Bose Frames Audio Sunglasses, Alto (S/M), Black

Product Information

The smart bit of the Frames is support for the firm’s audio augmented reality platform, Bose AR, which is also available on the Bose’s popular QC35 II headphones, and on the upcoming Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700.

They’re both IPX2 water-resistance rated which, for a product meant for outdoor use, is lower than we’d like. They’ll be able to take a few drops of rain, but you’ll likely need to keep them out of a downpour. Then again, wearing sunglasses in the rain is a whole new world of looking like a fool. The Bose Frames are delightful – a set of premium sunglasses that also act as your personal music system. Kept to 50% or lower those next to you can’t hear your music, but because your ears are open you can hear the world around you. Sensors are hidden in the frames that can detect your head position and interactions such as taps to the side of the glasses. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian The Bose Rondo’s arms are 154mm long while the front of the glasses comes in at 142mm. The Alto are quite a bit bigger at 162mm arm length and 148mm across the front.

Sound

The glasses sound amazingly good for what they are. Two small speakers sit in the frame just in front of your ears. The music is directed straight to your ear through small speaker grilles, while cancelling sound is projected out into the world. The result is a sound leakage of about 1%, according to Bose. The original Frames were pretty good about not leaking that much sound. Unless someone was standing pretty close to you, as long as you weren't cranking the volume all the way up, people couldn't even tell you were listening to something. With these new models, you'll get more sound leakage, particularly from the Tempo, and in quieter environments people will hear whatever audio you're playing if you have the volume high. But the majority of people will use these outdoors and sound disperses better outside, so you're probably not going to bother anyone. The Bose Frames’ headline feature is that they're also a pair of wireless headphones, and for speakers that don’t actually sit in or on your ears, these sunglasses are rather impressive. Sound quality is surprisingly good, albeit not as full or bassy as you’ll get from a dedicated pair of cans. Once you ditch the idea that ‘augmented reality’ must equate to ‘augmented vision’ you start to understand the Frames’ potential – and it really is the AR features that make the Frames an impressive piece of hardware.

So the Frames will never be the only set of headphones you need, and they could do with a battery in the case, volume controls and a few more styles, not to mention prescription lenses and some killer Bose AR apps. But between the two of them, the Bose Frames really demonstrate that augmented reality can go beyond vision, and we hope to see more apps take advantage of this. It should be easy to find compatible AR apps when more are added, as the Bose Connect app highlights them almost instantly. Battery life

We were recommended another app called Komrad AR, which is a game that lets you chat with a 'Soviet AI' from 1985, and we’re hoping to test that out further for future updates to this review. The sunglasses can last for three and a half hours according to Bose, and we found that to be accurate in our testing. Often we found them to last a little longer, but around four hours is the maximum we were able to get over our testing period. A single button under the arm takes care of power and play controls. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian Along with the glasses you get a carry case, which doesn’t feel particularly high-end considering how much the glasses cost. It also doesn’t charge up the product in a similar way to how wireless earbuds like Apple AirPods or Samsung Galaxy Buds work.

There’s no microfibre bag for the Frames included, which would make using them and keeping them clean while out and about a bit easier It’s unlikely you’ll be listening to these in too many loud locations, but when your ears are free to hear roadworks, vehicles, and even other people’s voices, it can make listening to any sort of audio too difficult to work with. AR Features One of the apps is a golfing one. It points you to the green and tells you the distance to the tee or which club to use. We found that so impressive it almost felt like we were cheating. The Bose Alto is best suited for music and audio content that makes little use of bass frequencies. Acoustic recordings, smaller ensembles, instrumental recordings, audiobooks and podcasts should all do well with these. In addition, this device delivers an amazingly wide stereo field, with the feeling that the audio is playing around you, rather than funnelled into your ear. In Practice Crank them up beyond 85% volume and you start to hear distortion, but they pretty loud by that point. Most of my listening was about at 60% on the street or about 30% in quieter spots.In the real world if you have the volume below 50% people sitting right next to you won’t hear it. In fact I took delight in the look of surprise on people’s faces when I gave them the Frames and they suddenly heard my tunes blasting out as they put them on. It’s really very impressive. That would have been a handy addition, but instead the glasses are charged via a proprietary cable that connects to a part inside the right arm of the product. Audio quality The Frames know which way you’re facing and your location from the GPS on your phone, so you can use audio to feed information about the real world into your ears. We've tried two different apps with the glasses, and these are currently only available when connected to iOS devices. We've been told by Bose that support for Android devices is coming in July 2019, but there's no specific date yet.