Steve Kelley
If you have low vision, there’s a good chance you have a collection of tools you use every day—magnifiers, telescopes, a smartphone with low vision apps, a handheld video magnifier, etc. Tools in hand, you tackle most everyday tasks. The challenge is having enough pockets, or room in the purse or backpack, for all the tools. Wouldn’t it be great to eliminate a couple without losing the usefulness of the tool? Eschenbach thinks less might just be more with the new Optaro.
What Is Optaro?
The Optaro is a case and camera for an iPhone that transforms the iPhone into a handheld video magnifier with crisp images, high contrast, and plenty of magnification. You’ve probably got a smartphone with you for calls, texts, and apps. A handheld video magnifier would be great—but do you have room for another device? If your smartphone is an iPhone 12–15, with the Optaro attached, you can have the best of both in one device.
The Optaro is a high-quality HD camera, light, and stand built into one unit that connects to a case holding the iPhone. The Optaro connects to the iPhone using Wi-Fi. It’s important to note that this is a Wi-Fi signal the camera creates to connect to the iPhone, so you do not need to be connected to Wi-Fi at home or use mobile data—this is not an internet connection, it’s just the way the camera and phone connect to work together.
In addition to the camera unit, the Optaro app (free from the Apple App Store) needs to be installed. The app works exclusively with the Optaro camera unit.
The sturdy stand on the Optaro flips out to angle the iPhone perfectly for viewing and makes it easy to slide the iPhone across a page, newsprint, or a magazine. The stand collapses flush against the camera when not in use, so the overall profile of the Optaro adds slightly less than half an inch to the central width of the iPhone with the camera installed.
Getting Started
With the app installed and the iPhone in the case with the Optaro attached, the camera is turned on by pressing and holding the Optaro power button. A dialog box appears on the iPhone screen prompting the user to join the Wi-Fi connection. With the camera connected, the app can be opened and used to transform the iPhone into a handheld video magnifier.
Optaro can be used just as easily without the stand open. With the app open and the camera on, the Optaro will magnify whatever text, objects, and images are within the camera’s view. The reading stand eliminates the need to hold the iPhone when reading and provides an elegant way to slide the phone across printed material.
Getting Around the App
When the app opens, the image on the screen is a magnified view of whatever the Optaro camera is pointed at. The default magnification is 3x but can be adjusted as high as 15x. On both the left and right sides of the image is a vertical column of four buttons that serve as the menu.
On the left, from top to bottom:
- Settings
- False Colors
- Take Photo
- Tell Me
On the right, from top to bottom:
- Zoom In
- Overview
- Zoom Out
- Show Reading Support
The Settings button includes a number of options to personalize the Optaro app and hardware. For example, this is where you can adjust the brightness of the light on the camera, select the number of contrast options that appear when you select the False Colors button, and more. In addition, it offers an option to choose between Advanced Operating Mode or Simple Operating Mode. The simple mode eliminates some of the on-screen buttons, making it more user-friendly for those who just want the basics.
Below Settings, the False Colors button cycles through the various contrast options enabled in Settings. By default, there are around 14 combinations of foreground and background colors that can be used to increase the contrast on the camera image. As mentioned above, this number can be reduced in Settings to only those that a user prefers.
As you might expect, the Take Photo button (below False Colors) snaps a picture of what’s on the screen, freezing the image and changing the navigation buttons to manage the captured photo. Here, the image can be saved, added to the Gallery, shared with others, magnified, or the user can simply return to the live camera view. This is a handy feature for saving a phone number, business card, or product label. Also from this screen, users can open the Gallery to review other saved images.
The last button on the left side is Tell Me. When text is visible on the screen, pressing Tell Me will read some of the text out loud. It does not read the entire screen top-to-bottom; it tends to read the text that is most centrally located. This can be very helpful if the text is difficult to read or the letters are hard to make out.
On the right side, the top button is Zoom In. The default magnification is 3x, and this can be increased by pressing the button—one level at a time up to 15x. This maximum can also be changed in Settings. It’s worth noting that the standard pinch gesture can also be used to zoom in and out on-screen.
Below Zoom In is the Overview button. This returns the view from the current magnification back to the default 3x. It’s a great feature for switching quickly between close-up and wide views without having to tap Zoom Out repeatedly. The Overview button can also be toggled to go back and forth between views.
Zoom Out, just below Overview, decreases the magnification. Each time it’s pressed, magnification reduces by 1x until the default 3x is reached.
The final button on the right is Reading Support. When activated, it places a high-contrast line horizontally across the middle of the screen to assist with reading. Many aspects of Reading Support can be customized in Settings: the line’s thickness, color, and position on the screen (including vertical orientation). One especially useful option is changing the line to a Reading Bar. This creates a narrow rectangular window that blocks text above and below, making only one line of text visible at a time—a great feature for those who have difficulty tracking lines.
Final Thoughts
Overall, using the Optaro is very intuitive. The app is user-friendly and accessible using VoiceOver. The camera on the Optaro is excellent. Combined with a glare-free light, image quality is sharp, and there is no granularity in the image as the Optaro is moved across a page.
The Optaro unit is charged separately from the iPhone, and a USB cable is included with the case and camera. The benefit is that it won’t drain the iPhone’s battery during use. The downside is the need for a separate charging cable. Fully charged, the Optaro lasts approximately 2 hours of continuous use. The camera will shut down after several minutes of inactivity to conserve power. However, once shut down, it must be turned back on and reconnected via Wi-Fi before using the app again. In settings where the Optaro is used intermittently, this may lead to frequent reconnecting.
With the possible exception of OCR (Optical Character Recognition), the features on the Optaro are comparable to, or better than, those on standalone handheld video magnifiers. For OCR tasks, free iPhone apps like Seeing AI and Envision provide excellent alternatives. The Tell Me feature on the Optaro is helpful for clarifying some on-screen text but is limited in scope.
Indeed, with the Optaro attached to an iPhone, there’s no need to carry a separate handheld video magnifier—it’s built in with excellent features and image quality. The trade-off is about 5 ounces of added weight and roughly a half-inch of thickness. In a backpack or purse, that’s barely noticeable; in a pocket, it’s more apparent.
To Learn More
For more information, check out the Eschenbach Optaro website, where you’ll find demo videos and a downloadable brochure. Optaro is available for iPhones 12–15 and costs $760 for both the Optaro and case. For a detailed video review, check out The Blind Life review on YouTube.
