10 Augmented Reality glasses you can buy now
What’s the state of Augmented Reality eyewear, and how do you get your hands on it?
Imagine standing in your lounge room — wearing only pyjamas and a pair of smart glasses —with a row of holographic suits floating in front of you. You touch one, and suddenly you’re wearing it. Your glasses speak in your ear, announcing your first work meeting. Members of your team appear, standing around a holographic 3D model of a hover-board you’ve been designing. Gesturing in the air like Tom Cruise in Minority Report, you tap and swipe on floating menus to update the board’s materials and specs right before everyone’s virtual eyes. Your team thank you for your great work and disappear, leaving you alone again in your lounge room. Swiping off our suit hologram, you sit down in your pyjamas and work on your floating, holographic hover-board like a child playing with a toy.
Unfortunately, today’s smart eyewear experience is not quite there yet. But following the 2016 success of Pokemon Go and the popularity of 3D avatars in smartphone video, investment in business applications for Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) are driving the development of AR/MR-enabled smart eyewear to put the functionality of your phone — and more — into your view. So, where is this technology at, and how do you get your hands on it?
The current state of smart eyewear
AR and MR are two of the three Extended Realities — Virtual Reality replaces our view of reality, AR overlays our view with virtual graphics and information, and MR interweaves the virtual with the real world so they seem as one. MR requires spatial computing and a lot of processing power, so most of today’s consumer eyewear is AR.
The immersion of the experience is reliant on a devices’ field of vision — that’s the limited part of your view where the augmented graphics can be displayed. This means you won’t see all the buildings in the distance become trees, because the AR can’t scan that far away, and any virtual effects will stop and disappear if they extend too far into your peripheral.
And although the graphics are improving, complete hand and eye-tracking are still evolving, so most smart eyewear requires control by your voice, a touchpad on the arm of the eyewear, or an accompanying device, like a connected smartphone or a ‘control’ ring.
So what kind of smart eyewear experience suits you? Here are some you can buy today and others to keep an eye on.
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A smartwatch for your face
For everyday use, there is already much eyewear to choose from that offer a choice of style, as well as being adaptable to prescription lenses, and aren’t too intrusive or distracting. Some, like Amazon’s Echo Frames, don’t have AR and simply provide information through sound and an integrated AI assistant—like Alexa—allowing you to take calls, send emails, or google something.
But AR-enabled eyewear, such as North’s Focal from Canada, offers a smartwatch experience in your view by displaying basic information like weather, messages, and notifications.
Starting at US$599, you need to have them fitted to your face and eyes at one of their two stores — Brooklyn, New York, and Toronto, Canada. Of all the everyday wear glasses, these look the most promising.
Vuzix Blade will allow you to stream and capture video in your vision by interacting with a built-in Alexa, as well as call an Uber, set reminders, hear the news, get directions, and more. They do require an Android smartphone to operate, etc. and some reviewers report an experience requiring more development, but they could be fun to play with if you have a spare US$799.
For a basic picture in view experience, Vufine Wearable Display allows you to view the screen of a connected device (phone, laptop, or drone camera) in your side view. The eyewear does need to be connected to your device with a cable, but you can attach the eyewear to your own glasses or use the ones supplied, and they’re super affordable at US$99.
Activity-specific
Rather than offering all AR features, task-specific eyewear focuses on one activity, from running or cycling to droning. The Raptor (from US$599), by Everysight, offers video recording as well as personalised displays of maps and stats such as heart rate and speed. The Raptor also makes cycling more socially competitive by sharing stats between cyclists as they ride. There’s also Solos Smart Glasses (US$499) for cyclists that display stats in view and give directions.
For drone enthusiasts, there’s the aforementioned Vuzix Blade, and also the Moverio BT-300 drone edition, which displays a drone’s footage so you can keep it in sight while you control it with a companion handheld device.
Experimental
Snapchat’s Spectacles (US$420), from the UK, don’t display AR elements in view, but rather they use 3D cameras to capture memories as you experience them. You then add MR effects to these videos and photos before sharing on Snapchat. While sharing is limited to Snapchat, Spectacles do give us a vision of what artists and storytellers might do with AR-enabled eyewear.
The most advanced AR/MR experiences
…and you’ll pay for them. Microsoft and Magic Leap are investing in practical applications for the business sector and pushing the boundaries of augmented living and working, but their devices are priced from $3,500 and $2,295 respectively. Both can track your head, hand, and eye movements, know your position, and have real-world mapping — all of which create two of the most immersive mixed reality experiences available.
Microsoft’s Hololens isn’t made for the average consumer — not yet — and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of apps. Magic Leap’s eyewear is also more targeted at enterprise, but they do offer a package for individuals, with a payment plan at US$96/mth (but only shipping within the US). Magic Leap eyewear consists of bug-eyed goggles connected by a cord to a power pack on your belt, and a hand-control that allows the goggles to track your hand. After raising US$2.3Billion in support, Magic Leap created a lot of hype that reviewers inform us has yet to be lived up to.
What happened to Google Glass?
Google is still in the game. After public resistance to the ‘privacy invasion’ of the in-built camera in its 2013 Glass eyewear, Google pulled Glass back into development and has since relaunched it as the Glass Enterprise Edition. The Google Glass Explorer Edition is also still available, starting at around US$1045, but is more for app developers.
Upcoming eyewear to watch
Realmax’s Qian (under US$1000) is a more bulky (but light) headset but will offer a 100° FOV, which is very impressive compared to Hololens (52°) and Magic Leap (50°). Stylish-looking AR glasses from Digilens are due late 2020, and from the Silicon Valley of Beijing, the NReal eyewear (US$499) is also slick in design and offering MR. Finally, Norm AR Glasses promise what Google Glass first got us excited about, and with a more fashion-orientated design. Still on Indigogo, with backing starting at USD$349, Norm glasses have been delayed from April 2020 to September 2020.
So what’s next?
With technology shrinking, more apps being developed, and companies like Apple and Facebook developing their own devices, AR/MR enabled smart eyewear could eventually replace smartphones, impacting every aspect of our lives from shopping, dining, traveling, dating, to medical and more. Combined with the development of smart lenses by companies like Mojo, the future of smart eyewear looks bright.
For transparency, this post includes affiliate links.
Damien Lutz is a UX Designer/Researcher, author of The Life-centred Design Guide, Future Scouting, and two sci-fi novels, and creator of futurescouting.com.au and lifecentred.design.
Follow Damien on Medium for more fringe design thinking and experiments.
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