Today, I get back to reviewing hardware, with my hands-on review of the Reebok by Lucyd Octane smartglasses. If you’re looking for smart glasses to do sports with, you’re gonna like this article…
(Disclaimer: this article has been made in collaboration with SmartBuyGlasses: they sent me the glasses to review, and I’m mentioning them in the review. No monetary exchange or affiliate sales schema is involved in this collaboration)
Reebok by Lucyd Octane
Reebok by Lucyd Octane are audio smartglasses meant for sports activities.
Let’s first dig into the long name:
- Reebok is a famous sports apparel brand
- Lucyd is a tech company that manufactures smart glasses
- Octane is the name of the model. There are other models made by Reebok and Lucyd together, like the Nitrous.
The model I’ve got from SmartBuyGlasses for this review is in particular the “Reebok by Lucyd Octane Polarized Black-Black“, because they are fully black and feature polarized lenses.
These are not super-hi-tech glasses: they are regular sunglasses meant to protect you from the sun, and they also feature some tech to let you listen to music or answer phone calls hands-free when they are connected to your phone.
Keep on reading to discover my impressions about them!
Unboxing
Unboxing the Octane smartglasses was a pretty nice experience, as you can see in this video:
The glasses come in an elegant red box. They already come with both a hard case that lets you put them in a backpack and a soft, small protective bag for storing them in your house.
In the box, there is also a cloth to clean them and some instruction pamphlets. Most things in the box are red, and this gives the glasses a distinctive touch.
Design
The Reebok by Lucyd Octane has the classic design of the glasses made for running or biking. They have a pretty aerodynamic shape and are easy to put on and take off.
I frankly love the design, I think they are probably one of the coolest smartglasses I have ever worn. I look pretty good when wearing them, and when going out in the streets running, no one ever notices that I am wearing smartglasses. The only problem they have is that the frames are kinda thick compared to standard running glasses.
Having the Reebok brand also helps with the coolness factor: people care about what they wear on their face, and going around with a gadget of a brand that is super-famous in the sports field is definitely good.
Let me now show you the glasses from all the points of view:
Being glasses with limited technology (they’re audio-only glasses), there is not much to comment on the above photos. For sure, you have noticed that the frames are a bit thick. Also, in the bottom-view pic, you have most probably appreciated the controls:
- The magnetic charging port and a speaker on the right temple (the left one in the picture, since the photo is taken with the glasses upside-down)
- The power-on button, the volume button, and the other speaker on the left temple.
Comfort
The glasses are pretty lightweight, weighing 50g on my kitchen scale. They fit quite comfortably on my head, and I kept them on even for an hour without any major discomfort. The only parts where I felt some slight discomfort sensation after a long time were the top of the nose (because the glasses rest on it) and the lateral parts of the head (because the glasses slightly press against them). Luckily, both the nose mount and the end of the frames are made of rubber material, so you can slightly modify them to make the glasses better fit the shape of your face.
The glasses were also pretty stable on my head, so I never had the sensation of them falling to the floor when I was bending.
In general, I’ve found the comfort to be pretty good.
Sunglasses
The Reebok by Lucyd Octane are, first of all, sunglasses. And they are pretty good ones: I went outside during a sunny day, and they protected my eyes from the strong light. According to the specs, these glasses use adaptive photochromic polarized lenses with UV400 protection, anti-fog, and anti-scratch features. These are a lot of words, which basically means “they work well as sunglasses”.
Even if you turn the smart features off, these are still cool sunglasses to wear. And that’s important to make them interesting to the average consumer.
Notice that the sun protection is only on the upper and front part of your vision field (which is where the sun and most reflections usually are). In the lower part, there is no sun ray protection, which may be good if you want to sneak on your phone with maximum visibility without having to remove the glasses.
I also tried to use them indoors to listen to some music, but honestly, they make little sense. Indoors, the light is much less than outdoors, so they just obscure your vision too much.
Audio
Being audio glasses meant to take phone calls and listen to music, the audio part is very important on these glasses. I always say in my reviews that I’m not an audio expert at all, but with the Octane audio-only glasses, I tried to put in an extra effort to analyze the quality of the sound.
Audio is emitted by two small speakers installed on the frame of the glasses. In general, the audio is very audible: when the volume is maxed out, it can be pretty loud, and also, the people around you can listen to what you are listening to. If you want some privacy, I suggest you keep the volume low.
The sound leaking from the speakers may have some unexpected drawbacks. When I was having phone calls with the glasses, the experience was great: I could hear the other person loud and clear, and they could hear me very well, too. But if the volume of my speakers was too high, the other person could hear a bit of an echo of what he/she was saying. It’s a minor annoyance, but it is worth mentioning.
