Anker is joining in on the trend of glasses that pull double duty as music listening devices. Today the company’s Soundcore brand announced the $199.99 Soundcore Frames. That price gets you the glasses’ temples and a frame of your choosing. The frames can be swapped out for any of the 10 different designs, but the chunky side temples always stay the same polished black style. They’re due to start shipping in mid-November and will be available from Anker’s website, Amazon, and Best Buy among other retailers.
The temples essentially act as true wireless earbuds, with two speakers in each one. This is a strategy we’ve seen from other companies like Razer. In Anker’s case, it makes it simple to switch the temples to a different frame; polarized, blue-light filtering, and prescription lens options will also be available. Additional frame styles will sell for $49.99 each. The company will let people virtually try on frames through its Soundcore smartphone app for Android and iOS.
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There are two speakers on each temple, and in most cases outside, most people won’t notice your glasses are playing music. But if you’ve got the volume up inside, there’ll definitely be some sound leakage to those nearby.
Battery life is estimated at up to 5.5 hours of continuous playback, and the Soundcore Frames are IPX4 water resistant. Similar to the controls we’ve already seen from Bose and others, they use simple tap and swipe controls on the temples.
Anker is very much aware this is its first attempt in a category that has been led by Bose and to some extent Amazon, and the company is hoping it can do its own part in pushing the concept of audio glasses to wider popularity.
