$10 Amazon Echo Frames Prescription Lens Hack

Have Echo Frames and need prescription lenses on a budget? Then this is for you.

Echo frames are a "Day 1"-edition, which means you had to get lucky with the draw as an invite is required to purchase a pair. There are some being sold on third party sites, such as Ebay, if you don't have an invite.

The Echo frames come with non-prescription lenses and as you can guess, feature Amazon Alexa on the go. Unlike some other frames that use bone-conduction for audio, Echo Frames have directional speakers that point to your ears and leave your hearing open for ambiance. Must say, they work pretty good (Bose developed the tech), but are no replacement for quality headphones. I'd rather listen to music on proper headsets, but for audio-books, occasional YouTube videos ans such, these are awesome.

If you do have a need for prescription lenses, congrats, you can stop here and enjoy your Frames with Alexa.

Should you need prescription lenses, you are also in luck. These frames can be fitted with proper lenses and the box even comes with instructions to the optician.

I recently noticed a need for reading glasses and an optician recommended glasses not only for reading but also for working with computers and even a slight correction to seeing far.

Go see a local optician. They often offer you a free exam and you'll walk out with a prescription that works pretty much universally. If your prescription is straight forward, then this hack is for you. If you need some special corrections, then this hack won't work.

My prescription was simple. Both eyes were exactly the same. I needed +1.5 for reading, 1 for computer and 0.25 for far distance. This meant a basic multi-focal setup.

I went to my local department store (wearing my dummy glasses)to check out their off-the-shelf selection of glasses and surprisingly found many options that had my exact prescription. Rather than being called multi-focals, they are marketed as "Progressive" lenses.

I simply picked up a pair that resampled the Echo Frames the most. Main thing is to make sure the lenses are large enough to cover the Echo Frames lens area. That's pretty easy to do as the lenses fro the Echo Frames pop out quite easily.

The pair I ended up buying was around $10.

I popped out the lenses from my newly acquired glasses and prepares to Dremel the lenses a bit. But, my eye-balling the lens sizes ended up being spot on and I could simply just click the lenses in to the Echo Frames without any modifications.

Should you need to do some fine-tuning, I'd suggest that you do by constantly pouring water on the cuts to dissipate the heat from "Dremelling".

I did ask around few opticians, what it would cost to have lenses made and fitted to my frames and the lowest offer was $250 and it would've taken minimun of two weeks.