While I acknowledge Meta’s role in bringing smart glasses to a mainstream audience, it has proven to be an irresponsible steward. Its “growth at all costs” mindset has actively poisoned people’s perception of the form factor. Under Meta’s watch, glasses have gained a creepy connotation before their utility has been fully realized.
Google’s second take on smart glasses is the exact opposite of what Meta has done. Every single aspect has been considered, and the result is worthy of being most people’s introduction to the form factor.
Officially, Android XR glasses are known as Gentle Monster and Warby Parker Intelligent Eyewear. The branding is a mouthful, and I’m not quite sure “Intelligent Eyewear” will take off. Something more colloquial, like “Google glasses” — glasses.google is the landing page — or “Samsung glasses,” will probably stick in the public consciousness.
That critique aside, the name reflects how Google wants Intelligent Eyewear to actually replace your existing glasses. Unlike the Ray-Ban trap that I frankly think Meta did not consider, Google’s offerings are not situational or activity-based devices like sunglasses. These are a “smart” upgrade to the assistive device some people have to wear.
As a wearable, smart glasses are a bit like smartwatches in that the platonic design is pretty well established and indistinguishable from traditional eyewear. Unlike watches, glasses are so visible on people’s faces that form overrides everything else.
Fortunately, the Samsung hardware I wore for an hour last week looks and feels like glasses, almost unremarkably so. I’d venture to say that audio-only glasses without a display are a solved design challenge. Google emphasized that, at 41 grams, this is the lightest pair of smart glasses on the market, and it worked to make sure the weight is distributed evenly.
The sides of the stems that face your head feature translucent plastic that lets you see the internal components. I liked that small design choice. You can control the glasses using voice commands, with Google debuting a new “Hey Gemini” hotword for the form factor. While “Hey Google” and “OK Google” remain available, the new one is meant to reflect how big a role Gemini plays on smart glasses.
There is also a touchpad on the right stem that accepts taps and swipes, while a button up top lets you take pictures and record video. Another way you’ll be able to control the glasses is with your Pixel Watch and Galaxy Watch. You can play/pause audio and enable Gemini using double-pinch and wrist gestures. Notably, gesture support is also coming to the Fitbit Air next year.
From its internal testing, Google tells me that which input method people use is pretty situational and ends up being natural. At the beginning of my demo, I favored the touchpad, but by the end, I was leaning toward voice commands.
When you’re capturing media that gets saved, there will always be a white blinking indicator light. There’s also another light in your field of vision that’s analogous to the camera and microphone privacy indicators in the top-right corner of Android phones. When I first put on the glasses, that light was distracting, but I quickly forgot about it by the end of my demo.
Talking to Intelligent Eyewear uses Gemini Live. Some prompts, like take a picture or play a song, are one-shot “chat” commands in phone parlance, but for the most part, you’re using Gemini’s back-and-forth conversation mode. Google heavily customized the Gemini Live model for glasses to reduce latency, shorten responses, and tightly integrate the camera.
Even compared to my last demo in May, the latency of voice commands has come a long way. That said, I need more time to see if it’s really fast enough to use as a primary interaction method for most commands.
Google built a number of privacy protections into Intelligent Eyewear that are clearly in response to the current perception of smart glasses. There are some interesting ideas here, starting with how Gemini queries that involve a picture (like a visual search) won’t be saved to your Gemini History, used for model training, or ad targeting. For example, if you ask Gemini to find out what kind of plant you’re looking at, that image won’t be accessible anywhere else.
Similarly, Google will blur all faces and filter out bystander voices before it gets uploaded to Gemini in the cloud. This on-device processing occurs on your phone.
Since that visual media isn’t being saved, the external indicator light won’t be active when you’re talking to Gemini. The LED is only on when photos or videos are being saved and can be reviewed later.
That indicator light features anti-tamper detection that prevents recording. Algorithms detect whether the LED is covered by stickers or markers, with this process featuring hardware verification when the glasses are in their charging case.
Google’s “Glasses” companion app, with Samsung having a near-identical version for Galaxy phones, is pretty similar to the version for Pixel Watch. Unlike the bloated “Meta AI” app, it’s just for settings rather than the very definition of a growth hack with a full chatbot. The difference is staggering, and something Google deserves a bit of credit for in this age of throwing AI into every crevice of day-to-day smartphone usage.
Under the hood, the glasses are offloading a lot of processing to your phone. This includes HDR pipelines and video stabilization. The 12MP camera takes pictures in a 4:3 aspect ratio, while you can record up to 90 seconds of video. Images are transferred immediately to your phone over Wi-Fi, while videos wait until the glasses are charging to preserve battery life. I am so excited by point-of-view photography and the instantaneous capture the glasses offer, and early impressions of camera quality are positive.
Another thing I want to test is how Intelligent Eyewear fares as always-available headphones. There are two open-ear speakers and four microphones, and Google is clearly very proud of the noise-cancellation work in place.
As someone who has been waiting for smart glasses since 2012, I cannot overstate my annoyance at how Meta allowed smart glasses to gain a scummy undertone, if not overtone. It should have been more proactive to societal issues. Meanwhile, Meta releasing glasses without a camera, thus removing the primary utility of real-world context, makes me deeply question its belief that this is the future.
Smart glasses that know what you’re interacting with in the world can be extremely useful. That always-available camera is a genuine physical advantage over smartphones. It unlocks new use cases and convenience that are just not possible with something that goes in your pocket.
Google took a long time to get back to glasses. From what I’ve used so far, the wait will be worth it. The hardware and designs are solid, while the software is chock-full of innovative, well-considered ideas.
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