Getting started with the Nuance Audio means purchasing them either online or through an eyeglasses reseller. With the former option, you’ll need to have lenses fitted separately, unless you want to use the glasses with uncorrected lenses. Only two frame family options are available—a squarish version called Audio Square (available in two sizes) and a rounder one called Panthos (just one size). Both frame families come in either black or burgundy, and all options can be configured with clear, tinted, or Transitions lenses—a prescription eyeglass provider can put whatever lenses you want in them (at additional cost). My local LensCrafters configured my Audio Square lenses with untinted progressive lenses based on my prescription.

The Nuance Audio eyeglasses are unlike any hearing aid I’ve tested, so it perhaps makes sense that the user experience is also unlike any hearing aid I’ve tested. There’s no hearing test in Nuance’s mobile app. Rather, it’s up to the user to choose from four presets, denoted with letters A through D. A represents “flat mild hearing loss” and C is “sloping moderate hearing loss,” and while Nuance offers some description of each of the four presets, it largely came down to trial and error to see which one helped the best. I spent most of my time on preset B, “sloping mild hearing loss,” which only enhances higher frequencies.

Photograph: Chris Null

Additional options on the app’s home screen let you lower or raise background noise or leave it as is (I was almost always on lowered) and switch the audio mode between frontal-amplifying or all-around. An option to adjust how your own voice is amplified is buried in the settings menu.

Volume is one of the only things that can be changed via the sole button on the glasses themselves, cycling through three levels (out of five total) that you also configure within the app. Double-tapping the side of the frame switches between front-facing and all-around amplification, but I found this movement difficult to perform reliably.