Ruimen AJ01 Smart Sunglasses Review

Verdict

Looking like your average set of specs from a budget fashion retailer, the AJ01 smartglasses are as basic as smartglasses can be. They’re simple in style and execution, but acceptable sound quality means they can serve a very specific purpose in this price bracket.

Introduction

The AJ01 Smartglasses are about as simple as can be. Buttons in place of touch controls, a one-size-fits-all approach, and a design that’s as generic as possible. For the right person, though, that’s exactly what they might want: familiarity and no finicky surprises.

It’s not all too surprising to see Amazon flooded with supposed smartglasses at a comparatively bargain price next to the swiftly emerging big-brand competition like the Ray-Ban Meta glasses and Echo Frames. It’s precisely what happened in the earbud space when Apple’s AirPods came onto the scene. But what corners need to be cut to get a double-digit pair of smart specs out to market?

They may look simple at first, but there’s a lot of consideration that goes into designing a pair of smart glasses. As with smartwatches, these wearables need to do everything a regular pair does and more.

They need to be comfortable, look good, sound great, offer private listening, house a battery without jeopardising the fit and feel, and sometimes include screens, cameras, and the processing chips that drive them. The AJ01 Smartglasses barely offer any of that. But they’re not entirely useless.

Design and fit

• Rigid one-size-fits-all approach
• Bargain bin design
• Relatively inconspicuous as far as smart glasses go

Looking like something from the rack of your nearest pharmacy, the AJ01 smartglasses would fit right in with a two for £20 deal if not for the apparent smart tech gubbins. The large and chunky black plastic frame isn’t quite thick enough to give the game away immediately – especially if your hair would cover the grills toward the temples.

Even still, that same area is certainly on the taller side than most. They’re far from modern thin and light stems. And with absolutely no flex to the hard plastic unibody around where they’d wrap around the curves of your ears, the 44.8g of weight will likely be felt over time. There are no adjustable cushioned nose pads, either. The fit is all down to a rigid plastic frame with very little give.

The arms themselves can stretch outward to accommodate slightly larger heads, but you’ll notice the lenses pushing out toward the outer edges and the inner part pulling in closer, too, which might add undue pressure to your face or distort the view through the lenses.

Even after 20 minutes outside, I could feel the AJ01 smartglasses becoming a little too uncomfortable for my liking. It’s always the rubbing around the ears that I notice first, and these gave me flashbacks to the ill-fitting bargain pair I’d usually have to pick up from the airport as a kid. Zero flex in the frame means the hard plastic has no give against your skin.

I can’t see them being comfortable for long-term use out and about. Instead, they might make do for lounging in the garden over summer or getting some yard work out of the way. Unlike the best noise-cancelling earbuds, however, the lawnmower will drown them out.

If you don’t gel with earbuds and typically don’t listen to audio for more than an hour or so at a time like me, they’re a relatively simple solution to a hyper-specific problem.

Included in the simple cardboard packaging is a soft case that won’t protect the shades from the damage of accidentally sitting on them or overcrowding your bag. It’s there for scratch-resistance purposes only, but you should be able to fit them into any hard carry case if you want that extra piece of mind.

Software and setup

• No software
• One-button setup
• Light song navigation controls

With just a single button on either side of the temples, unlike the fit, setting up the AJ01 smartglasses was relatively pain-free. Holding one button long enough kicked Bluetooth pairing into gear, with my iPhone 13 Pro Max finding and connecting to them without issue.

What wasn’t too clear, however, is that you do actually need to hold both buttons to power both sides of the specs up. You don’t need to pair the other half after the first, but without powering it up, you’ll only get sound through one side. Once powered up properly, they’ll automatically link up like a pair of wireless earbuds.

Being a budget pair, software is non-existent. That means there’s no room for changing what the few buttons do, or the sound quality you can expect. What you see (or hear, in this case) is what you get.

Audio

• Loud stereo sound
• Good enough quality for casual listening
• Microphone is crisp and clear

My first trip outside with the AJ01 smartglasses didn’t instil much hope in the sound quality department. They were quiet and didn’t seem to respond to the volume slider of my phone. Turns out, however, that they were just already too loud at around 20% volume, kicking in my iPhone’s hearing protection mode I wasn’t aware was still enabled. Can you tell I’m not a big metal fan?

Before I dive much deeper into the volume of these things, it’s worth noting that even at lower end of the volume wheel, I was still able to hear the output of the AJ01 specs without them being on my head. Audio leakage is prominent with these, likely due to the need for speakers on the outside of the temples for that important stereo projection, and that gets worse at high volumes.

Once there’s enough power to drive them properly, 80s music sounded upbeat and punchy, and podcasts were clear enough to enjoy just fine. Just because these are comparatively cheap next to the competition doesn’t mean they sound atrocious. They won’t add new meaning to your favourite songs, but they get the job done.

On a similar note, call quality was solid. You can use presses and long presses to take, reject, and end phone calls without too much room for error. And once you’re on one, the microphones close the hinges work well enough. Just don’t expect much in the form of noise reduction on either side. And be prepared for the world around you to hear your whole conversation.

Being IP4X splash-resistant, wearing those out for a jog in heavy rain shouldn’t be a cause for concern. And knowing the ferocity of those surprise summer showers, that’s a pretty big deal.

Battery

• One battery per side
• Magnetic charging
• Around eight hours on a 90-minute charger

Like the Huawei Eyewear 2, the AJ01 frames are charged via a proprietary magnetic connector that latches onto either side of the temples. Unlike the former, however, the magnetic cable ends in a male USB-A rather than a female USB-C port. There’s no charger in the box. So if you’ve already made the switch to solely USB-C chargers, you’re going to have to go backwards to keep these running.

The exact charging method means you’re likely to be in a world of trouble should the cable ever be misplaced, lost, or, as the quality looks to be in line with the cheapest wired earbuds out there, broken through a few months of light use. Finding a replacement won’t be easy, likely turning these into an uncomfortable and wildly overpriced pair of sunglasses overnight.

On a full 90-minute charge, you can expect between five to eight hours of runtime from the 90mAh battery. That’s dependent on listening volume, with 60% being the benchmark given.

For reference, 20% volume is more than enough for listening to podcasts in a quiet environment, so pushing ahead of the projected lifespan of a single charge is entirely possible. That means comparative battery life to the best earbuds around. You just won’t be able to top them up by stowing them in the included case.

Still, the USB-A charging method means you won’t struggle to juice them up on public transport. However, that’s also presumably when you’d rather use them.