Short version
These are exactly how they look and the claims are fair. If you find the price for your matching interest then I strongly recommend to buy now to benefit from the summer outdoors.
Long version
I do a lot of biking and walking where I can’t or won’t use in-ear / over-ear.
I also find TWS buds fall out too easily and would be lost / broken and I want to maintain sound awareness anyway of my surroundings. I have Life P3, Liberty Air 2, Neo. Due to their falling out easily I nearly always use the over-ear Q30 at home and the discontinued wired Slim around-neck buds when outside moving.
So when I became aware of the Frames coming I knew I was very interested, and so prioritised getting a set. I chose the Landmark and the Cafe front set, for strong sunshine and twilight situations respectively. I chose those specifically as there is no gap at the nose-tearduck area, as any gap there makes for wind and flies get forced into the gap.
The premise here for the potential buyer is this is not the only thing you’ll own. As you read review below you’ll see these complement other items you’d use in other contexts.
There’s plenty of unboxing out there but this is the box and contents.
What you get:
- the left and right side, these are effectively very long TWS buds.
- your choice of front
- case, cloth
- charging cable which is magnetic to the buds and USB-A to charger.
The Soundcore app gives plenty of controls.
- swipe front to back, back to front, left and right side
- double-tap
- you’re phone’s voice activation (Google, Siri)
- the above two can be set to do any of volume control up/down, play/pause, next/previous
- press-hold to manually turn buds off.
Setup
Intuitive. I didn’t read the manual, I assembled the sides to the front, put on face, they made a bleep sound, and I paired in the phone. Simplicity.
Sound quality
The sound is good quality, reasonable, say similar to a stereo speaker placed immediately behind the head. The sound feels like it is inside your head, slightly to the rear. I am not listening to music, just to voice, tried some music and it was good. I have the Soundcore Motion+ to compare, the Motion+ is able to do a richer broader sound, but these for their size, and fact not inside your ears, is very good.
Sound EQ
I tried the presets, in truth there’s barely any change between them. Possibly the Soundcore Signature had a bit more bass.
The spacial sound, I could not detect any difference. None.
Sound volume
Indoors in quiet environment, it is plenty loud enough, you’d not complain.
Outdoors in quiet environment, by a quieter road, sufficient.
Outdoors in a loud environment, I basically could not hear them any more.
That for me is not a complaint but a desired feature - the point being I can hear everything going on around me in full real stereo. This is exactly what I expected and am pleased.
The sound being heard by others is no way masked, any notion it is “pointed” to your ears is not the case, if you make it loud for yourself, it is loud for others, and then the ambient noise determines how much they hear. So if you were, say, on a train / bus, with some background noises, for you to hear what you wanted, most everyone else would hear it too. So don’t think you have a personal secret bubble.
Placing some kind of hat and/or neck clothing which reflects sounds back towards the ears helps a lot better. So a coat with hood, or a cap which dangles behind / over ears helps make the sound louder for oneself and presumably less loud for others side/behind you.
On a bus where the bus engine was drowning out the sound, I figured out as simple as one hand over one side did effectively make it loud enough so you have a kind of temporary volume boost.
If you do cover the ears it’s probably wise to disable the double tap control as the item over the sides tends to trigger it.
As these do not obstruct the ears, these would complement in-ear TWS buds where you’d keep wearing the Frames as sunglasses, disconnect Frames, connect some TWS buds in-ear and use them, and swap back, say through a bike / train / walk commute cycle.
There is a “privacy” EQ mode, it simply made it very quiet to point of unusable. Gimmick. Didn’t like it. Just turn volume down if you are entering a place you want to cause less sound to others.
I tweaked the settings to try to increase volume. On Android disabling Absolute Volume may have helped a little. A custom EQ with everything dialled to 11 did increase volume but just caused distortion.
Call quality
I do not intend to use these primarily for voice calls but want to make / receive calls. I took and made a test call and they sounded fine and they said I was legible. Acceptable. I may do further call tests later.
Comfort
I find them very comfortable, easily an all-day wearing comfort.
However, if you do wear something over your head, then the sides begin to dig into ears and that makes it uncomfortable. The sides are rigid and not tweakable to size / shape of head so if you press them in, they hurt.
There’s no sense of these falling off, the pinch is just-right, weight is fine.
Wear Detection
This works extremely well. It is on by default, and triggers play/pause. If off head for more than say 30 seconds, the Frames turn off, if you place back on head, they turn on.
I liked this as if I were crossing a busy road junction walking, I’d take the Frames off for maximum vision+sound, the media would auto pause then auto play.
Battery Life
I was seeing around 25% battery loss per 1.5hr so the claim of 5hr total is about right.
I did invest in a spare 2nd charging cable and if I’m doing anything more than a dog walk / quick shop then I’m always with an Anker Powercore so I have no angst about battery life, I carry the usual cables with me. So a 2nd cable helps. I doubt 5hr will be an issue for me. If you’re at all worried either do as I do (cable + Powercore) or carry a small set of TWS buds or simply plan for 5hours-ish of use and ration appropriately.
Charging
Charging is via a proprietary magnetic connected cable to both sides to USB-A power. The connections are firm. The cable shows green for charging, no light for charged. That’s possibly non-intuitive for most, had to read the manual. I’d prefer say red for charging, green for charged, off eventually if you ignored the green.
Landmark lens
The size and tint of the lens were acceptable. What was a major problem is the inside glass is reflective so I am seeing to the sides my own ears. A recommendation to Soundcore is make this a matt inside so no reflection.
Cafe Lens
They seem very small. Smaller than Landmark. Why?
I’d like Landmark and Cafe to be the same size, Cafe larger to be same size as Landmark.
Photos in the field (literally)
Summary
Pros:
- Good for a broad range of indoors and outdoors activites where you want to hear your environment.
- Good for noisy environments where you prefer to hear the noise. As I do.
- Good for quieter environments where you not bothered if people can hear what you are listening to.
- Simplicity. Just works. Put them on head they turn on, take them off briefly they pause, keep them off they turn off. Perfect.
- All day comfort, you can turn them off if required to conserve battery.
- Good for cycling, country / low-density urban.
Cons:
- lens (my Landmark choice) shiny!
- Not for noisy environments where you want to listen to something. These do not block external sound at all (a pro, if you want that sort of thing, as I do). Note: you can temporarily boost the volume via placing a hand over the ear.
- Not for crowded quieter environments shared with others. They pretty much hear everything you hear.
- Not really for where sound quality or volume is your key criteria, so you’d complement these with something else like some TWS buds you’d put in when sound quality or volume or privacy matters most.
Areas for improvement in a successor:
- improve the battery life. For example I have the wired Slim bud with battery and control in a volume a fraction of the size one side of the Frames and have 10 hours, so surely something as big as the Frames can significantly increase battery life.
- I’m not so sure the swappable fronts is that critical, given these Frames can’t really benefit from LDAC nor ANC or Ambient (their nature) the sides probably cost $30-$50 so a full set shouldn’t really need to be more than say $80 so I’d suggest folks would simply buy two full sets for similar to less cost than a full set and another front.
- In that future suggested Frames product you can then place electronics in the front, such as microphones nearer the mouth at the inside lower side of the front. They could also have electronic control of darkness so the tint is controllable.
- If you do pick up my ideas I suggest they are called Frames Professor Edition ™.
I’d like to thank @sean.l for help to the side via PM in obtaining my Frames.
I guess a potential comment coming up on another thread. 
