Magic Palm puts a DIY spin on smart glasses

As someone who has worn glasses most of their life, the conversation around smart glasses has always been especially infuriating. While the category has steadily grown in quality and quantity in recent years, many of the fundamental downsides of the form factor remain at best — unresolved — and — at worst — overlooked.

Even if you don’t go full AR headset, you’re still carrying more tech on your body than is usually comfortable and paying more than you’d like for the privilege. You’re also stuck with whatever style of spectacles your tech brand of choice thinks are still in fashion and support for prescription lenses remains a rarity.

Shown off at this year’s Computex 2024, Venous Eyewear’s Magic Palm Bluetooth earphones show what an alternative to this purgatorial phase of product development might look like. Instead of getting you to pay for a bespoke set of smart glasses, their business model involves allowing you to turn a pair of regular glasses into a set of smarter ones.

This involves modifying the temple tips to incorporate a set of directional audio speakers and a detachable battery, ideally with the assistance of a local optometrist or eyecare clinic. When set up, charged and slotted into place, these batteries activate a set of Bluetooth headphones in your now-modified frames. You’re able to turn any regular set of glasses into something like that of the Bose Frames. There’s even a built-in microphone that allows for hands-free phone calls.

You get four batteries included with each set of Magic Palm Bluetooth earphones plus an AirPods-inspired carry-case that can be used to charge them up over time.

According to Venous, a single charge should get you by for as much as a week of standby usage or up to six hours of continuous playback. When you do run out of juice, you just swap in a fresh battery and continue with your day.

During my hands-on with a demo unit, I was impressed by the low level of noise bleed but I wouldn’t say the fidelity of the audio blew me away. It was better than nothing but it was also clearly worse than my current set of true wireless earbuds. Granted, I am rocking the Sony WF-1000XM5s so the bar is pretty high. Still, I wouldn’t say that sound quality is much of a selling point here.

While the Venous Eyewear website is currently out of stock and there’s no sign the company will ever start selling its wares in overseas markets like Australia, the Magic Palm Bluetooth earphones are listed at a price equivalent to around $195. That’s not a huge amount of savings, but it does a lot to offset the amount of additional clumsiness involved.