There will be smart glasses in 2025

It was the year 2024 A big year for spatial computing, capped by the release of two major virtual reality headsets: powerful but expensive Apple Vision Pro and more affordable Meta Quest 3S. While these devices transport their users over large areas, strange Digital worlds can also feel restrictive because they reduce or even cut off the user’s connection to the real world.

Here come their lighter, more (um) wearable cousins: smart glasses. It turns out that many people like a device that you can take out of the house and out into the street. There’s an incredible convenience to digitally interacting with the real world while looking at it without obscuring your view with a bulky headset or being distracted by a phone screen.

These days of more affordable face computers have come a long way Glass hole. Smart glasses—which I’ll loosely define here as internet-connected glasses with embedded apps—have moved from silly, unattractive wearables like Google Glass to truly useful devices you won’t even be embarrassed to wear. in public.

Meta-Ban Ray is the big dog in the smartglasses pack. Metaa company whose reputation is often swamped by its own problematic uncoolness has managed to capitalize on the long established cool factor of the Ray-Ban brand to create a line of smart glasses that people really like. They look great and have real functionality that many people can easily understand supporters find it incredibly useful. They can take photos and videos, act as headphones for music and calls, use Meta AI-powered voice functions to send texts or ask anything in the world. New features added this month enable the glasses to do things like remember where you parked your car and use Shazam to figure out what song is playing near you. All this happens without a built-in display, which means you can keep your eyes on real life.

The success of the Ray-Ban Meta frames has shown that there is a market for screenless smart glasses that don’t just work as VR-lights. Small companies and startups are moving forward with every kind of smart lens imaginable. This year alone, we’ve seen new smart glasses or technology to power them from companies like Oppo glasses, Swaveand Empteq. Some were a bit silly and disappointing, e.g Brilliant Labs Frameworks released in May. Others have yet to be realized by the company, such as glasses Looktech works with various different chatbots and is calculated potential Meta Ray-Ban killers after the project recently exceeded its funding goal (to date). Kickstarter.

Screen-controlled AR glasses still work. After all, a device that gives the user an active title screen or offers a window mirror world It has long been considered the copper ring of spatial computing. The meta accomplishes this goal with its own strength Orion glasses— a pair of ambitious AR technologies that, while still deep in development, aim to do everything your smartphone can do, but in your face. Snap here is also a player with cyberpunky Glasses with apps that focus on social interaction for their younger, more playful users.

Through the glass

Recently, another leviathan of augmented reality has awakened. In early December Google announced the start of operations Android XR software platform featuring an upcoming pair of smart glasses with an in-lens display. Google’s efforts are similarly a work in progress, but the company already has an advantage due to the size of its developer partners that build on Android’s multiple platforms. Google’s glasses work with Android apps, essentially taking a lot of things that currently live on a smartphone — maps, messages, news feeds — and putting it right in front of your eyes.

“They’re probably the closest of the big, tier-one competitors that can ship something to compete with Meta,” says Anshel Sag, senior analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy. “Meta doesn’t have a screen yet. So they can even beat the Meta to ship with a display.