Brilliant Labs’ Frame AI Glasses Initial Impression 👓

As I arrived at the breakfast place, was a bit excited to share with a friend these new glasses. They were no different than the ones I usually wear in the way they looked, but they were definitely different in the way they acted. I took the glasses out of the case to put them on. Then turned on my iPad Pro to connect the glasses to them. I got a message: “you must unpair the glasses in order to pair them with this device.“ This was the first moment where there was actually a negative experience regarding the Brilliant Labs Frame AR glasses. And within the first 12 hours to say that much was the first negative experience says that they’ve learned a lot from their previous Monocle.

About Frame AR Glasses

The Frame AR glasses is the second product from Brilliant Labs. A small company of craftsman/enthusiasts, they have created an open-source optical wearable - two of them now with the Frame. The first one purchased some time ago, the Monocle. It is a single-lens device which clips onto a pair of glasses. It has a small HUD, microphone, and camera to be used concert with an application on one’s Android or iPhone device to leverage Perplexity, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Whisper for small applications. Teleprompters, object identification, and even somebody who did a really cool set playlist for a live concert, are the type of things that Monocle has stood out for. Frame takes those lessons and makes it more approachable by being designed into a well-fitting (and quite comfortable) glasses frame.

Frame builds on those lessons to extend them. It is not a prosumer or consumer-level device such as the Meta/Ray Ban glasses, or even Snapchat Spectacles, but it is not unattractive. The Noa application isn’t as easy to grasp for those not familiar with tuning large language models (LLMs) - but it’s polish on onboarding and use speaks to some of the better UX treatments w/n open source applications. Its Lua-based programming language lands closer to the Everysight Maverick Developer Edition we are also playing with - these are devices meant to help developers feel out and create applications while learning about contexts for overlaying digital, contextual content on top a person’s viewpoint. While not a developer to that end - there are some usable features and contexts using the Frame does help to build some notable questions, and likely some usable insights.

Concepts Turning Real

Some years back, I drew a concept pair of glasses which had a variable prescription lens. Threading on some of the lessons from decades of wearing transition lenses, assumed that similar could happen with lenses. And there’s some present evidence that such a thought isn’t far off. Frame gives a means to play towards that side of augmented vision without (necessarily) running into the IP space that is optical science. By definition and law, am not going to be able to replace my prescription lenses with these. But, similar to the Everysight Maverick (which also do not have a prescription insert), will be able to exercise some contexts where needing 20/20 vision isn’t as valuable as having an ability to identity parts of the surrounding area. Granted, my astigmatism is not as harsh as some - so this limited means of using AI to address visual perception might be a very limited case.

Another item which came to mind was the Pebble Core. Nearly a decade ago, the idea of conmected glasses alongside that device was merely a glimmer in imagination. But, looking back at what’s happened with Pebble and connected watches since, one can see what Pebble was pointing towards - even if people were/aren’t ready.

Other Impressions of Frame

What else has been noticed within the first day of wearing Frame? The comfort. In looking at the design of these, you would assume that the large bulbs on either end of the ears would make the glasses feel less comfortable. However, the choice of plastic plus the weighting makes these feel incredibly comfortable. So much so that even and dictating this impressions review, and wearing them with no discomfort whatsoever. They do seem to be a little convex, however. There is some glare towards the edges of both eyes from the flattened lenses. But this is nothing that really falls away as long as there’s no light coming from an obscure angle on either side.

Off of the initial impressions, what are some things that could be improved? For a consumer level version of this, would definitely like to see some small improvements in the on boarding. There have been some pretty major improvements along the way. But, the ability for someone to be able to pair to multiple devices would be a plus. Also, the ability to pair to wearable device (Apple Watch, Android WearOS, Humane’s AiPin, Garmin cycling computers, etc.) would go a long way towards helping some of the “local but not always connected LLM/AI” aspects be leveraged. Because there’s no computer w/n the Frame, it has to rely on a host device. This could/should be a neat piece of hardware for those who cater to local LLM approaches.

There are no speakers with the Frame glasses (compared to the Vue glasses which we also use). So if you are using the application to give voice feedback to you from your queries (toggle feature), you’re gonna want to use some headphones so that your surrounding audience would not know what’s happening. That said, the voice used is extremely friendly and does not sound at all like a very bad machine trying to emulate a human. At the time of this writing, have not tested with languages other than English, so will not give any notes on quality at this time.

From the AI-as-a-Service end, there is a limit to the number of credits/tokens each month (2000) you can use as part of the launch of Frame. There is no additional (paid) tier or apparent integration into one’s existing OpenAI/Perplexity/etc subscription for Frame - at the time of this writing. It is quite fast on recognition however (much more so than AiPin was at launch for comparison). Because of the reliance on having one’s slab phone, your feel of whether there’s too much friction or not will depend on you. Noa runs in the background on iOS, seemingly addressing a complaint I had with Monocle’s Noa app.

Frame charges via a small orange device called Mr. Power. This is a USB-C cradle looks like a clown nose, and needs a cable (does not come with one), but will charge the glasses from empty in two hours. My glasses arrived with at least 50% charge, but, still let them charge all the way before getting completely underway. There also two magnetic nose pads (to make Frame sit higher on one’s face) included. These sit in the same place as Mr. Power and need to be removed when Frame is being charged.

Lastly, prescription lens support would be the biggest improvement. Unfortunately, the lens partner Brilliant Labs worked with at the beginning of the frame introduction fell through. This meant for myself and others who were excited to have a heads up display with prescription lenses, we were pretty much out of luck. Some canceled their order, but we and others did not. There is a pretty interesting market for heads up display computing for those persons who normally wear glasses or some type of visual aid. Monocle exposed me some to those persons who needed on-time object recognition but might not have wanted a service like Be My Eyes. Frame points further to this.

And selfishly speaking, using Frame w/o a prescription has actually felt like a break for my eyes (similar to some of what’s said in the book Take Off Your Glasses and See). Our eyes are the one part of our brain which touches the outside world (some would say), and giving that muscle some renewed work and aid could be transformative.

Concluding Thoughts for Now

There’s much more to explore with Frame (it’s app Noa, and the Lua programming language). But, that’s for later. For now, am excited to have added Frame to the collection of connected glasses. There’s a hope its unique proposition could push glasses to doing more than just aligning to optometry‘s perspective of 20/20 vision; and that its LLM/AI integration can do more than simply creating more digital noise. There’s probably a better framing for all of this - and Frame may offer many of us a canvas to explore what that means.

Frame is available from the Brilliant Labs website. At the time of this writing, prescription lenses are not available. Glasses usually ship about a month from when the order is made.

Appendix: How Many Connected Optical Devices in Play

While doing some editing thought to just add a list at the end here of all of the optical connected devices in use or in experimental review:

• Snap Spectacles v2
• Vue Pro Glasses (2)
• XReal Air
• Everysight Maverick Developer Edition
• Brilliant Labs Monocle (2) and Frame