Here’s the dirty secret about hearing aids. Millions of people need them. Most don’t wear them. Why? Because they hate having shit in their ears. Pardon my French.

I often feel the same way. I have mild but measurable hearing loss, and I love the benefit that high-quality hearing aids provide me. But I don’t often wear hearing aids in my daily life when I'm not testing products for the same reasons as everyone else. I hate putting them in, taking them out, having them in for hours at a time—the whole experience. As a result, I tend to wear hearing aids for short periods—only when I know I'll need them.

The negative hearing aid experience is compounded because I wear glasses. In-the-ear hearing aids like Apple AirPods Pro are fine, but behind-the-ear (BTE) aids like the Jabra Enhance Select 300 aids don’t play well with eyeglass arms that compete for the same space on top of and behind the ear. Unfortunately, BTE aids generally offer a higher quality listening experience, so glasses wearers may have to choose between improving their hearing or eyesight (or just suffering with discomfort).

That’s a long preface to introduce EssilorLuxottica (the owner of Ray-Ban, Oakley, and numerous other eyewear brands), which may have come up with a solution for all of this: prescription glasses with hearing aid features built in.