Captify Pro- live caption glasses

I expressed my concerns to the Captify team and was about to initiate a return during the 15 day trial, however, they granted me an extension for up to a full 30 day trial as there were some firmware updates coming which should address some of the initial glitch-ness.

The app shows some new pending features coming. One is “speaker labeling” which will help identify which speaker said which words. I’m looking forward to that vs the mush of captions right now.

I can attest that using them tonight during dinner with my family of 4 was quite fantastic. The captions were nearly instantaneous and were mostly spot on. I was not wearing my hearing aids during dinner and it helped me catch several words that I missed to stay on track during conversations. Now there was no noise outside the four of us talking so will have to try out the updated firmware in some more challenging conditions, but I did want to report back on my updated observations.

Just signed on and found your observations helpful.
I’m 83 and started with original Captify which I thought was a great innovation. There were glitches which the creator was very help full with and he was clearly committed to fine tuning the glasses.
I upgraded to the new Captify Pro which solved one problem with better prescription lenses.
The issues you raise are similar to my initial experiences which I have conveyed to them.
I stated my age since the challenge for me was my frustration with the buttons and swiping features. I felt that for accessibility needs of older people who might be large target population that all the functions that the buttons and touch-bar do, they should on the Captify App. As a result of my contact with Captify Tom quickly incorporated that which made it a seamless experience for me.
Unfortunately the new app is back to where we were with the original glasses. I’ve communicated this to the company. I’ve indicated that this would limit me from using the glasses in public because of the challenges I would have getting full functionality. It is really an accessibility issue as important as hearing aids and implant devices.

Hi, I am wondering if the original poster or anyone else has any more information to share about the Captify Pro caption glasses. I have severe hearing loss and struggle to understand any conversations that my family members are having. I need to be face to face and close to the speaker even with my HA’s and still I struggle for words with my measured 20-25% WRS. Live Caption on my phone works OK one to one if the other person is close but breaks down when there are several people in a conversation. I am curious if Captify glasses offer any improvement and how difficult it is to read them projected in front of my eyes. It seems like some type of captioning is soon going to be the only way I will be able to communicate with anyone.

I haven’t used mine that much yet, only due to lack of any social events so far.

To the extent I have used it, I’ve haven’t found the transcription better than what my phone does. The display of the captions is a little more limited than I hoped:

1. They’re right in front of you. Changing position is a ‘coming soon’ feature although I doubt how far they down they can actually be moved due to the limitations of the projector and the small reflector area in front of your eyes).
2. Can be very bright: there are 3 levels of brightness but changing it doesn’t to make any difference so far. Auto-brightness is also a ‘coming soon’ feature.
3. As a result it is much more in your face than expected, compared to say subtitles on TV.

But I still have high hopes for them. They’d be much better for making eye contact than constantly looking down at captions displayed on a phone.

If you don’t opt for glasses, make sure to try other captioning apps on your phone too. I’m using iOS live captions more for convenience but Microsoft Translator remains my go-to for highest quality.

I just recieved Captify Pro and used them when meeting with a group. They worked great. I have Even Reality G1s and they don’t compare in ‘transcribe’ as G1s don’t pick up most of the voices. The Captify has a 15 day return policy, so I figured if they worked better than G1 I’d know within that 15 days. They’re great. But– I’ve not used them more than twice so far. I can keep you posted.

For context, before I tried glasses, I needed to use google live transcribe on one or two phones in order to manage my conversations. I’m not deaf, in terms of hearing sounds thanks to my hearing aids I’m more or less ok, I can hear tones in people’s voices and quiet noises etc. But I can’t comprehend speech except minimally, if someone is talking to me I can understand their tone etc but without my transcription app I have no clue what they are talking about.

I’ve always used wireless external microphones as the transcription app’s audio input, to hand to people in noisy situations because no matter the quality of the hardware and software, in my experience proximity matters more than anything else when there’s too much background noise (canteens, bars, overlapping chatter, traffic noises etc). It’s become a habit of mine to wear a wireless microphone that stays on my person in quiet situations, but can immediately passed around if the background noise rises or if there starts to be overlapping chatter.

When the wireless microphone is being properly used, I would say the google live transcribe app is really accurate and sets the bar (Apple’s equivalent isn’t too bad either, main difference in my impression is that it’s more susceptible to disruption from background noise), the only problems are local language quirks (UK english isn’t the same as Irish english!). I use it 24/7 in offline mode for privacy and battery saving. At social functions I have two phones and two sets of microphones, that I juggle around depending on where the conversation I wish to listen to is happening. With this set-up, I can have a clunky but very reliable conversation with two other people.

I have been trialing Even G1 glasses for two weeks, and the experience has been absolutely amazing, with so much reduction in my reliance on looking at a phone during a conversation. I’m not using the Even G1 app for transcription purposes, I’m using offline captions on MentraOS to avoid having all my conversations processed online and to avoid having transcripts being saved, because at work I have to be careful with confidential info. But I have tried Even’s captioning, and Mentra’s online captioning.

