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Editor's Note: For lab and real-life findings on Nuance Audio hearing glasses from the independent HearAdvisor lab and HearingTracker, please see Nuance Audio Glasses: Lab Tested for Hearing Aid Performance, Real-life Use, and Value.
What if you could put on a pair of glasses to hear better during any conversation, freeing your ears to do what they do best: hear the world unencumbered?
Nuance Audio™ is a new over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aid software from EssilorLuxottica, the global leader in eyewear—and the first in what HearingTracker thinks may be a new category of amplification devices we’re calling Hearing Glasses. The company is aiming to revolutionize the hearing aid industry with its highly anticipated Nuance Audio Glasses. These groundbreaking smart glasses—which received FDA clearance in early February 2025—blend cutting-edge hearing software with stylish, comfortable eyewear, targeting the 1.25 billion people worldwide who have mild to moderate hearing loss.
They spotlight speech, making conversations easier to understand and follow, especially in noisier environments. We’ll note that in December 2025, Meta announced Conversation Focus, a new feature in its Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 smart glasses, which has the goal of amplifying speech and making it clearer and easier to hear. Although both products are associated with EssilorLuxottica, Ray-Ban Meta is the result of a collaboration with Meta, whereas Nuance Audio is EssilorLuxottica’s own OTC hearing aid platform.
Unlike traditional and OTC hearing aids, which have struggled to gain widespread adoption due to their cosmetics, discomfort, and stigma, Nuance Audio Glasses are discreet, comfortable, and stylish. The audio components are completely hidden within the glasses, removing the need for unsightly wires, tubes, or earmolds, leaving the ear canals open for a more natural hearing experience.
How did Nuance Audio do it? A receiver (electronic speaker) is hidden at the end of the glasses' arm or temple, just over your ear. An advanced directional microphone array on the end pieces of the glasses picks up signals in front of the listener. The software then digitally processes and transmits the amplified sound through the receiver for a clean, transparent listening experience. And, unlike conventional hearing aids, Nuance uses open audio technology free of earmolds, earpieces, tubes, or wires that extend into the ear.
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By some estimates, about 30% of older adults (age 65+) with hearing loss wear hearing aids, and of the older adults who wear hearing aids, more than 70% also wear glasses. This makes a hearing solution built into glasses particularly attractive from a practical standpoint, as well as for comfort, invisibility, and effectiveness:
Nuance Audio technology is seamlessly integrated into the frames of glasses, enhancing speech and reducing ambient noise. It is a great solution for conversations in challenging listening environments.
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These are not like your grandfather’s (or great-grandfather’s) hearing aid glasses—the kind that had a clunky earpiece attached to the back of the glasses’ bridge and contributed to the stigma some people now associate with hearing aids.
EssilorLuxottica—known for iconic brands like Ray-Ban, Oakley, and Persol—has a legacy of transforming functional eyewear into fashionable accessories. Their expertise in eyewear design ensures that Nuance Audio Glasses look just like a pair of regular glasses. But behind those lenses, they feature advanced hearing amplification technology, offering wearers a dual benefit: enhanced hearing without compromising style.
“By integrating superior hearing tech into fashionable eyewear, we aim to break the stigma associated with traditional hearing aids,” says Francesco Milleri, Chairman and CEO of EssilorLuxottica. “We did this for vision with our iconic eyewear brands, and now we’re doing it for hearing.”
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At the heart of Nuance Audio is beamforming technology, a sophisticated method of isolating speech in noisy environments using directional microphones and advanced sound processing. This is particularly useful for those who struggle with the “cocktail party effect,” where it becomes difficult to hear conversations amid competing speech and noise sounds.
Nuance Hearing had previously developed an exceptional table microphone system, successfully used as an accessory device by one of the world’s largest hearing aid manufacturers. It relies on an array of microphones that effectively pick up voices during noisy meetings, conferences, or restaurants. Following Nuance Hearing acquisition in 2023 by EssilorLuxottica, this microphone array technology has now been engineered into a pair of stylish glasses.
