I am an owner of many many pairs of headphones.  Bluetooth, wired, bone conduction, over-ear, studio reference, open-back, light-weight, waterproof, you name it, I have probably got it.  I’m not really a major audiophile, I don’t spend absurd amounts of money on fancy equipment, but I listen to music nearly non-stop when I’m not doing other things.

I’ve always been an avid music consumer and have lived with glasses on my face and a pair of headphones around my neck since I got my first Walkman back in the 80’s.  I say all of this to highlight the fact that it takes a lot for me to be surprised or impressed by a pair of headphones but here I am.

Over the last year or two I have become a big fan of open-ear listening options so I can hear the world around me while listening to music.  Just because I am currently playing “Those Crimson Tears” by Ed Harcourt doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be approachable in a conversation or, if I’m walking/biking/jogging, able to hear the sounds of automobiles in the vicinity.  My introduction to the wonder of open-ear listening was a cheap pair of bone conduction phones I picked up a couple of years ago.  If you’re not familiar, BC devices, here’s a picture of the Vidonn F1.  As you can see, they loop behind your head and over your ears but don’t actually cover your ear canals.  Instead, two audio drivers rest on the sides of you head just in front of your ears and transmit audio by sending the audio vibrations into your skull, which, your ears are quite able to hear.  It works surprisingly well and once I started using these, I found earbuds and other options to be fairly unappealing because I was constantly needing to take them out to be able to talk/hear/interact with the world.  With the BC headset I was able to keep listening while in a check-out line without even pausing while still being fully engaged in the interaction.

I found that I was gravitating more and more to my BC phones despite the other available options.  And then I heard about another option for open-ear listening: Bose BT sunglasses.  What?

As a glasses wearer, the idea that my glasses could ALSO be my open-ear music player seemed too good to be true.  There were two problems.  Problem #1: the Bose sunglasses were stupid expensive at $250.  Problem #2: I wear prescription glasses all the time and I have multiple pairs as well as prescription sunglasses.  I would need lots of Bose frames to replace all my glasses situations.

Enter JLab Frames.

JLab Frames are open-ear audio devices that clip on to your existing glasses, be they sunglasses or prescription daily wear.  They are Bluetooth, a little clunky but not terrible looking, and they only cost $49, so they definitely don’t break the bank.  As soon as I saw them I had to give them a try so I ordered a pair a couple of weeks back and I’m here to report on my experience.

I bought my Frames directly from JLab.  The shipping was fast and free and JLab threw in a pair of wired earbuds for free.  Not sure why, but, hey, some more earbuds.  Nice.

The Frames come in a black storage bag with a magnetic USB-A type charging cable.  If I had only a C-type port on my computer, I might be annoyed but this was perfectly fine.  After an initial charge I powered them up and the pairing process was quick and painless.  Didn’t even need to read a manual.

I put on some music and started listening.  Fairly quickly I found that the volumes are more than sufficient for my listening and the sound is brighter and more enjoyable than with the bone conduction option, although they are not super loud and there is not a lot of bass presence.  There is a bass-boost mode that helps a bit but if I was after booming bass I would be disappointed.

The controls are easy enough to manage with the ability to play/pause, adjust volume, change the EQ options, and answer/hang-up phone calls.  These are astonishingly good in terms of voice quality on phone calls and people have been telling me so on almost every call.  If anything, the mics are too sensitive as I’ve been asked to mute because of sounds happening in the next room that were picked up by the Frames.

It’s really easy to forget I’m even wearing them.  The rubber grips do touch the side of my head, but it’s forgettable and doesn’t feel any worse than the occasional contact between my head and the arms of my glasses.  Switching them between different pairs of glasses (when I put on sunglasses while driving, for example) is fairly trivial and only takes a few seconds.

In terms of battery life, I have found that I use them so much more than I have ever used any other headphones throughout the day that I routinely hit the 8-hour battery life limit and have to move them to a charger and go back to bone conduction or some other option.  This doesn’t usually happen until the evening, but it has me contemplating the purchase or a second pair.

Overall, I would wish for a little more battery life and perhaps a few additional EQ profiles built in, but other than that I have absolutely no complaints.  The JLab Frames are my new default daily driver for music consumption, taking meetings from my phone, and everything else I listen to throughout the day.  There is no ear fatigue, voice audio quality is fantastic, they’re comfortable for a longtime glasses wearer, general sound quality is nothing to write home about but is quite listenable and enjoyable, and the price point is pretty damn reasonable.  Also, you get to hear the world around you, which is really addictive.

Strongly recommend.