The short version
- Legato Frames are glasses sold as an over-the-counter hearing aid for adults with mild to moderate hearing loss, starting at $999.
- The speakers sit in the arms and leave the ear canal open, and the glasses carry no camera and make no recordings.
- An independent lab rated their sound 4.6 out of 5, but no study of people wearing them in daily life has been reported.
A startup founded by two Bose veterans began selling glasses this month that double as a hearing aid. Legato Frames went on sale in the United States on October 1 at $999 for two matte-black styles and $1,099 for a tortoise browline, and they take prescription lenses. They are sold as an over-the-counter hearing aid for adults with perceived mild to moderate hearing loss. Microphones and processors sit in the arms. Software on the glasses separates speech from background noise, and small speakers aim the result at the ear without plugging the ear canal. There is no camera and no audio recording. The battery runs 10 to 12 hours.
The pitch is about stigma as much as sound. “There are millions of people who want to hear better, but remain on the sidelines because they have not found a product they actually want to wear,” chief executive Mehul Trivedi, who led the Bose Frames project, told HearingTracker. Legato raised $12 million this summer, and it has company: EssilorLuxottica sells Nuance Audio glasses, and Meta has an FDA-cleared hearing-aid feature for its smart glasses. Sales through eye care clinics begin in late October in ten states, including New York, California and Texas.
The evidence so far is a lab result. HearAdvisor, an independent testing lab, gave the glasses a SoundScore of 4.6 out of 5 in May, among the ten best devices it has tested. Neither report describes a study of people wearing them through an ordinary day, and the claim that the speakers cancel 99% of the sound that would leak to bystanders is the company’s own.
