A while back, we asked if CLEAR had jumped the shark. With their latest announcement, the answer seems to be a resounding “no.”
CLEAR has announced that, beginning in 2025, they’re going to up the ante on technology they use at airports.
Until now, they’ve been using the “old-fashioned” method of scanning your eye or finger and comparing it to their records on file. Since CLEAR started showing up in airports, they’ve only made one big change to that technology.
Meanwhile, peoples’ biggest complaints about CLEAR are that it’s too expensive and slow.
Well, they’re certainly not going to make CLEAR any cheaper. But the company says they’re soon to have 5x faster verification with their newest product, called EnVe Pods.
EnVe Pods are, of course, CLEAR’s version of facial recognition. Here’s what they say about it:
CLEAR Pods, Reimagined
Seamless Journeys
- EnVe Pods verify your face instead of your eyes or fingers “for an even faster verification.” They’ll introduce EnVe Pods across their nationwide network through 2025.
- EnVe Pods have a high-resolution, wide-angle camera that will be able to verify with face-first technology.
- YOU CAN’T OPT OUT: To use the CLEAR Plus Lane, you must verify with your face. CLEAR is always opt in—if you don’t want to verify with your face, we can direct you to another way through airport security (however while they introduce EnVe Pods at select airports, they might still have their original CLEAR pods available for verification.
- They say they’re introducing face-first technology to give Members a faster verification. CLEAR Plus Members can now verify 5x faster with our new EnVe Pods. (I’m sure the fact that it’s facial recognition has NOTHING to do with it. It’s all about the speed. Suuuuure it is.)
- It won’t cost any extra money to use the EnVe Pods (after the last price hike, I would hope not!)
- You may or may not still have to take your ID out to show the TSA officer (the examples they used were “randomization” or if there was a name mismatch.
So, the bottom line is that CLEAR will use facial recognition, which will be “5x faster” than scanning your finger or eye.
Our thoughts
People tend to have a love/hate relationship with CLEAR. Of course, the price is a non-starter (or a game-ender) for some people. Having it use facial recognition is not going to thrill some people who are not on board with that technology. But it saves them time, so…
Which is another issue. Obviously, “saving you time” is a selling point. You know what would also save passengers time at the CLEAR kiosks? Having more than just 1-2 people working at the kiosks to process passengers at any given time.
When I flew out of MCO last month, I first went to the CLEAR line – there were 7 or 8 people ahead of me, and only 1 person manning the kiosks. And it wasn’t a super oddball time of day, either. When I saw how fast the PreCheck lines moved, I left the CLEAR queue and went to the PreCheck one. But really…for all the money CLEAR is making between all the pots they have their hands in, if they can afford to upgrade (replace?) all their kiosks in a year, they can’t hire more CLEAR representatives, so more than 1 person at a time can get processed at the 7th busiest airport in the country?
All photos: CLEAR
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