Razer Anzu Smart Glasses Review, Blue Light, Sunglass Lens Bundle

Razer Anzu Smart Glasses Review

Razerthink – A pair of smart glasses join Razer called the Razer Anzu Smart Glasses, a couple of glasses with arm-mounted speakers that play audio without blocking the rest of the world. But Razer devices have some unique features. Since this is a brand known for its gaming products, it’s no surprise that Razer offers a “Game Mode” for low-latency sound.

 Razer Anzu Smart Glasses for $199.99 They look good, and their mic captures speech clearly, but the audio performance they provide is not up to par for gaming, let alone considering the hefty price tag; in the end, you’re still better off pairing a good pair of earphones with Your standard glasses for gaming.

Design

The Razer Anzu Smart Glasses are framed in glossy black plastic, available in rectangular or round lens shapes, in small and large sizes for every style. When viewed directly, these glasses look almost indistinguishable from ordinary glasses but are not the word cheap familiar eyes. The Anzu has a larger module up its sleeve, which in the end, makes it less comfortable for some people and more comfortable for some people to wear all day. Razer devices also have two charging ports — one on each arm.

When you look at it from the side, you can see that the temples are thickened, arching before curling back behind your ears. This thicker section holds the electronics, including the downward-facing speaker driver, wireless circuitry, and battery. A small bump on the outside of the temple in the same position indicates touch-sensitive control. You can tap to answer or end calls and play and pause tracks, double-tap to skip forward, and triple tap to go back. The Razer Anzu Smart Glasses has no physical buttons at all. Fronts on both arms offer touch-sensitive control.

Razer Anzu Smart Glasses are also IPX4 rated for water resistance. The Anzu also has a more springy hinge, which helps it accommodate a larger head and makes it less likely to break. These glasses come with built-in clear blue-light-blocking lenses and an additional set of polarized sunglasses lenses in the box. You can easily and carefully switch between the two by removing the current lens and attaching the other in its place. Razer doesn’t directly offer prescription lenses but partners with Lensble to offer compatible prescription lenses starting at $77.

Touch settings and controls

Razer Anzu Smart Glasses are configured in two ways. You can pair it to your phone or laptop directly through your Bluetooth settings or using the company’s mobile app. Via Bluetooth, make sure the Anzu arm is open, which turns it on and triggers pairing mode. Once you’ve linked it to your laptop or phone, you’ll have to manually disconnect it every time you want to switch to another device. To turn off your glasses, fold the arm. Going through enterprise apps gets a little more complicated if you’re not used to it. After finding and pairing the Razer Anzu Smart Glasses in the Razer Android app on your phone, maybe some music won’t come out of your glasses; you still have to manually go into your phone’s Bluetooth settings to connect the Anzu for audio output.

Razer added Gesture control to these glasses. The tutorials in the app will walk you through all the available touch gestures, letting you try out each function and choose what they do. The Anzu can recognize — excuse me, is supposed to remember — a single press, double-tap, triple-tap, long press, and triple tap with a long press at the end. But it’s important to note that Razer Anzu Smart Glasses will only recognize a press, not a fixture. You can’t go too fast with a double or triple tap, or they won’t register, and your single tap has to be slow and deliberate. Old press? Make sure you hold your fingers to your forearms and count one to 3 or 4.

When they are detected accurately, the movement works fine. By default, double-tap skips to the next song, triple tap return to previous and triple tap with long-press combos toggle Game Mode on or off. A long press brings up the voice assistant of your choice, be it Alexa or Cortana on your laptop or Google Assistant on your phone. Anzu executes this fairly quickly once you find the right rhythm for the action. But to control the volume from the Anzu itself — you have to use your phone or laptop to change it.

Anzu Battery Life and Apps

Razer Anzu Smart Glasses can last up to five hours of audio playback. The glasses turn off automatically when folded. You can also change the equalizer preset between three modes: Default, Enhanced Clarity, and Treble Boost. That’s it for audio tweaking. The app can also enable low-latency Game Mode, but this can already be controlled on the glasses themselves by triple-tapping the touchpad and then holding it down for two seconds.

Audio Performance

These glasses use down-firing drivers aimed at your ears when worn, directing sound into them. Because there’s nothing but air between the driver and your ears, you should wear glasses close to your face to better direct the sound to your ears. There’s no noise isolation to block out distractions, meaning any surrounding sound has the potential to interfere with or even surpass anything you’re listening to; sound leakage from glasses is a risk, meaning that whatever you listen to can potentially be heard by those around you. Although the glasses don’t impress with their audio performance, the mic does very well for phone calls. Test recordings were loud, clear, easy to understand despite slight Bluetooth artifacts.

“Game Mode”

According to the Razer app, it allows “low latency audio.” The company says it uses an “industry-leading 60 ms” Bluetooth connection to ensure your streaming is smooth and “stutter-free.” I turned on Game Mode and played a few races on Forza horizon which at my expert level involves high-speed racing, overtaking, and crashing, I rely on audio cues to tell me it’s time to change gears, and it’s time to brake, and any sound breaks are jarring. Without Game Mode on, the audio Forza horizon feels delayed, making everything feel sluggish. I noticed a slight improvement with low latency enabled, but the game still feels slow.

Eye protection

I like that the Razer Anzu Smart Glasses comes with 35 percent blue light filtering lenses, which gives non-glasses wearers like me a reason to stick with them. At least, in theory, it made me feel like I was protecting my eyes. I didn’t notice a big difference in how strained my eyes were throughout the day, but my temples felt like Anzu’s thick arms were pinching them after a few hours. Anzu is made for indoor and outdoor use, and these glasses come with two sets of lenses.

By default, they have a pair of clear blue-light-blocking lenses to minimize the negative effects of staring at a screen on your day.  Anzu uses a clear blue light blocking lens and can block 35% blue light. That’s the same amount you would get from the clearest gaming glasses. They also come with a pair of polarized sunglasses lenses, which you can swap out at any time. You can push the lens out and attach a new one.

Pros 

• Attractive design
• Good microphone
• Blue light blocking and sunglass lenses
• Relatively long-lasting battery
• Availability of size and style options
• Convenient hands-free audio

Cons

• Unintuitive touch controls
• No sound isolation lets any outside noise get in
• Weak audio, especially in the lows and highs
• Expensive

Price 

The Razer Anzu Smart Glasses is now available on the Razer website for US$199.99 

Overall

Razer Anzu Smart Glasses is that it’s a decent headphone-glasses hybrid with blue light filtering built-in, With better motion recognition and noticeable improvements in low latency Game mode. Razer Anzu Smart Glasses can even very well say that these are the best smart audio glasses that have been made so far, but the price makes us think twice about buying these glasses.