Nuance Audio has new glasses with hearing aids built into the arms. The Nuance Audio Plus costs $829 and is on sale now in the U.S., per Gizmodo. The FDA has cleared it as a hearing aid for mild to moderate hearing loss, and that's who it's for.
Nuance belongs to EssilorLuxottica, the eyewear company that makes Meta's Ray-Ban glasses, and this pair points the same kind of frame at a different job. It has no camera to hide and no AI assistant to power, so it looks like an ordinary pair of glasses. There are three frame styles, called Square, Pathos and Upturn, and five colors that run from olive green to shiny burgundy.
The hearing hardware is packed into the arms, and a phone app sets it up. There are two main modes. Frontal focuses on the person in front of you, the way you'd want it across a dinner table. All-Around lifts every sound nearby. Background noise filtering runs at four levels, much as it does on a lot of dedicated hearing aids, and the app has quick switches for changing rooms.
Nuance says sound boosting and voice clarity are both better than on its first pair, and battery life now reaches 10 hours. Folding the glasses puts them to sleep. That stretches a charge further. A double tap on the frame switches between front-focused and 360-degree listening, as it does on the first pair, and on the Plus it also answers and ends calls. Bluetooth arrives for the first time, too, so you can answer calls through them.
Charging runs off a wireless pad that comes in the box. A proper charging case is another $149. Add prescription lenses and the price goes up again.
Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 sells for less than half of $829. That pair is built around a camera and an assistant that answers questions about what you're looking at. This one has neither. It's built so you can hear the person you're looking at.
Plenty of earbuds, Samsung's Galaxy Buds among them, are already cleared by the FDA to work as hearing aids. A pair of glasses built for the job from the start is still unusual.