As for the quality of the speaker, I would say that it is good enough, but of course, they can’t compete with Sennheiser headphones. I tried to listen to music, and the audio was crisp… but I also had the sensation that the songs would have felt better in some professional headphones. Anyway, for casual usage, they sounded great. One thing that I appreciated over the cheap earphones that I sometimes use is that the audio over-the-ear felt more “spatial”, more realistic, than audio just plugged into my ears. Being over-the-ear, it also has the added advantage that if you are with other people, you can put some music in the background, and still be able to speak with them. This is good when running with your friends, for instance.
Battery
The claimed battery time is 8 hours. I didn’t make any extensive battery test, but I rarely charge them, and they keep working all the time, so I guess the advertised time is in the correct range.
The glasses are provided with a magnetic add-on that attaches to the right temple and lets you connect the glasses to a USB-C charger. The magnets on the add-on prevent you from accidentally attaching it in the wrong sense.
Setup
Setting up these glasses was super-easy. I just pressed the power-on button for a couple of seconds, so that they went into pairing mode. Then, on my phone, I paired with them via Bluetooth. And basically that’s it! After this 20-second setup, I was able to use my glasses with the phone to listen to music or answer calls.
Companion app
The glasses work out of the box for all the audio features, and you don’t have to install any companion app. But if you want, you can install the Lucyd companion app on your phone to enjoy additional features, like AI translation or ChatGPT integration. Or at least, this is what they say.
I’ll say this very bluntly: my experience with the companion app was very bad, and honestly, I would suggest you not even bother installing it. Let me just give you some examples of what happened to me while using it:
- The chat with ChatGPT is not natively vocal, as you would imagine from smart glasses. It is a textual chat, and for every message you get, you have to click on “Listen” to listen to it. This is a huge UX mistake: the chat should be fully managed via audio
- When I clicked on “Listen” on the ChatGPT messages, the app tried to read the English messages of the chat as if they were Italian (My phone is in Italian). It sounded like those Italian soccer players who have not studied much and try to speak English with international journalists, and when I hear them, my ears start to bleed.
- There is the translation functionality, and I tried the live translation Chinese-Italian with a Chinese person. The translation was not accurate, with very noticeable mistakes.
- There are some public “walkie-talkie” channels where you can meet new people. It could be nice, if there were any people there…
On paper, the companion app looks interesting, so I hope that Lucyd is going to update it and make it truly useful.
Controls
The glasses have basically just two buttons to operate them:
- The power-on button, which is also used to pair the glasses, to play/pause music, and to answer/reject calls
- The volume lever, which you move in one direction to volume up and in another to volume down.
Controls are pretty straightforward. There are just two drawbacks, in my opinion. There are too many functions associated with the power-on button, and you need a while to memorize all the nuances of them (e.g., when you receive a phone call, you have to press the button once to answer or twice to reject it). The other is that the volume lever is a bit too small: it is clunky, and it kinda stings your thumb when you use it.
Running with the glasses
People say that blogging is a seated activity. Actually, to review these glasses, I had to go outside to the park to run a bit. And I have to say my experience with them was great.
It was a sunny day, and the lenses protected me from the strong light of the sun. The glasses were stable on my face, and I didn’t feel any discomfort. The lenses did not fog up.
Then I put on some music and started running: the music was crisp even if I was outside, and there was background noise. There was a friend with me, and I was able to speak with her whenever we wanted, because the glasses didn’t prevent me from having a conversation, even if the music was on. This was also good for safety, because I was aware of my surroundings, and I could hear, for instance, when someone was coming from behind. This was a game-changer compared to when I wear earphones that isolate me from the world around. I was also able to change the volume of the music just by operating the glasses and without taking out my phone.
In general, it was a very pleasant experience, and I have no drawbacks to speak about.
Prescription
Reebok by Lucyd Octane does not support the addition of prescription lenses. But its sister model, Reebok by Lucyd Nitrous, does, with the following range: SPH: -8.00 to +7.00; CYL: -4.00 to +4.00.
Having smartglasses with prescriptions installed is fundamental to having an optimal experience with them: you can keep them on all the time, without having to constantly switch between smartglasses and regular glasses. It also prevents you from wearing contact lenses all the time. It is the key to smart glasses that people can wear the whole day.
Price and availability
Reebok by Lucyd Octane can be bought on the SmartBuyGlasses website for $160. If you need a prescription, you can get Reebok by Lucyd Nitrous for $154, and order them with the prescription lenses ideal for you, directly on the website.
Final considerations
I think these smartglasses by Reebok and Lucyd are a pretty solid product. They’re not generalistic glasses and have been made for one clear use case: go outside and go running or cycling. In this sense, they are perfect: they are cool as sunglasses, and they work very well to let you listen to music or make phone calls while keeping you aware of your surroundings. They have just some minor drawbacks, but in general I was satisfied with them, and I will keep using them when I’ll go running. So, if you are looking for glasses for this specific use case, I can only suggest buying them.