If you haven't been receiving services recently, it may be worth looking into what low vision evaluation type services exist in your area. They may be able to help you select the best products and try stuff out in person. Your insurance might not cover blindness gadgets, vocational rehab might, but you should always personally check what is available to you.

If you ever go to any blindness-related conventions, it's also a great opportunity to try all the latest gadgets.

I have tried orcam in a conference demo, and was unimpressed. They weren't super clear with me on how someone could be trained to "point" at items they cannot see, which is required for the device to read. The battery unit seemed bulky. The recognition was fine. I recommend going for a demo and personally trying the device before buying, but also compare it to other options that are on the market.

Some other options to look into:

If you want portable optical character recognition, KNFB reader (on your iphone or android phone) works well and costs $99 per license. I own and use this. It can be used to read text in large print, to listen to it, or with a connected braille display.

Another app worth mentioning is the new "seeing AI" app. It can identify products, recognize saved faces, read text, and describe scenes or objects in very general terms.

If you want magnification, the glasses do not provide this as far as I know. If you have an iphone it has a built in magnifier app (go to settings, general, accessibility, turn magnifier on.) There's also android apps that do this with your cell phone camera. If you need more power, there are dedicated low-vision portable video magnifiers that typically cost a few hundred dollars.

It's not quite the same, but Aira has glasses with remote human agent minutes (who can read, describe, look up information, etc for you.) It's a paid monthly subscription. If I was going to spend a lot of money on "smart" glasses, this would probably be it.

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