One of the downsides of aging is you often find yourself fumbling in your pocket or purse for reading glasses or holding a menu at arm’s length just to sort the mulligatawny from the minestrone. A new set of tunable glasses, rolled out at CES, is hoping to do away with those inconveniences — but early users say it still has a way to go.
Voy glasses let the wearer adjust the prescription on the fly, via a small wheel hidden in the front of the frame. Originally designed for people with presbyopia (a $3 word that’s slightly easier to confess in public than saying, “I need bifocals”), the glasses now aim for a wider audience, including drivers and athletes.
It’s an odd play in the vision space, but even the best eyeglasses can disappoint from time to time – as your eye’s strength varies slightly on a day-to-day basis. External factors from fatigue to stress to frustration at your ophthalmologist can cause patients’ corrective vision needs to vary. Voy glasses correct for that – and don’t require any electrical or battery components.
They also feature an anti-reflective coating, as well as UV and blue light protection.
The glasses are available now starting at $59 and run as high as $99. (It’s still a very wise idea to see your eye doctor annually, though.)
Using the glasses is simple enough. Turn the wheel away from the nose for more negative power (good for people who are far-sighted). Turn it toward the nose to increase the magnification. As you might guess from the design description, these aren’t the frames for you if you’re looking for something thin. They weigh 35 grams, about the same weight as a light bulb, but within norms for the industry.
This isn’t a debut for Voy. The company got its start on Kickstarter last year just barely topping the goal for the glasses with 163 backers. Early feedback has been … well, underwhelming, judging by the comments section. Backers describe the product as “plasticky and low quality” and have complained of headaches. Others called it a “waste of money” and said the “end product has more misses than hits”.
Voy, in a response to Kickstarter backers, said that “this is our first release of the product. We recognize there are many areas we need to improve. We hope our tunable lens technology can work for lot of people and help them seeing better under various conditions.”
For more of the most exciting wearable tech seen at CES 2021, take a look at our roundup here.
The OnePlus Buds Clip are a new pair of open-ear earbuds built around a simple convenience. They join Sony’s LinkBuds Clip in the growing ear-cuff category, but either OnePlus bud can go on either ear.
Sensors recognize how the earbuds are being worn and route the audio channels accordingly. There’s no label to check before putting them on, and the feature also works when only one bud is used.
We buy fitness bands and activity trackers to keep tabs on our exercise, but it is easy to forget to start tracking or switch modes when moving between different activities. For Fitbit and Pixel Watch users, that could soon become a lot less annoying, as Google is rolling out a major upgrade to automatic activity tracking that can recognize more than 100 types of exercise, up from just 10 before.
Google first showed off the improved tracking earlier this month alongside the Fitbit Edge. It is now coming to Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5, and Google claims the added context behind the system makes workout detection nearly twice as accurate while cutting missed activities by more than half. Fitbit Edge will support it too.