Nuance Audio Glasses give you more control in conversations by accentuating the voices of people you’re directly facing. The glasses' microphones focus on specific areas, picking up sounds with focused accuracy while filtering out ambient noise. They have been engineered to enhance directional hearing, allowing users to focus on the sounds in front of them while reducing distractions from surrounding noise.
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While traditional hearing aids are effective, their adoption has been limited by concerns about appearance, comfort, and cost.
“As an audiologist, it is very difficult to convince someone with a milder hearing loss to try hearing aids,” says Nuance Chief Audiologist Tami Harel. “This usually has to do with stigma, comfort, and cost issues. Nuance Audio Glasses tackle both stigma and comfort because we have a completely different form factor for a hearing aid. Nothing impedes the ear, and it’s completely invisible. And because it’s specialized beamforming technology, the glasses can capture the sound in front of you and provide a solution to the need for better hearing in noisy environments.”
Nuance Audio Glasses tackle these barriers head-on:
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While EssilorLuxottica is keeping a lid on the specifics of the technologies employed in Nuance Audio Glasses, we do know this much about its key features:
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During testing of an early prototype, two well-known hearing industry experts reported an almost "superpower-like" ability to hear clearly in crowded, noisy environments.
Here’s how HearingTracker Audiologist and Founder Abram Bailey, AuD, described his experience listening with the Nuance Audio Glasses in an office setting and then in a boisterous restaurant:
Wherever I looked, I could hear. It was really like some kind of weird eavesdropping super power—the kind you always expect hearing aids to give you (spoiler: they never do). In all my hearing aid testing over the years as an expert reviewer of hearing aids, I’d really never experienced anything quite like this. It was cool … but a little disorienting at first.
[Nuance Chief Audiologist Tami Harel and I were talking] near a large group of visitors gathered at one of the many brand experience displays and [I] went and stood with them. At the same time, I pointed myself at Tami, and continued listening to her speak. The visitors were all speaking quietly so as not to disturb others, and Tami was speaking quietly too. She was standing about 5 feet from me, off to the side of the group. I was in the middle of the group looking at Tami, and I could still hear her loud and clear. When I removed the glasses, I could no longer make out the words she was saying at all…
[Later, in the noisy restaurant,] I’d stopped focusing on the glasses and just found myself enjoying the conversations I was having. It was at this point that I realized that I was doing exactly the thing that had become so hard for me over the past few years. Just being present, not straining, not focusing, just having a good time, and chatting with the others in my group.
Long story short, it was eventually time for me to pass the prototype on to one of my colleagues. This is where things unfortunately went downhill a bit. Removing the glasses confirmed that they were indeed helping me. Suddenly, the conversations were muddy, and I found myself feeling tired, wishing my turn with the glasses hadn’t ended so soon.
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AuraFuturity Founder Andrew Bellavia, a hearing industry veteran and frequent blogger who has a severe hearing loss, was located down the table from Dr. Bailey at this same dinner party. He writes:
Unaided, this would be my worst nightmare. I arranged a [test] in which two females were positioned about 1.5m in front of me and talking to each other. The rest of the dinner party was positioned in an arc from just to my right to 90° to my left. With the glasses off, I was still able to understand one of the talkers a majority of the time, but I knew her well, and she spoke with a deeper voice. The other, whom I had not met before and who was also rather soft-spoken, was almost completely unintelligible to me. I recognized no more than 20% of her words.
The real magic came when I put the glasses on. My understanding of the first person’s speech was 100%, and nearly so for the second. Only occasionally did I miss a word, a vast improvement over unaided listening. I put the glasses on and off several times to make sure of what I was hearing. The result was nothing short of remarkable.
