It\u2019s the second day of CES, and I\u2019m waiting in a line to see my tenth pair of smart glasses. I honestly don\u2019t know what to expect: I\u2019ve seen glorified sunglasses with dubious ChatGPT clones. I\u2019ve sidled up to several booths where the glasses were almost carbon copy clones of the pairs a booth over. I\u2019ve seen all manner of \u201cdisplays\u201d tacked onto the lenses, some washed out, others so tedious to calibrate as to make me walk away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
So when I slipped on the Rokid Glasses, I felt my brows raise. I could see what looked like a mini desktop. I swiped the arm, and horizontal list of apps appeared. Green writing appeared in front of me a bit like a monitor in The Matrix<\/em>. A Rokid staffer began speaking to me in Chinese, and despite the surrounding din, I could see a text translation of what she was saying float in front of me. After a brief conversation \u2014 she asked whether I ate lunch, she hadn\u2019t \u2014 she prompted me to try taking a picture. The display shifted to what looked like a camera\u2019s viewfinder. I hit the multifunction button. An animation flashed. On her phone, I saw the picture I took.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018Holy crap,\u2019 I thought. \u2018So this<\/em> is what the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses<\/a> would be like with a display.\u2019 And then \u2014 \u2018If this is possible, why doesn\u2019t<\/em> it have one yet?\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It seems that everyone is still trying to figure out what makes the perfect pair of smart glasses. I must have tried out 20 pairs over the course of the last week, but they all seemed to fall into one of three different buckets in how they balanced wearability and functionality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The first bucket is the simple and stylish glasses. The more stylish and comfortable smart glasses are, the fewer features they tend to have.\u00a0But for this group, that\u2019s often a good thing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Take the unassuming Nuance Audio<\/a>. These smart glasses \u2014\u00a0made by EssilorLuxxotica, Meta\u2019s partner in making the Ray-Ban Meta eyewear \u2014\u00a0discreetly function as over-the-counter hearing aids. When you wear them, you can dampen some of the noise around you, as well as amplify the voice of the person you\u2019re speaking to. This would sound like science-fiction if I hadn\u2019t tried it myself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But at a glance, you\u2019d never know the Nuance Audio glasses can alter how you hear the world \u2014 and that\u2019s precisely the point. They look like any pair of stylish glasses and come in two colors and three shapes. By \u201chiding\u201d their smarts in a normal-looking pair of glasses, they\u2019re essentially helping to reduce the discomfort some people feel when wearing visible hearing aids. It\u2019s not flashy, but it\u2019s a precise and clear use case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Chamelo glasses<\/a> take a similar tack. The \u201csmart\u201d part of these electrochromic sunglasses can, depending on the model, change the color or tint with a swipe of a finger. Some models also have Bluetooth audio. Chamelo\u2019s glasses aren\u2019t new, and at CES, they weren\u2019t suddenly adding in AI assistants, displays, or anything wild. This year\u2019s update? Adding support for prescriptions so more people can use the device.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Neither of these glasses is trying to reinvent the wheel. They saw a simple problem worth fixing, and decided to fix it. Nothing more, nothing less.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n On the other end of the spectrum, you\u2019ll find long-time CES veterans Xreal and Vuzix. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n When I arrive at Xreal\u2019s booth, it\u2019s jam-packed. There\u2019s a station where people wear Xreal glasses as they \u201cdrive\u201d in a BMW. (The car doesn\u2019t move, but you can pretend you\u2019re moving the wheel and tilt your head on a race course.) I don a pair of last year\u2019s Xreal Air 2 Ultra glasses while seated at a desk with only a keyboard in front of me. The Air 2 Ultra are a bit like chunky sunglasses, with miniature screens hovering beneath the lenses. From afar they look pretty normal. Up close you can feel their bulk \u2014 and on the face, they protrude further than looks natural. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Inside the glasses, I see football players on a football field, information popping up over their heads. The virtual display switches to a panoramic video with avatars of friends watching alongside me. In another window, I\u2019m prompted to type in a description of a fictional creature. I pick \u201cmonstrously fat cat with unicorn wings\u201d and lo, it appears. I can pinch and pull with my hands to make it even bigger. The more recently launched Xreal One<\/a> is also here, though it admittedly gets hard to tell which pair of Xreal glasses is which while elbowing past other eager onlookers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When I mosey on to Vuzix\u2019s booth, it\u2019s less packed but that\u2019s likely because folks are gawping at a bizarre karaoke contest a few booths over<\/a>. I, on the other hand, am wearing a pair of the company\u2019s latest Ultralite Pro glasses. The glasses look a bit clunkier, but when you put them on, you can see an array of rainbow lights that culminate in a 3D display. I\u2019m looking at a picture of nature, and there\u2019s actual depth<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n You\u2019d be hard-pressed to find someone who\u2019d wear glasses like these walking down the street. They look like glasses, sure, but they can also be bulky and sometimes have cords dangling for battery packs. These glasses show hints of what augmented reality is capable of \u2014\u00a0but they aren\u2019t meant to be things you wear all day, every day. