It is just past eleven, the light is off, and you only want to have one incoming message read out before you put the phone down. Someone is asleep beside you. The question that matters in that moment appears on no spec sheet: does that person hear the voice from your glasses — and if so, how clearly? That is exactly what this is about, and the answer depends less on the glasses than on the room you are sitting in.
Short answer: The Even G2 uses open speakers, not sealing earbuds. The sound is aimed at your ear, but it is not soundproof — some of it escapes into the air. In loud surroundings (a street, traffic, a busy café) that leak simply disappears under the background noise and no one makes anything out. In a quiet room or at high volume, a person right next to you can pick up a faint, often tinny leak — not necessarily word for word, but enough to notice speech is playing. If you want to hear something genuinely privately, turn it down, fall back on earbuds with your phone for anything confidential, or read it silently on the display. We have not measured decibels; this is an honest orientation, not a lab figure.
Why open speakers leak at all
A classic in-ear headphone seals the ear canal and keeps the sound where it belongs. Open-ear audio deliberately does the opposite: it leaves your ear free so you can still hear your surroundings, conversations and traffic. The price for that is physics, not a design flaw — sound radiated into the open air beside the ear does not magically stay inside your ear alone. Some of it spreads, and anyone close enough catches it.
Two dials decide how much arrives. The first is volume: the louder you go, the more sound escapes, and the relationship is steep — the last few steps turn an inaudible whisper into a clear leak. The second is the room's background noise. On a street, traffic drowns the leak effortlessly; in a silent meeting room there is nothing for it to hide behind. That is why "can it be overheard?" is not a fixed yes/no property of the glasses but a matter of the situation.
Situation by situation
Here is how the open audio behaves from the point of view of the people around you. "Background noise" is the sound level that masks your leak; the higher it is, the more privacy you get by accident.
| Situation | Background noise | Can others overhear? |
|---|---|---|
| Busy street, traffic, a train in motion | High | Effectively no |
| Café or restaurant with chatter | Medium to high | Hardly, it is masked |
| Open-plan office, normal volume | Medium | Possible for a desk neighbour |
| Quiet one-on-one, meeting room | Low | Possible at higher volume |
| Silent reading room, quiet carriage, waiting room | Very low | Yes, a faint leak is audible |
| Bedroom at night, someone right beside you | Very low | Yes, for people very close |
This table is based on how open speakers work and on our showroom experience, not on a decibel measurement by AI-Eyewear. Your own impression depends on volume, room and distance — when in doubt, test it yourself.
What others actually hear
The distinction that matters is between "hearing something" and "understanding everything". Even in a quiet room, a person beside you usually does not catch a clean, intelligible conversation but a faint, rather tinny trickle of speech — enough to notice something is playing, rarely enough to transcribe word for word. That is a real difference: for most everyday situations the relevant worry is less "someone is eavesdropping on my secret" than "it is a little awkward or distracting that a voice is leaking out of my head". For anything genuinely confidential, though, you should not rely on that fuzziness — more on that next.
What reliably prevents overhearing
You do not have to treat the glasses any differently from any other speaker worn on the body — a little situational awareness is enough.
- Turn the volume down. By far the biggest lever. Because the leak rises steeply with volume, it often all but vanishes a step or two quieter — and in a silent room surprisingly little is enough for you to hear well yourself.
- Fall back on earbuds for the confidential. The open speakers are open by design — you cannot dial that away. If you truly must hear something privately, pair earbuds with your phone for that audio. That is the honest limit of the technology, not a workaround.
- Lean on the display instead of the sound. The often-overlooked advantage of a display glasses: notifications and translation captions can be read silently on the lens rather than read aloud to you. No sound, no leak — and more discreet in a meeting anyway.
- Read the room. In a quiet carriage, a reading room or beside a sleeping person, pause briefly and turn down or switch to text. The same courtesy you would already apply to a phone call.
- Test before sensitive moments. Have someone stand an arm's length away and tell you what they catch at your usual volume. Two minutes, and you know your personal leak better than any table.
So: buy, skip, or test first?
Buy with confidence if you will mostly use the glasses out and about, in a café, in the car or in normally busy daily life. There, the background noise masks the leak and the open speakers show their real advantage: you keep hearing the world and are still practically inaudible to those around you.
Think twice if your main purpose is listening to audio in quiet, shared spaces — a hushed open-plan office, libraries, confidential conversations. It works at reduced volume or on the display, but if loud, private audio in silence is your actual use case, an open glasses is simply the wrong tool for it.
Test before you buy exactly this point, because it cannot be read off a number. Put the glasses on in the Zürich showroom and have someone beside you judge how much reaches them at your volume. If you want to set the topic in the wider privacy context, our piece on AI-glasses privacy covers the camera-free design and the cloud questions; the specs of every model are in the AI glasses database.
Disclosure: AI-Eyewear is the authorised Swiss reseller of Even Realities. We have described the acoustic leak as honestly as we can judge it — without a decibel measurement of our own, and without sugar-coating the convenience of open speakers.