Xander glasses are a recent innovation in hearing technology. These smart glasses support people with severe to profound hearing loss and provide live captions.
In this exclusive CES 2025 interview, Matthew Allsop explores this groundbreaking technology.
What are Xander smart glasses?
Xander smart glasses are designed to help with hearing loss. If I can’t hear what you’re saying, our glasses let you see what I’m saying by projecting real-time captions of conversations directly into your field of view.
It’s an emerging category, and many new captioning glasses are launching. What makes this product different is that we build advanced speech-to-text technology directly into the glasses, which we believe helps many of our customers.
How Xander’s speech-to-text technology works
You simply push a button to activate the captions—they work right away. Because the speech-to-text technology is built in, you don’t need Wi-Fi, cloud services, or a phone.
It’s pretty accurate. How have you got to the point where it doesn’t pick up everything that’s going on around you, and it just focuses on the person in front?
It really is about using the right technology in the right way. What’s nice is that, because of the Lombard effect, people in noisy environments tend to talk louder, and we rely on that a lot. But if people come by and speak really quietly, the glasses won’t pick up every word.
Just as you have to speak loudly and clearly for someone with hearing aids, you also have to do so for someone with captioning glasses.
The glasses transcribe speech in a bright neon color that really stands out. Everything the other person says appears right in front of you.
Who are Xander glasses designed for?
These glasses are intended for people with more advanced stages of hearing loss—specifically, severe to profound hearing loss. If you have mild to moderate hearing loss, hearing aids are amazing.
As hearing loss progresses to severe or profound, you may try more high-powered hearing aids. While these aids can help, they don’t always solve the problem—some people can hear sounds but still struggle with speech intelligibility. That’s where Xander excels.
When people try the glasses and point out errors, we tell them, “Congratulations, you don’t need our glasses. Your hearing is so good you don’t need them.” We’re genuinely happy about that.
We focus on helping the people who need it most.
Where are they available?
You can currently purchase Xander smart glasses directly through Xander in the USA.
For the latest hearing technology available in the UK, contact Harley Street Hearing.
Live Captions in Smart Glasses! Xander Glasses for Severe Hearing Loss | CES 2025 Video
Matthew Allsop is a Partner at Harley Street Hearing, and a content creator for Hearing Tracker, where he shares his honest opinion on all new hearing aid technology. Hearing Tracker is the world’s first truly independent resource for hearing aid customers. You can view his exclusive CES 2025 interview on Xander Glasses below.
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