Headphones without headphones: We test Lucyd Lyte Bluetooth sunglasses

Lucyd Lyte is a $ 150 pair of sunglasses that includes speakers and a microphone suitable for making calls or listening to podcasts. This is not at all a category of devices for which a PR representative has offered a review unit, but once I know it is something, I would like to test it.

The Wayfarer style I tested is a neutral, unobtrusive style that is unlikely to be negative or positive. It looks more beautiful than a pair of sunglasses at the gas station, but without a specific style to make the viewer think they are an expensive designer brand. There is also no visual idea of ​​the built-in sound – the frames are a touch on the thick side, but unlike Bose Frames, there is no clear shape to give away the extra features.

Lucyd Lyte connected quickly and easily to my Pixel 2XL phone. The instructions recommend an initial period of two hours; when the factory is new and after the initial charging period, the phones are on and in pairing mode – all you have to do is open the pairing menu on your phone and select “Lucyd Lyte”.

There is no specific trigger for the “pairing mode” on the Lucyd Lytes. If they are not within range of the device they were last paired with, they switch to pairing mode and can be selected from any new device within the range.

Test

As a pair of sunglasses, Lucyd Lytes is pretty good. I found that they were comfortable enough to “disappear” in my head in six-hour continuous wear, starting with a 45-minute ride and continuing with my parents, playing catch with my kids and otherwise outdoors on a clear sunny Saturday.

As a Bluetooth headset, it is unfortunately not that great. The sound quality is decent, but the maximum volume is low – and everyone in the area can hear almost as well what you are listening to. I listened to podcasts after the 45 minute drive to my parents’ house, and my daughter said she could easily hear the podcasts (including most or all of the words) from the passenger seat.

The low maximum volume is not a problem when listening to music or well-normalized podcasts, but it is probably a problem with phone calls or podcasts with a very quiet source. With a maximum volume, Joe Ressington’s Late Night Linux was not as loud as I wanted, but I could understand everyone talking about the interstate road noise. Jamie Loftus’s Lolita Podcast was a different story – designed with much quieter source levels, and I almost constantly had to pair one ear (which drastically increases the supposed volume of the phones).

Maintaining the Bluetooth connection was also a bit crapshoot. While the Pixel 2XL sits in a cup holder, the connection was good. If I put the Pixel in my jeans pocket, it would almost destroy the connection, after which the Pixel would rather be connected to my car until it was manually redirected to my (non-pocket) phone. I had much better luck with the bag I stabbed around in my car than in my car, but it was never rock solid.

Aside from the volume issues, the sound quality is decent – better than you’d expect from practical microscopic speakers embedded in a sunglasses stem, but not good when compared to typical earbuds or headphones. For voice calls or podcasts – again, if we assume the level is high enough, you probably have no complaints. The Lytes is probably not someone’s favorite listening device for music, with almost basic bass and little or no stereo position.

We tested Lucyd Lyte’s microphone using a voice recording app rather than a call to eliminate potential telephony issues. The experience is better than putting the Pixel 2XL in speakerphone mode, but it’s not as good as the original microphone of the phone in normal mode or the microphone in most standard headsets. The sound level and brightness are pretty good, but there is little to no distinction between the speaker’s voice and the ambient noise – in my test recording, my children’s voices and the episode of Spongebob Squarepants on television was just as much in the foreground as my own voice.

Battery life easily matched the manufacturer’s requirement of eight hours – we did not try to dry them, but after about 90 minutes of driving and incessant listening to podcasts, the Bluetooth connectivity dialog on the Pixel 2XL drained the batteries. of Lytes reported at 85 percent.

Control

The Lucyd Lyte phones are easy to operate – the included charging cable has two-pin connections that are magnetically connected, sounding directly at the contact points of each pair of sunglasses. The charging cable is of a Y-splitter type and must be connected to both stems – they have independent batteries that must also charge independently.

The individual strains are also switched on independently. If you press and hold one control button for a long time, the voice of the trunk is finally declared “on”, after which you can press the button on the other until it starts. If only one stem is turned on, the voice on board will declare ‘connected’ – as soon as the second stem also turns on and off, you will get a Windows-style ‘bing-bong’ sound effect letting you know that everything is fully linked.

Once turned on, the controls depend in part on whether you call or listen to music – a single tap on one of the buttons answers an incoming call, or a two-second press will reject it. While paired (to either calls or music), pressing the left button increases the volume, and the single press of the right button decreases it. Pressing the one or two buttons twice interrupts music (or podcast) play, and pressing one of the buttons three times jumps the tracks forward or backward, depending on the button.

The switch-off of the headphones is done with an eight-second long press on one of the buttons. Unlike the turn on procedure, turn off one voice or another, and turn off the other one with it.

Conclusions

My wife and I were both very excited about this device – although the sound quality did not match that of good traditional headphones, the light weight and lack of hearing intrusion appealed to both of us. If they were cheap devices, I would be on board for certain use cases, despite their Bluetooth connection errors and relatively low volume.

The surrounding broadcast factor of the Lucyd Lytes is also not attractive. Half the use of headphones is to spare people around you listening to your music or podcasts – which the Lucyd Lytes absolutely do not. In a car full of noise, it’s much less unpleasant than blowing up a podcast on the stereo – but if there’s something in your podcast or music, you’d prefer others not to listen to it, good choice.

Unfortunately, at $ 150, it’s not a cheap device. At that price, we expect at least a solid, reliable Bluetooth connection – and we did not get it. For us, this is the breakthrough error in Lucyd Lyte.

The good

• Comfortable
• Lightweight
• Unobtrusive styling
• Not in your ears
• Fairly clear sound
• You can still hear what’s going on around you
• Simple, tangible controls
• Magnetically coupled charge
• Can be ordered with standard, prescription, bifocals or reading lenses

The bad

• Flaky Bluetooth connection
• Insufficient maximum volume
• Fully audible to everyone in the area

The Ugly

• We did not know we wanted Bluetooth sunglasses before we tested them
• Now we know – and it’s terribly close, but still not quite there

List by Jim Salter