The best smart glasses for live commentary (2026), tested by WIRED

Unlike other glasses I tested, Even doesn’t sell a subscription plan; Everything is included out of the box.

The only downside I can find with the G2 is that it’s pretty much devoid of offline features, so the glasses have to be connected to the internet to do much of anything. Given the G2’s capabilities, it’s a trade-off I’m happy to make.

Other clarifying glasses I’ve tested

There are a lot of suspension-capable glasses on the market, but they are surprisingly similar in both shape and features. While many of them are very capable, none of them had the combination of power and affordability that I got with Even’s G2. Here’s a summary of everything else I tested.

Leion’s Hey 2 is the price leader in this market, and even its prescription lenses ($90-$299) are very affordable. However, the device is heavy: 50g without lenses, 60g with them. A full charge gives you six to eight hours of playback; The case adds juice for up to 12 recharges.

I like Leion’s interface, which offers captions, translation, “free talk” (two-way translation), and a teleprompter feature in its clean app. You have access to nine languages; Using Pro minutes expands that to 143. Leion sells its Premium plan by the minute, not by the month, so you’ll have to remember to turn this off when you don’t need it. The price is $10 for 120 minutes, $50 for 1,200 minutes, and $200 for 6,000 minutes. There’s no support for offline use, and I often struggle to get AI summaries to appear in English instead of Chinese (regardless of the registered language).

You don’t see double: XRAI and Leion use the same manufacturer for their devices, and the glasses have the same weight. Battery specifications are also similar, with up to eight hours of battery life on the frames and another 96 hours when recharging using the case. XRAI claims its display is noticeably brighter than competitors’ displays, but I didn’t see much difference in daily use.

The features and user experience are almost the same, although Leion’s teleprompter feature is not implemented in the XRAI app, and it does not offer AI summaries of conversations. I also didn’t find the XRAI app as easy to use as the Leion version, especially when trying to switch between the recognized 300 comprehensive language options. Only 20 of them are included without paying the Pro subscription, which is sold by the month and minute: $20 a month gets you 600 advanced transcription minutes and a maximum of 300 subtitle minutes; $40 per month gets you 1,800 and 1,200 minutes respectively. On the plus side, XRAI has a primitive offline mode that works better than most. For prescription lenses, add $140 to $170.

AirCaps does not make its own prescription lenses. Instead, you must purchase a pair of $39 “lens holders” and take them to an eye care professional if you want a prescription included. I wasn’t able to test them with prescription lenses, and eventually had to try them over my regular glasses, which worked well enough for short-term testing. Frames weigh 53g without additional lenses; The company couldn’t tell me how much extra weight prescription lenses would add, but it’s safe to say that these are the largest and heaviest glasses on the market. Despite the extra weight, it only holds between two and four hours of battery life, with 10 or so recharges packed into the comically large case. Another option is to clip one of the AirCaps’ 13-gram rechargeable power pods ($79 for two) to one of the arms, which can provide an additional 12 to 18 hours of juice.

The AirCaps’ feature list and interface make it perhaps the simplest of these devices, with just one button to start and stop recording. Transcriptions and translations are freely available in nine languages. For $20 per month, you can add the Pro package, which offers better accuracy, access to more than 60 languages, and the option to create AI summaries on demand (though the recordings are only long enough). As a bonus: five hours of free Pro features every month. Offline mode works well too. The only bad news is that these bulky frames are not comfortable enough for long-term wear.

The most expensive option on the market (up to $1,399 with prescription lenses!) weighs a relatively tidy 40 grams (52 grams with lenses) and offers about four hours of battery life. No charging case; The glasses must be charged directly using the USB-connected dongle.

The glasses are very simple, and offer transcription and translation features – with support for around 80 languages, which is impressive. I unfortunately found that the prescription lenses sent by Captify were the foggiest of the bunch, making reading captions relatively difficult. While the device supports offline copying, performance was severely affected when disconnected from the Internet. I couldn’t get subtitles to work at all when offline. For $15 per month, you get better accuracy, better speaker recognition, and access to AI conversation summaries. The cost of prescription lenses ranges between $99 and $600.