power-off state, play once in power-on state, cut songs twice, and long press to wake up the mobile phone voice assistant. 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 temple of Bose frame is conspicuous.

Compared with the above two glasses, the shape of Mutricks sunglasses is the most exaggerated. Mutricks sunglasses use more colorful lenses and larger square frames, which makes the visual effect of the whole machine very harmonious and the facial effect cool.

Mutrics sunglasses Asian version, in addition to black, there are two colors: white and orange.

However, the operation of Mutrics 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 the song, and press and hold the switch to turn it 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.

Mutrics sunglasses temples

In terms of weight, the weight of these glasses is controlled within 50g, including 45g Bose frames, 45.6g Huawei glasses and 50g Mutrics sunglasses. 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 sunglasses of Tyrannosaurus Rex, Gentle Monster and other brands on 20 19, and their weights were basically between 30-40g.

#2 Audibility: Bose frame > Mutrics > > Huawei glasses

Smart glasses bring wonderful open surround sound experience, among which Bose frames are the most comfortable, and Huawei glasses are 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 wonderful open surround sound, which is a music experience closer to home stereo.

This wonderful music experience comes from the unique speaker structure of smart glasses. Bose frame, Huawei glasses and Mutrics basically adopt the structure of side sound. The speaker is placed in the middle of the temple, aiming at the back of the temple, and 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 transmit the sound to the wearer's ear at any time, reduce the sound leakage and realize the surround sound effect.

Bose frame speaker

In addition, due to the different components of the temples on both sides, there may be slight gaps in the sound cavity structure of the temples on both sides of the glasses, which may easily lead to unbalanced sound on both sides. To this end, Mutris reserved an independent cavity for the Speaker in a narrow temple.

Multi-channel loudspeaker structure

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

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

Huawei glasses speaker structure #2 Privacy: Mutrics>Bose frame > > Huawei glasses

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

Although the open speaker feels comfortable, it inevitably leaks sound. However, as a personalized audio equipment, if the problem of sound leakage of glasses is too serious, the practical value of audio smart glasses will be greatly reduced.

Take Huawei glasses as an example. In the choice of product value and wearability, Huawei glasses have become the first in the eyes of our ladies with the fashion design of gentle monsters. However, this product has never been the first choice for people to use in the street. There is a simple reason. The listening experience of Huawei glasses is not good. Huawei glasses are obviously small in size, but the sound leakage is quite serious.

Especially when walking outdoors, Huawei glasses walk outdoors. I need to adjust the volume of my glasses to at least 80% to hear the sound of music clearly, but this volume is not enough for me to really enjoy 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, 30% of the system volume can make you listen to the music clearly, and less than 50% of the system volume basically does not have to worry about people around you hearing the sound; In the outdoor scene, 80% of the system volume still maintains good privacy under the coverage of ambient sound.

Bose framework in outdoor scenes, 70%~80% of the system volume can basically be heard clearly and will reach a relatively balanced state on these two issues.

#4 Intelligence: Jarvis with glasses is still a little green, but the future can be expected.

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

Among them, Huawei glasses are deeply bundled with Huawei EMUI system to support Huawei I; Both Bose and Mutrics support Google Assistant and Siri.

Huawei glasses double-click the left temple to wake up Xiaoyi.

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 service.

Bose AR

Mutrics supports third-party applications, such as Google Translate, text-to-speech and tracking activities.

Part III 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 smart wear track.

In 20 12, Google Glass opened the first year of smart wearable products. 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, wearable products such as smart bracelets, smart watches and smart headphones have emerged one after another, but smart glasses have always been blocked from the consumer market.

Until the appearance of the Bose framework, the audio smart glasses with visual interaction function were deleted, which came into our lives in a lighter way, bringing new experience and value to traditional glasses, and bringing the third kind of companion listening experience to users, which also opened up a new entrance for companion AI.

This change 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.

As a smart wearable product, the biggest difference between smart glasses and bracelets, watches, headphones and other products is that smart glasses are always a "face-looking" product, and their wearability and personalization are much higher than the first three. In other words, smart glasses are unlikely to sell as well as AirPods.

For a simple example, even if Bose frames, Huawei glasses and other products provide a variety of models and styles of frames to choose from, there will still be many little-faced stars who miss these products because of the width of the frames and the length of the temples.

Just as we will be 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 the optical shop buy buy like Gentle Monster, rather than in smart hardware stores such as Huawei.

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

Due to the frequency of use, users will be more tolerant of the weight and volume of the sun; At the same time, in the relatively noisy outdoor, the requirements for the privacy of sound are relatively low. For this reason, the current smart glasses are mostly sunglasses.

But just like we cook at home without sunglasses, sunglasses will limit the use of smart glasses. Smart glasses want to become mass consumer hardware like TWS, and it is not enough to use sunglasses only.

However, with the maturity of the whole technology chain and supply chain, this problem is being solved. We can see that Huawei glasses, Echo frames, Mutrics and other glasses all provide more choices of optical glasses. The weight of Echo frames is only 3 1g, which is very close to the glasses we use every day.

In an earlier interview, Mutrics said that the third generation product they are developing uses a brand-new sound generation unit, which makes the glasses the same size and weight as those we wear every day.

As mentioned above, smart glasses are a kind of smart wearable product with high hopes, which has a wider user base and greater product interaction advantages. Perhaps the current audio smart glasses haven't played the maximum value of smart glasses, but we are still looking forward to the growth of such a product and the changes this category will bring to our lives in the future. (Text/Shenzhen Bay)