Bellavia also interviewed Nuance's Tami Harel and Davide D'Alene at the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
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Nuance Hearing is a startup specializing in cutting-edge acoustic beamforming technology to enhance speech in noisy environments. Its bespoke products have been behind the success of assistive devices that use Nuance’s directional microphone arrays to filter out ambient noise while focusing on speech.
Seeing an opportunity to integrate advanced hearing technology with fashionable eyewear, EssilorLuxottica acquired Nuance Hearing in late 2022. Nuance and EssilorLuxottica plan to leverage their individual strengths, combining sleek and unobtrusive eyewear that addresses the discomfort and inconvenience associated with traditional hearing aids, particularly for eyeglass wearers.
EssilorLuxottica was formed in 2018 by the merger of two major companies: Essilor, a French leader in ophthalmic optics, and Luxottica, an Italian eyewear giant. Headquartered in Paris and Milan, EssilorLuxottica ranks 260th among the world’s largest companies. In 2023, it generated $25.4 billion in global revenue and held assets totaling $60.5 billion. It is involved in every facet of the eyewear industry.
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Managing over 18,000 stores globally and with a vast retail network with access to over 300,000 third-party stores, EssilorLuxottica is the force behind many of the world’s most iconic eyewear brands. They hold exclusive rights to Ray-Ban, Oakley, and Persol, among others, and also produce and distribute luxury brands such as Prada, Giorgio Armani, Bulgari, Burberry, Chanel, Ralph Lauren, Versace, Coach, Dolce & Gabbana, Ferrari, and Michael Kors. On the retail side, the company owns major outlets such as LensCrafters, Target Optical, Pearle Vision, Sunglass Hut, Ray-Ban, and Oakley. They also collaborate with a large network of independent opticians and retail partners worldwide, and are starting to work with audiology practices, as well.
Finally, as noted above, EssilorLuxottica has partnered with Meta to produce Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 1 and 2) smart glasses, Oakley Meta (HSTN and Vanguard) performance glasses, and Meta-Ban Display (which includes real-time captioning directly on the lenses).
What sets Nuance apart is its ability to tackle one of the most significant barriers to hearing aid adoption: stigma. By embedding cutting-edge hearing tech invisibly into fashionable glasses, Nuance offers a functional and nearly invisible solution, ensuring users can improve their hearing without compromising style.
Moreover, EssilorLuxottica’s history of transforming necessary medical devices into fashion statements—evident in how they redefined prescription glasses—could have a similar effect on the hearing aid market. Their expertise in balancing comfort, technology, and style makes Nuance Audio Glasses an attractive option for those who want hearing support without the traditional drawbacks of old-looking hearing aids. With their vast retail network, they are well-positioned to make hearing glasses easily accessible to consumers worldwide.
In this way, EssilorLuxottica says Nuance Audio Glasses are more than just a hearing aid; they represent the future of integrated vision and hearing solutions. Whether you need help with mild-to-moderate hearing loss or struggle to hear in noisy environments, these glasses promise an attractive alternative for the billion-plus people worldwide who have mild-to-moderate hearing loss and are not quite yet ready for hearing aids.
“While sight remains our core business—and growing the optical market our strategy—we are uniquely positioned to open up a new avenue for the industry by addressing the need for good hearing with innovative technologies,” says EssilorLuxottica CEO Milleri. “As we did in the vision space, we will be the first to remove the stigma of traditional hearing solutions, replacing it with comfort and style.”
This article was written by HearingTracker in collaboration with Nuance/EssilorLuxottica which sponsored the content. The company provided input through interviews, collaboration, suggestions, and supplied images. While efforts have been made to ensure accuracy and objectivity, this article reflects a combination of editorial expertise and sponsor contributions.
Karl Strom ist der Chefredakteur von HearingTracker. Er war Gründungsredakteur von The Hearing Review und berichtet seit über 30 Jahren über die Hörhilfenindustrie.
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Doktor der Audiologie
Chefredakteur
Chefredakteur
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