Disappointed with Envision

Several months ago, 3 or 4 of us wore our Metas to an Open Tech session at the library. It was chaotic and hilarious. At one point, 2 people almost got their glasses mixed up because one person had Wayfarer, one had Skyler, and they passed them back and forth to compare. Glasses were responding to commands from the person sitting next to you, and it was amusing.

Interestingly, both Chat gpt voice mode and Gemini once in the live have the same behavior. they respond to every passer-by... I guess they could do voice training like the old Hay Google and store a copy of the voice in the glasses itself or something...

Can anyone please tell me which build of the ally app on iOS is the latest available in Testflight? For me it is 1.7.5, but some say it is 1.7.6. But I do not see this.

According to Testflight, I'm usin version 1.7.6 build3. It's weird, though, because when I opened test flight so that I could answer this question, there was an update button for Ally. So far as I could tell, the version number didn't change. I just hope it's not going to delete/clone my allies again. I hope you're able to get the latest version if you don't have it. I'll be trying to test it at some point over the next day or 2. I just need to be sure I have enough patience first. LOL!

Just to let you know, yesterday I tried to turn on my solos glasses and nothing happened. After charging them for two hours still the same, and yes, the arms are placed correctly. the light is red while charging, and after unplugging they flash blue for half a second and that's it. And when touching the power bump while charging, they make a completely distorted beep sound.

Thank you very much for updating us on what happened when you returned the Ally Solos glasses. I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to get only a partial refund. This a big part of why, even though I am extremely underwhelmed by the Ally glasses, I decided to keep them anyway. I got the ultra earlybird price, and it almost sounds as though in that situation, I may not have been able to get enough of a refund to make the return worthwhile. My only hope is that Envision delivers on all the promises they made when marketing the glasses. I still try them out from time to time, but I now find myself preferring my Gen2 Meta Ray-ban glasses. I'm kind-a following any info I can find about the Agiga glasses, as they sound pretty nice, but realistically, I suspect that my smartest move, at least financially, is to just be grateful for what I have. I kind-a thought about selling the Ally glasses, but as they are now, I can't reccommend them to anyone in good conscience. More importantly, though, anyone I might be able to sell them to would have even less chance of learning how to use them than I have. If I had things to do over again, I would have made myself wait to hear what other people thought of the Ally glasses before buying them myself. It seems that youtube demos/reviews, podcasts or whatever are still all but non-existent, which, unfortunately, seems like a bit of a red flag in and of itself.

Hi Louise,

I too am so sorry you had to go through all of that. Thank you, however, for sharing your experience with the rest of us, and for anyone in the future looking to purchase one of these devices. Hopefully Envision will get on the ball and deliver the promises that they claimed before the product launched.
This reminds me of the Seleste smart glasses. I believe another user on here was asked by that company, to help them market/ship their own product out to other customers.
I get that everybody wants to jump on the wearable technology bandwagon, but if you are unable to deliver, don't make promises you can't keep. It's just going to bite you in the backside when all is said and done.

For what it's worth, Louise, I'm glad you at least got something back for your troubles. 🙂

I purchased the Envision Ally Solos Glasses on Oct 27, 2025 for my blind mother!
To this day, it has not yet arrived!!
I have emailed the company MULTIPLE times between then and today, January 26, 2026 asking for a cancellation and refund since the product never arrived. No one replies.
I believe their company is a SCAM preying on blind people!!
And now I've lost about $700 buying their stupid glasses that never arrived.
https://shop.letsenvision.com/ is A GIANT SCAM. Beware!

I'm sorry you never received the glasses you ordered. You most definitely need a refund at this point. On the other hand, at least so far, you're honestly not missing much. I can't even remember the last time they updated the Ally beta, and I haven't even attempted to work with my Solos glasses for quite some time. If you are able to get a refund, I'd recommend either waiting for the Echo vision glasses whenever they are released, or just getting your mom a pair of Metas. I'm still not super impressed with the meta glasses, but right now, they're infinitely better than the Ally Solos glasses, and that truly makes me sad to say because the Ally glasses sounded as though they were going to be amazing when they were first released.

If you still haven't gotten your refund that's looking really bad and that can be a lawsuit waitin' to happen. I could be wrong. If everyone reports this company is a scam, they need to go out of business and rightfully so. They shouldn't even have any business catering to us if they're going to pull stuff like this. It's why I said before what I said. I do not trust blindy tech companies who charges up the ass just because they want the money when sighted people can get access for cheaper, and mostly even free. Mainstream is where it's at yall. That's it.

I read the above thread about Louise's issue in particular, but all the other posts too.

My own experience of Envision hasn't been terribly good either. I ordered 2 paris of Solo glasses in August of 2025 at the early bird price. shipping was delayed in October but I was told that our purchase was on it's way in November 2025. The shipping information said that both pairs were in the one shipment, but on 20 November only one pair was delivered and the enclosed paperwork indicated that there was only one pair in the shipment, which there was.

I reported the issue to Envision and was told they'd look into it and be in touch, to my way of doing customer service they fell well short as I didn't hear anything for over two weeks and even then I had to chase it up which I did more than once during that time. Did they reply to my email messages? no, they didn't.

