Are ORCAM Blind Smart Glasses Worth It???

Just letting your veteran fans out there know that if you are blind and you are interested in envision AI or the orcaine glasses, you can get them at the VA free of charge. You just have to go to the blind center and order one. Or have the optometry team refer you to the blind center.

For five thousand plus dollars the battery life should be a lot better than a couple of hours. Colors ought to be recognized. The reading feature was impressive but so much money for so little.

It's not perfect but still pretty amazing. Thank you Tamara and Robby for this honest review.

Great review. I’m personally not a fan, especially for the price, and want to see more innovation in the space. Thanks for your review!

The orcam is very cool but inaccessible to most people due go the price will say the £5 note was outdated so that's why it may have struggled- the uk has switch to plastic money just like Canadian dollars from the old paper money ( which I think you had ). At 12:02 i was so confussed and thought it was broken but then realised it was speaking in French 😂 Great review I love your channel

Thanks for your honest review. Spot on with the pros and cons.

Thank you. I'm so glad that I found your channel. I take care of my mom and she lost her vision from diabetes in the last 3 years, I am learning a lot from your channel on how to better help her now that she is living with me.

Thank you for such an honest review. I have personally been pretty unimpressed with these so far. As you mentioned in the video, I have seen a lot of people making go fund me pages just to afford these, because it seems like they are sometimes marketed as this miracle solution for everything about blindness, and the price point makes them seem worth it. It’s really upsetting when I encounter newly blind people who think this will be the solution to everything and collect all their family’s money only to end up with such a mediocre product. I think the price point is absolutely untenable for how little it truly does, especially given that this is the top model currently available. From what I have experienced, the only feature that’s really pretty decent is the OCR software, and while the OCR is better than most other programs out there, it’s not so much better that it’s even remotely worth that price. I think a lot of people would be better off just getting a smart phone stand and using Seeing AI most of the time, unless they have no choice but to do a large amount of heavy reading with no other accommodations available. That seems really rare, because at school or at work, I think most people would be much better off getting proper accessible textbooks or getting a human reader for free through the school or workplace. I also felt that the smart reading feature was really interesting but left a lot to be desired. It seemed to still do a pretty poor job at finding specific words or using context to determine how much of a section you wanted to read. The fact that it couldn’t find instructions was a real disappointment, because that is the biggest reason I would want to use the feature. I was also somewhat impressed by the color identifier, because most camera-based identifiers are pretty terrible, but I still wouldn’t pay anywhere even close to $5000 for it. There are other devices like the Colorino that are more accurate and overwhelmingly less expensive. The currency identifier is also a huge downside to me. The fact that it’s so unreliable is worrisome, because that is definitely something you don’t want to take risks with. Even seeing AI is much better at identifying currency, and at least here in the US, you can actually get a free iBill currency reader from the bureau of engraving that is far more accurate than anything else. Heck, you can even purchase a currency reader if you don’t want to apply for the program and still pay like 5% of what this costs. The facial recognition software also seems pretty useless, because by the time you are standing face-to-face with someone in such close proximity, it would be much easier to just talk to the person, because if they are looking straight at you, they have probably recognized you and will tell you who they are well before the glasses do. I just don’t see a real use for the technology, but blindness tech places keep trying to incorporate it into things like this. I think I was most disappointed by the chair and doorway recognition features though. That was the thing I was most curious about because there isn’t really another product on the market that can do that, but it’s functions so poorly that it’s practically unusable. At that point, it would be much easier and more efficient to just ask somebody in the space to point them toward an open chair or doorway, or heck, even to call an Aira agent to find those things. Especially now that you can make five minute Aira calls for free. Ultimately, these seem somewhat useful as OCR, but overall, I find them not at all worthwhile at such a ridiculous price point. Realistically, I would personally probably only be willing to pay around $50 for these, because almost everything they do can be done much better by other means which are often much cheaper or even completely free. I would be interested to see if the technology improves drastically, but right now, it just feels like it’s trying to solve a problem that has already been well and truly solved by plenty of other things that are much easier to access.

Nice review so far of the ORCAM! Even though I have some usable vision, this can be helpful if I have a hard time reading small text or a few others. I like how it’s pretty accurate with text! I might look into this! Thanks for the review Tamara! I’ll be looking out for the next two parts of the series!

Thanks for the really honest review, Tamara. I totally agree that this tech is way overpriced for its functionality. And I love your channel name. 😀 I took a look at your home page to see what other videos you have, and there are a lot of them that would be useful to me as a legally blind person. So I will be going back to watch those. Liked and subscribed!

You guys are so cute on this episode! Tech really amazes me. That shape & colour of the glasses really becomes you Tamara.

Excellent walkthrough. Thank you 💪🏽

I’ve heard about them a lot lately. Thank you for doing a review about it.

Excellent review. Thanks. So far leaning toward Envision (for. my blind father). Looking forward to your take on that one. Love your natural hair and brow colors, by the way. Striking.

Thank you Tamara!, for reviewing this product. Orcam, impressive, really good reading books, what a very interesting review, really good testing,orientation is so important, good it could identify peoples faces. thank you! Kind regards Tony from Scandinavia

thank you , wonderful review

Hi Tamara, the only reason I would consider it is because it’s more subtle, and convenient, than waving my iPhone around to use Seeing AI. Especially since getting my iPhone out means juggling my walking stick and long white cane and for some reason I only have 2 hands 😉 It would be so useful when I go to the hospital to check I’m at the correct reception area or which floor I’m on when walking up and down the flights of stairs as I’ve miscounted on the the double flights before now. Double flights have a half flight of stairs, then a landing, then the next half flight of stairs is in effect taking you back the way you came as it’s 180° to the first. The landing of the next floor is the same size and shape as the halfway landing. Oh and being able to find my daughter when she’s meeting me at the train station, or my son when we’re meeting in town would be easier if I don’t have to wave my phone around.

Thank you so much it helped me a lot

I was pretty impressed with the reading! Other apps seem to need a constant internet connection to sort of work. Being able to use offline could be beneficial for jobs that have strict security measures. I’m excited to see the next review!

This kind of reminds me of E sight for low vision folks. It’s marketed at an extremely high price point, and promises that it will solve all of your vision loss. my vocational rehabilitation councilor suggested I get a pair Through them and it was a horrible decision. Not only were the glasses extremely uncomfortable to wear, their functionality was very limited, and my technology plan was down $30,000. It was ridiculous! This tends to be a trend in the low vision and blindness community with new technology. That being said, I thought this was a wonderful and thorough review, and I was very impressed with the OCR capabilities!