The Nuance Audio Plus can answer a phone call with a double tap on the temple, something the first generation couldn’t do at all. The call feature only works with an iPhone, though. EssilorLuxottica put the glasses on sale on September 22, 2026, starting at $829 depending on the lenses you order. These are hearing glasses, with no camera, no assistant and no display. Microphones in the temples pick up speech, and small speakers above your ears play it back louder, aimed at the person in front of you. The company sells the range to adults with perceived mild to moderate hearing loss.
The call feature works on an iPhone and nowhere else
According to EssilorLuxottica’s comparison page, “The product, as an MFI certified device, supports voice calls only when used with an iPhone (requires iOS 16 or later).” The same page lists no phone call support at all for the first-generation Nuance Audio Glasses.
MFi is Apple’s Made for iPhone accessory program. Hearing devices in it connect to an iPhone over a method Apple controls. Android uses a different one, so support on one platform doesn’t carry over to the other.
EssilorLuxottica’s pages don’t say what an Android owner gets instead. If you carry a Pixel or a Galaxy, treat the calling feature as absent until the company says otherwise. Judge the glasses on how well they amplify a conversation, since that’s what they were built for.
What you get for the extra $130
The original Nuance Audio Glasses still sell for $699, so the Plus costs $130 more, and four changes account for the difference.
EssilorLuxottica rates the Plus battery at “up to 10h under average use conditions” and the original at “up to 8h”. A full charge now takes about four hours, up from three, and the charging pad comes in the box. Folding the temples puts the glasses to sleep, and unfolding them wakes them. Whether ten hours covers a real day depends on that sleep behavior.
Day to day, the controls are probably the bigger change. A slider turns the glasses on and off, and separate buttons handle volume and presets. A double tap switches between the frontal and 360 degree microphone modes and also answers a call. The original puts on, off and volume on a single multifunction button, and anyone who has fumbled one of those in a restaurant will see the point of the change.
For the speaker, EssilorLuxottica describes the Plus as having “stronger amplification and warmer sound” and the original as giving “normal amplification for everyday hearing support”. The company publishes no measurement or gain figure on its pages to back that wording.
The Plus also comes in more frames: three shapes (Panthos, Upturn and Square), each in five colorways. The original comes in two shapes and three colors. Frame shape counts for a lot on a hearing device, because it has to sit on your face all day.
What the app adjusts
The Nuance Audio app gives you two microphone modes: frontal for a conversation across a table, and all-around for everything else. Under those sit four preset amplification profiles labeled A to D and three levels of background noise reduction. Volume runs on a scale of one to five.
Those are presets you choose between, and none of them is a response curve shaped to your own audiogram. That’s where hearing glasses differ from a hearing aid fitted by an audiologist. If your hearing has dipped gently and evenly, a preset can land close enough to be useful. No number of taps will fix a steep high-frequency loss in one ear. EssilorLuxottica sells the range to adults with perceived mild to moderate hearing loss, and its launch announcement keeps to that wording.
The lens is the part most smart glasses get wrong
Nuance Audio comes from an eyewear company, and it shows in the boring places. You order the frames with clear prescription lenses, Transitions Gen S photochromics, or blue-violet light filtering, the same menu you would get on any pair from the same group.
Camera-equipped pairs usually take a different route. You order a separate insert, check a supported prescription range and hope your cylinder falls inside it, which is how ordering prescription lenses for Rokid Glasses works. Nuance skips all that, because the lens was never an afterthought here. It also means you’re buying a hearing device and your actual glasses at once, so the fairer comparison is with the cost of both.
Where you can buy a pair
Being sold by the world’s largest eyewear group gives the Plus an edge in distribution. It goes out through authorized optical and hearing care shops, with online sales in selected countries. Stefano Genco, who runs Nuance Audio, put the first year’s reach at “14 countries and more than 18,000 stores”.
That’s a different deal from a direct-to-consumer hearing device shipped from a warehouse. In a shop, someone can adjust the nose pads, glaze the lenses to your prescription and take the frames back if they sit wrong. For a product you wear on your face for ten hours a day, we’d put that ahead of any spec in this article.
Before you order
Get a hearing test from an audiologist first, and take the result with you. The company runs an online screening test and books free in-store demonstrations. Do the demo in a noisy part of the shop, away from the quiet consulting room. Ask to try the frontal mode with someone talking to you while other conversations run behind you. That’s the situation these glasses are built for, and it’s where a preset either works for your ears or doesn’t.
Check the return window too. EssilorLuxottica gives US buyers 30 days to send the glasses back free, which is roughly how long it takes to learn whether you’ll reach for them each morning.
The company hasn’t published a measured gain figure on these pages, or any statement about Android support. Both are fair questions to put to a stockist before you hand over $829.