Getting to the point…. I have experience with 5 transcription apps. What do they call have in common? It’s that they’re all accurate enough for me to follow conversations with… so long as I hand people a microphone. That seems to be the most important thing to keep in mind, in my experience. Proximity matters above all. It’s hard for me to interject like that as a kind of introverted person, but it’s the only way I can associate with people. I was leery about the Even G1 glasses because I’ve heard negative reports for transcribe purposes, but it’s been quite alright with an external wireless microphone.

I would have tried the Captify glasses, but in my case there’s an optician within reach that had the Even glasses, so that was much more convenient. I can imagine the Captify glasses being quite acceptable with an external microphone as well, though.

Final note, I will say that the various online captioning options are prone to lag and freezing if the connection is unstable, offline is much more robust and thus desirable in my opinion, sacrificing some accuracy for reliability is 100% worthwhile in my opinion. Another reason I use the only available method of offline captions on the Even glasses.

Interesting comments, thanks. I am in the same boat, can hear but can’t understand. Have used Apple live listen, but it only works when I am close to the speaker like in a car to understand my wife who is driving. The external mic seems like a great idea. Could you post the name of an external wireless mic that you like. and would hopefully work with iphone. Thanks.

I tried Maestra.ai for live transcription. It was truly amazing. I used it with 1) my hearing aid mic ) an external “shotgun” mic and 3) an iPhone 11 mic. The iPhone 11 was by far the best.

I compared it to Apple and Microsoft live captions. It worked at over twice the distance (~ 10 meters). It was transcribing the tv live. It was very close to 100% accurate.

Now the bad news. That was a short trial. Maestra charges $50 per month by month of $40 per month by year.

Hello may I ask for an update on your experience with these glasses?

I ordered and just received Captify Pro glasses with my progressive glasses prescription. I’ve only tried them for about an hour. My first impression is very positive. You can dim the live transcription, use it in only one eye and position it. You can change the size of the text. I used them with live TV. With the sound at “normal” volume, they worked out to 10 meters. I also used them with my wife talking and they worked great, even with the TV on. My hearing is quite good with hearing aids, but I miss words in noisy environments and with small children. With one eye they are supposed to last 6 hours. You can (on your own) buy a phone battery and recharge them while using them with the battery in your pocket and the cord running to the glasses. They give you a small rubber band to secure the charger connector to the phone (it also has magnets). I’ll update on here every so often. Feel free to ask questions.

More…

The glasses give you the option to use your phone’s microphone. Again, I have a iPhone 11 which has a superb microphone with noise cancellation.

I tried using the phone microphone in the car and in a restaurant. In the car I placed the phone with the microphone facing the rear. It was far superior to the glasses mic and I got almost all of the conversation with 4 adults and two children. In the restaurant the 6 of us were at a circular wood table. Again, with the phone microphone, it captured almost all of the conversation from everyone.

I highly recommend you get the sunglasses clip on. It makes it far easier to read the captions outdoors.

Hello. Could you please explain? What does “offline” mean? Does it mean that captions are displayed through communication between Captify and the smartphone itself, without using Wi-Fi or a mobile connection? Or does it mean that captions are displayed using only the Captify glasses app such as Even G2?

I don’t have the glasses but I think I can answer your question.

It means the smartphone processes the text to speech and displays the captions on the glasses. The glasses or the mic on the phone or a wireless mic pick up the sound. Because the phone does not have the processing power of the large on line computers it doesn’t provide the degree of accuracy other features that the pro mode can offer. Offline is a good choice where wifi is unavailable or the phone service is sketchy.

I’m not surprised that Abarsanti and at least one other user are reporting here that Captify is not very helpful at captioning speech in a noisy restaurant or other setting. I’d be astonished if Captify was good at that. Hearing aid manufacturers have been working overtime for decades to get that situation right, and they’re not trying to transcribe speech, just make it understandable to the wearer. Try speech transcription software in a very noisy environment where the signal to noise ratio is not good, and you’ll see: it’s not very accurate generally.

Also I realize, OP Abarsanti, looking at your audiogram, that you’re dealing with a reverse slope loss that makes it hard to understand men, and I’ve learned here that reverse slope can be trickier to program hearing aids for, and I don’t have any experience with reverse slope myself, but your losses seem mild-to-moderate to me. I wonder if better programmed aids with AI technology that can do a better job in isolating people speaking in noisy environments–or a small directional microphone going via Bluetooth into your aids–might not resolve this issue for you better than captioning glasses.

I struggled mightily to understand people, especially high-pitched voices, in noisy environments until I got new Jabras, programmed very well, last year. The new aids have been a game changer for me. Noisy environments are an area in which new aids with AI technology are showing some nice gains, finally. I used to need TV captions and TV streamers to make sense of TV programming but no longer do, generally.