About December 12 or there abouts, I decided that I wasn't going to be able to trust this company to communicate with me in a timescale that I'd expect and was thinking that if they won't respond to me in a reasonable time scale how would it be if I needed serious and immediate technical support?

I requested a refund under the 30-day returns policy and asked that as my second pair hadn't yet been despatched to me that they should not now send them, which they confirmed to me that they had done so. I requested the details needed to return the pair I had received which they did send me and I returned them and have confirmation of delivery to the address they gave me on 23 December 2025.

I made it absolutely clear, more than once, that the pair I'd returned had not been completely unpacked from the box, had not been assembled, as in connecting the second arm, had not been charged, powered up or registered to any app or account, so there should be no query regarding their condition.

Having made allowances for Christmas and new year, I then chased up the refund about a week ago. So far, no response to either of two email messages I've sent to them on the matter.

I can understand being a small company that things may take longer to respond to, but a wall of silence from17 December to today is not acceptable to me at all!

I come from a background of customer service, having worked for the RNIB for 23 years before retiring, providing technical support and training for the technology products the RNIB sold as part of their product range. during all this time, I always worked with one principle in mind, that was to provide the kind of support and customer service to my customers that I myself would expect to recieve from someone I was buying a product or service from and Envision fell well short of my expectations.

I'm still waiting for my refund and some kind of communication from Envision as to when I might expect to receive it.

their email messages say to add further information to an enquiry by replying to the existing email message, which I've done. they're either not getting them, though I get no indication of an undeliverable message or a bounced message, they're ignoring them, which I find unforgivable, or they're stuck in a spam folder which is a folder that someone their end should be keeping a regular eye on, just in case. Using this reply method also didn't provide any auto responder to say they'd received my email and would respond, but creating a new message from their contact form on their website did give me an auto responder to say they'd gotthe my message, so this is what I have been using.

The company has no phone number to use and the one I was given as part of the returns process was probably only given to satisfy the requirements of the currier who carried the consignment, as I was also told that this number was for orders shipments only and that if I called it I wouldn't get through to anyone. Nice huh?

I hope we get our refund soon or I may have to consider consulting a lawyer to recover my money.

There haven't been any new betas of the Ally app since early December. Even more worrying, at least to me, is how they're posting stuff on Facebook, basically implying that they've been working on something to do with the Meta glasses, or at least that's what it sounded like in the reel I listened to. I don't want to spread false info, though, so anyone who might be curious should try to check out Envision's community on Facebook. Maybe someone else will understand things more clearly than I did. Even though I was lucky enough to get in on the ultra early bird pricing, I'm beginning to seriously regret purchasing the Ally Solos glasses, but it's way, way too late to request a refund, and it sounds like even under ideal circumstances, getting one isn't exactly easy. Really hoping that Envision become active again soon and at least update the community on what's going on. Complete radio silence is always an ominous sign in my experience, and I seem to remember their customer service being better than this in the past, as in when they first launched.

I bought the Solos glasses last year and wish I hadn't. The speech is painfully slow. I'm used to using Eloquence at hyper-fast speeds, plus, if I'm moving around in an unfamiliar environment where I need hands-free access to visual information, I need it efficiently, not at the same speed that some random drunk stranger at a bus stop would provide it. When I contacted Envision's support team about this problem, I was literally told to (in quotes) "go to about your Ally, and edit each section of the personality and communication style to ask for all answers to be spoken very fast."

The guy who told me to try this admitted he had never actually tried it himself. I tried it, and of course it didn't work, since the AI's personality doesn't control its text-to-speech engine.

My Ally app is updated to the latest version, but after months, the speech rate slider is still non-existent in my settings. Being forced to use a slow, non-adjustable AI voice is an insurmountable barrier to my use of this product. The high-friction requirement to unlock my phone for every interaction also renders the glasses no more useful than a standard smartphone.

I've requested a return and refund but haven't heard a single word back from these people. I'm very dissatisfied with the product and the customer service. When I buy a device, I expect it to just work; I'm not interested in junk that's still in beta.

I've also recently gotten a Feeldom bag (the NavaiBadge that allows me to wear my iPhone on my chest with the camera lenses exposed and facing outward, and I can use Gemini like that with the iPhone locked. I really like the Feeldom bag.

I'm not absolutely sure about how customs operates in all the other EU member states, but here in Portugal you pay a fraction of the price of the purchased goods as an import tariff in order to claim them, meaning that both gifts and returns sent from outside the EU are not charged. Since this is a single market and there are no borders within the Schengen space, my understanding is that this is likely a EU-wide policy that also applies in the Netherlands as otherwise people would just choose to import stuff through the most convenient member state in order to reduce costs, and thus you were likely scammed hard.

Supposedly, there are speech controls in settings now. That's what I remember reading in the release nots for the last App Store release. I know they're in the beta I have, but the problem with that beta is that it has a tendency to delete some allies and clone others in their place. It's seriously weird and frustrating. I just want to assure you that there is indeed a way to increase speaking rate; I've actually done it, although I honestly can't remember when I last used the app at this point.