Fauna Audio Spiro
Comfortable unisex shades with taps, slides and discreet audio fit for podcasts and making calls.
Need some Bluetooth-enabled speaker-sunglasses for the summer? These competitors to the Bose Frames succeed on comfort and convenience, but don’t quite match the bigger brand on sound quality.
‘Open audio’ is the future. The ability to go for a walk or run without having to block out everything happening around you is safer and more pleasant than being locked away in your own head. Open audio is exactly what Fauna Audio’s Spiro Transparent Brown sunglasses offer inside a subtle, stylish and discrete unisex package that cleverly hides its core technology.
There’s no way anyone walking past you in the park is going to know your temples are kitted-out with a couple of microspeakers, a woofer and a microphone. Nor is anyone going to notice when you double-tap the arms to skip a track or slide a finger down the arm to increase the volume.
They’re cable-free thanks to a clever charging case, which weighs 190g and measures 169 x 57 x 66 mm. It features a USB-C slot for topping-up its built-in 1,300 mAh battery alongside four green LED lights that indicate how much power is left in the case.
Trouble is, the volume doesn’t go high enough to drown-out ambient noises while the sound quality – though incredibly clear and precise – doesn’t do much of a job with music. They work great for listening to podcasts and talk radio, and they’re excellent for making hands-free calls. But they don’t have enough bass response for music.
What its microspeakers also lack, however, is much ability with the width and depth of music. The mid-range is thin and the low-frequency sounds are discernible, but only just. Put simply, they need more bass response. Having said that, it’s all very listenable and there’s a fine sense of stereo separation, but that lack of bass leaves them short of the audio quality offered by the Bose Frames.
So despite being much better as a wearable device and as a pair of sunglasses when compared to the Bose Frames, they don’t sound quite as good.
Where the Spiro Transparent Brown sunglasses does get one-up on its rival is on longevity. Though they boast a 4-hour battery life it ships with an excellent sunglasses case that’s able to refuel them at least four times over.
It all leaves us thinking that while open audio remains the future, that future isn’t quite here yet. The Spiro Transparent Brown sunglasses impress, but overall they leave us still waiting for audio eyewear’s breakthrough moment.
Well designed with discreet speakers and some excellent tap and slide touch controls, these Bluetooth-enabled speakersunglasses succeed on style, comfort and ease of use. The audio is always clear, but it lacks enough bass response for music. Jamie Carter