According to my followers, cleaning is easy; doing a snap is okay but they hate the jerk, just like me, but with preparation and training you can get great results.
Hello, this is Oleksiy Torokhtiy. You may recognize me by having been in weightlifting sports for over twenty years. Ten years of that time I was an active member of the national team of Ukraine.
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According to my followers, cleaning is easy; doing a snap is okay but they hate the jerk, just like me, but with preparation and training you can get great results.
Hello, this is Oleksiy Torokhtiy. You may recognize me by having been in weightlifting sports for over twenty years. Ten years of that time I was an active member of the national team of Ukraine.
Continue reading
"Even though the audio quality is not up to standard, it is difficult for fauna to suppress the fauna if you look at design and aesthetics."
Excellent workmanship
Light, comfortable
Excellent call quality
Lenses can easily be replaced by an optician
Thin, deep audio
Confusing controls
Below average battery life
Optical wearable technology is in a strange place that I think comes from consumers who aren't sure what they are or should be. Google Glass, probably the most famous smart glasses, has failed. In a more focused branch of this type of wearable, Bose – the next biggest name in the segment – is said to have left the audio eyewear market unceremoniously in early 2020, but recently announced several new pairs. The prices and availability of these products have not yet been announced, however, and right now Fauna is one of the few players currently active in the audio glasses game.
The company's product, also known as Fauna, is simple enough: glasses that look good and act as listening devices. However, the biggest hurdle for someone could be asking why Fauna has any number of headphone or earphone options. In addition, at 200 euros at the introductory price (20% less than the full 250 euros) they are not a small investment that can be easily picked up and tried out. People understand the need for earbuds, but are they going to get audio glasses?
Let's take a look at the fauna they want to be and answer whether they are good at it or not.
From the box to the feeling they have on your head, the fauna is absolutely aesthetic. The orange / pink branding on their website carries over onto the packaging and looks really chic. The same orange / pink is a nice accent on the charging case and the included USB-C cable. The outside of the case is mostly dark green, which looks nice and doesn't attract too much attention.
The glasses fit in nicely, although they are not magnetically attached to the charging pins as expected, as this feature is common on earphones. However, you wouldn't expect your normal reading glasses or sunglasses to be magnetically attached to your suitcase. So why should they be here? From this perspective, Fauna did an excellent job with the design.
From the box to the feeling they have on your head, the fauna is absolutely aesthetic.
Back to packaging: I think the importance of good packaging for electronic devices is often underestimated. The Fauna box experience was spot on with Apple's premium packaging, and I can't think of any higher praise for it.
Jaron Schneider / Digital Trends
Jaron Schneider / Digital Trends
Jaron Schneider / Digital Trends
It should also be mentioned that the packaging was made almost entirely of cardboard and paper, with the exception of small plastic sheets that covered the charging contacts. I like packaging that doesn't contain too much plastic and ends up in a landfill. So it's nice to know that almost all fauna ships can be easily recycled or composted.
The idea that an everyday object could also cross over and be a listening device sounds fascinating. I like the idea of not needing headphones to enjoy media, and the Fauna really delivers it by packing headphone technology into glasses that are just a little heavier than my prescription glasses.
Jaron Schneider / Digital Trends
With that in mind, it's quite remarkable how light the fauna is. They clearly crammed a lot more into glasses than typical glasses, but when I wear them I don't feel the extra weight. I loved to wear the fauna for a whole day at work and often forgot that I was wearing it at all.
Maybe this is an opinion exclusive to me, but I think the Fauna goggles look great. I would always wear these well. I can see some people thinking that the sides of the glasses look too thick, but I don't particularly mind. I'm a fan of thicker-rimmed glasses initially, and I think the sides don't look obtrusive or bulky. This thickness is also guaranteed because the drivers are housed there together with the touch controls. More on that later.
The fauna really delivers … by packing headphone technology into glasses that are just a little heavier than my prescription glasses.