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n This divide between form and function isn\u2019t new. What\u2019s new is there are far more smart glasses that lie somewhere in the middle. And they have some funky ideas. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sharge\u2019s Loomos.AI<\/a> glasses, for example, look similar to the Meta glasses except they use ChatGPT and can shoot 4K photos and 1080p videos. They also add a bizarre neckband battery to account for the massive battery drain. RayNeo was back with smaller, more refined X3 Pro AR glasses<\/a>. I could list dozens more, but to be frank, they were mostly iterations of the Meta glasses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Of the myriad smart glasses I saw, three stood out: Halliday<\/a>, Even Realities G1<\/a>, and the Rokid Glasses. All three feature a discreet design, with a hidden green monochrome heads-up display. Halliday projects its single display from the frame by shining a green light into your eye; the other two feature microetched displays on both lenses that are nigh invisible when viewed from the front. (All three companies told me they use green light because it\u2019s easiest on the eyes, has the best contrast, and is less likely to get washed out in bright ambient lighting.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There are slight hardware differences between all three, but in my demos, it was clear that philosophically, they\u2019re much more geared toward all-day productivity. They have AI assistants, can be used as teleprompters, and offer live translation. The Rokid Glasses even have a 12MP camera for taking photos and video. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n In this vision of the smart glasses revolution, these devices are more like all-day companions that help you use your phone less. The display is something that\u2019s only occasionally glanced at when it\u2019s relevant and is done mostly in a productivity context. They offer more smarts than the very use-specific Chamelo and Nuance Audio glasses, but they offer more practicality (and wearability) to the average person than what Xreal and Vuzix are pursuing. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The more I talk to the people behind these products, the more it becomes clear that everyone believes smart glasses are the future. It\u2019s also apparent that no one agrees on the best way to get<\/em> to that future.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve chosen to optimize for something that is, we think, a great feature geared towards the actual use case of glasses,\u201d says Chamelo CEO and cofounder Reid Covington. \u201cYou\u2019re wearing them to see. You\u2019re wearing them to block out light. A lot of the more forward-looking smart glasses have interesting features, but they\u2019re not optimized for, you know, actual usability.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But even among companies pursuing simpler smart glasses, function isn\u2019t always the reason why they choose more discreet or stylish designs. Smart glasses are \u201csomething that you need to feel are part of yourself,\u201d says Davide D\u2019Alena, global marketing director for Nuance Audio. Function is nice, but doing all<\/em> the things isn\u2019t worth it if you have to wear something hideous on your face. \u201cFor us, it\u2019s just not enough to put out an ugly product, even if it\u2019s working perfectly from a functional point of view. It must be something that is also a self-expression.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meanwhile, some long-time veterans in the space contend it isn\u2019t a choice of form and function. It\u2019s a split between AR and AI. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI actually see two different directions going forward. One is AR glasses which will handle a lot of the XR content. The other one will be the AI glasses as a major kind of all-day wearable smart glasses,\u201d says Chi Xu, Xreal founder and CEO. Xu says that everything will converge at some point \u2014 though we\u2019ll be waiting a good while before it does. Right now, it\u2019s a matter of every option being developed at once as companies try to figure out the best way to draw people in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Xu isn\u2019t wrong. While some companies like EssilorLuxxotica and Chamelo are committed to one approach, others are happy to dabble. Rokid, for example, may have come out with AI-first smart glasses this year, but its array of more Xreal-like AR glasses was actually the bigger portion of its booth. Meta, apparently, is working on glasses with a display, too, targeting later this year \u2014\u00a0my colleague Alex Heath reports<\/a> that the company will add its own twist to the formula by shipping a neural wristband that can be used to control them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But for all the fragmentation, every company I spoke to said the same thing: they\u2019ve seen renewed interest in this space within the last year and a half \u2014 and with that comes investors aplenty with deep wallets. The vast majority emphasized how rapid advancements in technology and AI have made things possible today that were impossible<\/em> just two or three years ago. And every single one said that interest from the general public, not just first adopters, is also higher than in previous years. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n This, they all say, proves that smart glasses are inevitable. It\u2019s just a matter of getting everyone else to see the vision. And that\u2019s sort of the problem. With smart glasses, you have to see it to believe it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe three types of smart glasses<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
The face screens<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
The spyglasses<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
The smart glasses era<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n