Qubo Go Audio Sunglasses review

Things we liked about the Bose Frames we also like about the Qubo Go Audio Sunglasses. Both have a wayfarer design with speakers within the temple that are angled towards your ears. That said, the plastic body on the Qubo is finicky and flimsy-feeling than the much more expensive Bose Frames. 

On the bright side, the plastic frame keeps the weight to a minimum and the weight from the speakers doesn’t dig into your ears. This was a major issue with the Bose Frames. They were heavy. Even the Snapchat Spectacles were heavy and its metal frame would dig into your skin. So there are merits to having a plastic frame on sunglasses.

The lens is polarised and has UV protection too. These work really well for daily use and especially while driving. The polarised bit cancels out glare and the UV bit keeps the eye fatigue to a minimum. Needless to say, these are a good pair of sunglasses.

The Qubo Go Audio Sunglasses are built to add music into your daily routine without the ear fatigue that you can get from headphones. The open ear design might leak some audio, but it’s never too loud and disturbing for people around you. In quiet places or in an elevator the audio leak might be louder but you can tone it down from your smartphone.

There’s no volume control on the sunglasses themselves. You’ll have to whip out your smartphone to adjust the volume. However, you can press the two buttons to change the music track, pick up and cut calls, and even summon Google AI. It doesn’t work to summon Siri on the iPhone but that’s alright, everyone knows Siri is only salad dressing.

The audio quality is more tailored towards casual music and podcast listening. In fact, the Go Audio Sunglasses are more reliable for podcast sessions. Music listening is good too, but don’t expect any sort of audio fidelity here. It’s barebones at best. Think of budget smartphone speakers from back in 2015? Yup, the speakers sound somewhat like that. 

The city traffic sound and noise can easily drown all the best frequencies on the Qubo but we feel this is not the right way to discuss these audio sunglasses. Music fidelity is not what you should be looking for in these. Instead, let the Qubo Go Audio Sunglasses be a constant source of music. Something to beat the heat like an entire album by Poolside while you strut to work, or like we mentioned, a good audiobook during commute. And to that extent, the sunglasses also come with six hours of battery life.

The only downside to Qubo Go is that it doesn’t come with a hard case. It’s easy to pick one from the internet but until you do that, the Qubo Go is always under the threat of getting squashed in your bag. It is also using a proprietary magnetic charger and we would’ve loved to see a USB Type-C connection instead. Only the Snapchat Spectacles managed a magnetic case with a Type-C charging port. The case also served as a battery bank for the spectacles. It was very intuitive.

That said, the Qubo Go Audio Sunglasses is a fun gadget. We absolutely enjoyed the Bose Frames when they came out, but that and the Snapchat Spectacles cost upwards of ₹20K. So the ₹5,990 price tag makes Qubo Go very tempting.