The Fauna offers four different styles of glasses that cover almost the entire scope of the thick-framed style. I generally like a more angular frame than any other fauna, but I was pleasantly surprised by how I thought they were looking at me. I think their Memor Havana or Levia Black designs do the best job of not making the thick sides of the glasses seem too obvious. The company's Spiro Transparent Brown and Fabula Crystal Brown both have transparent pieces, making the huge opaque blocks on the sides more prominent.
Jaron Schneider / Digital Trends
One of the pairs I rated has a Zeiss blue light filter lens, and this filter makes it easier for my eyes to look at television or computer screens for long periods of time. A second set had the sunglass lens that protects against 99% UVA and UVB light. The quality of the glass is very good in both cases, but if I want I could take it to my optician and have the lenses changed on my prescription.
I wish I could keep praising them, but fauna falls short on this one key area – these don't sound very good.
While the Fauna has two MEMs speakers and a dedicated subwoofer over each ear, this implementation of the technology just doesn't result in high quality audio. Despite having six drivers, the quality doesn't match most earbuds with two.
Jaron Schneider / Digital Trends
Jaron Schneider / Digital Trends
They don't sound bad at all, but they lack a lot of depth in the presentation of music, with the bass feeling being particularly underrepresented. The mids are also weaker than I would like, but the lower registers are the main weakness despite the bass support from Fauna via these special subwoofers. The best way to compare the sound would be to see what 2009 laptop speakers sounded like. If, like me, you were listening to music on your standard speakers back then, you will understand what I mean when I say that music is perceived as "thin". There is no robustness for music from the fauna, and I miss that when I hear almost every track.
These don't sound very good.
I will say that the only type of music that will work with this type of audio quality is the very popular “Lofi Hip Hop Music to Relax / Learn” playlist curated by ChilledCow on both YouTube and Spotify . Because these tracks already have low fidelity, they don't ask the fauna to do too much, and that's why I enjoyed this style of music played by the fauna.
You know what it sounds like to sit in a hotel lobby playing soothing, voiceless tracks? This is what my whole life has sounded like wearing the fauna and I have to say it's pretty beautiful. Chill, sure.
Just as you can't hear lobby music as well because it exists in the background of conversations, the fauna doesn't get particularly loud and makes music you play on them almost background noise. I've been running it at maximum volume the whole time and it always feels just a few decibels quieter than I'd like. If they have to compete with other sounds around you, they will drown very easily.
Strangely enough, while they can't make me feel loud, they really do a good job of stopping me from hearing someone trying to speak to me from more than a meter away. Something about how the speakers project sound specifically blocks human vowel sounds and volume. So, if you're planning on working in a coffee shop (someday, right?), Let the pleasant clatter of that hustle and bustle pass through without distracting you from certain conversations.
Basically, wearing Fauna is like using headphones with ambient noise all the time, but at a lower volume and music quality with lower fidelity, with the advantage that glasses are put on at the same time.
When I switch from Fauna to my Jabra Elite 75t or my Sony WF-1000XM3, the difference in quality is painfully obvious. I don't think the fauna ever intended their audio goggles to go head-to-toe with special earbuds, but the sharp difference in quality due to the distinct lack of support for lower registers in the fauna makes it impossible to recommend these as primary Hearing aids through earphones or headphones.
It should also be noted that these are expected to have pretty terrible noise isolation. If someone is sitting next to you, they can hear what you are hearing pretty clearly, especially since the volume is most likely being maximized.
Fauna rates the audio glasses for about four hours of non-stop gaming per charge, which isn't great and feels like what we expected from headphones a few years ago. Nowadays, some companies are increasing battery life to eight or even ten hours. Given that fauna has significantly more room to work than earbuds, it's a little surprising to see estimates this low.
In addition, you can only get four full charges out of the case, which means your maximum usage time is only 16 hours per wall charge. Given that glasses are the kind of item you put on in the morning and wear until you go to bed, the low battery power makes it hard to imagine these glasses taking the place of your earbuds or low vision glasses.
After the initial pairing, these audio glasses establish a solid connection to my iPhone (a process that is identical to all other Bluetooth earbuds, where the glasses switch to pairing mode after being removed from the case and via Bluetooth -Menu can be added in your phone settings). I had no issues with cutouts or drips and even walked my entire yard while my phone was still in my kitchen.
The Fauna supports 20 hours per charge of passive connection time, that is, without playing music.
Jaron Schneider / Digital Trends
Do not add further to the complaints, but control with the fauna is not great. First, let me explain how the controls work: Any stretch of the sides about three inches long along your temple line has a touch sensitivity with a variety of functions.
Overall, these controls are not intuitive.
Double tap on the left temple answers a call, ends a call, plays music, or pauses music. Tap and hold to reject a call or skip to the next track. Pushing forward decreases the volume and pushing back increases the volume.
Tapping the right temple twice activates the voice assistant on your phone. Tap and hold to put the glasses into pairing mode.
Overall, these controls are not intuitive and in many cases contrast with years of training that other equipment performed prior to them gave me. Making the pause / play action by tapping twice and skipping rather than tap and hold was an odd decision.
Remembering these controls was a challenging learning curve that only applies to the fauna and no other equipment I have tested. Additionally, sliding forward to lower the volume is an extremely confusing decision. Moving a little forward in my head means increasing the volume and moving backward means decreasing the volume. Why the fauna chose to reverse this hard-wired propensity is astounding.
The fauna is successful in one audio area: phone calls. Both you and everyone you speak to will have a wonderful experience, provided you don't maximize the volume. You will hear that the other end is not a problem. If you keep the volume at 70% or less, this will also be the case with whom you are speaking. When you set the volume to maximum, the glasses record their own audio signal and give your listener annoying feedback on their own voice.
I mentioned that these weren't particularly loud at first, so turning the volume down may not sound intuitive. However, it works for phone calls. Even walking down a busy street I could have a great phone call with my friend who reported the same thing to me.
The Fauna app adds a function to the audio glasses that goes beyond audio. The fauna has special warning messages called "whistles" to help remind you to do things like drink water or improve your posture. I like the idea, but the implementation is … strange.
Although referred to as a whistle, the actual warning isn't a whistle, but a robotic male voice that can be programmed to say what's in a text box in the app.
For the whistle, the app sends a notification that says "Hey Jaron, it's time to get up and stretch your body." It's a bit unsettling and I wish I could just have a comfortable chime sent to me instead of a robotic voice. You can record a different voice, but hearing myself may be even stranger than the robot.
There aren't a lot of options in the whistles either, but Fauna has a direct link to their developers on the app if you have an idea you'd like to see which is lovely.
I ended up not using this feature because I personally didn't find it helpful, but others may disagree. Still, it's a good idea.
Jaron Schneider / Digital Trends
Fauna placed more emphasis on style than audio quality, but maybe that's not all that bad. While they won't blow you away with their sound, they do their job and provide an overall experience that will keep you coming back time and time again. I complained to my wife about one thing or another and asked her, "Then why do you keep wearing them?"
She's right, I wore her for a week. Despite all of its shortcomings, I still like it.
As previously mentioned, Bose recently announced a number of new frames options, but there was no indication of pricing or availability. Hence, it is difficult to say whether it is worth doing without it. In addition, Flows makes glasses with similar aesthetics to Fauna at a lower price, so it may be worth considering.
Fauna grants a two-year guarantee on its audio glasses, which is exceptional for portable audio products. Plus they feel very well built so I don't expect them to just stop working. But don't let them fall. They are still glasses and will definitely act as such.
Maybe. I know this isn't a solid answer, but this is the type of product that needs to be the right buyer for it. If audio quality is most important to you, give them a pass. But if you like the idea of having background music in your everyday life in an unobtrusive way, then fauna is a good argument in its own right.
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