Snap has finally launched its long-awaited augmented reality glasses, specs, and they’re not cheap

At the Spatial AI Conference in Long Beach on Tuesday, Snap finally unveiled Specs, its long-awaited consumer smart glasses, and at $2,195, they’re not cheap.

The specs will be available for pre-order on June 16, with a refundable $200 deposit, and are expected to ship this fall in the US, UK and France. The price is significantly higher than most Meta Ray-Bans (which can cost up to $350), though it’s still well below the Apple Vision Pro’s starting price of $3,500. Either way, it’s steep enough to put the specs out of reach for most average consumers.

Snap has been working on this device for more than a decade. Despite this, the company last released a consumer-oriented version of the glasses in 2019, and its most recent releases have been for developers only. Earlier this year, Snap A new company spun To focus exclusively on bringing the product to market.

Now the glasses are finally here. So what stands out on the first impression?

Visually, the Specs look like a fairly regular pair of glasses – albeit a slightly larger, goggle-like pair. This extra size is due to a key design choice: unlike some competitors, all computing is done on the physical device, and it conveniently lacks a disk or cord.

The specifications run on two Snapdragon processors, and come with a battery life of up to four continuous hours, in addition to a charging case that extends to 20 hours in total.

But what can you actually do with them? For starters, There are gamesincluding those that support shared multiplayer sessions between two users. Snap calls this feature “iConnectIt is activated simply by two wearers making eye contact with each other.

You can also watch videos (Snap says the screen offers a 51-degree field of view and 16 million colors), record point-of-view shots, and get work done, at least in theory, since the glasses allow you to browse the Internet, connect to productivity apps, and check your email.

One notable feature is contextual AI. Look at something and ask about it, and the glasses can extract information about what you see — a glimpse into the kind of AI assistant layer that has become a competitive battleground in this category.

The glasses come in two sizes – a 47mm model, weighing 132 grams (about 4.6 ounces) and a 52mm model, weighing 136 grams (4.7 ounces). That makes it noticeably heavier than Meta’s Ray-Bans — first-generation Wayfarers weigh less than an ounce — but significantly lighter than Apple’s Vision Pro, which tips the scales at 26.4 to 28.2 ounces.

There is also privacy protection. In terms of privacy, Specs follows in Meta’s footsteps with a built-in LED light that glows as the device registers. The company says users will also have control over what data is stored, synced or deleted.

When I was in Las Vegas for CES earlier this year, the Snap team Allow me to offer An earlier version of glasses. It was fun to play with the apps, and I was impressed with the contextual AI, but the device was also quite heavy, and after running it for a while, it could get hot.

From the looks of it, Snap has since shrunk the size of the hardware, making the glasses less obtrusive and more efficient.

The bigger question is whether this decade-long marathon of innovation will lead to some sort of viable business for Snap. Specifications enter a market increasingly saturated with competitors. Meta is now leading with its popularity Ray-Ban seriesAnd Google has it Announce Its new line of AI-powered glasses.

As for who these glasses are for, Snap says they’re primarily targeting tech enthusiasts, developers, and studios — though with a price tag of $2,200, this audience will need some deep pockets to match their enthusiasm.

The onerous price highlights an ongoing dilemma facing the smart glasses industry: that consumer interest has not yet moved beyond mere curiosity to the kind of enthusiasm that can lead to consistent profits.

As a result, no one really makes a profit. Even the current industry champion – Meta – is like that Losing a ton of money In the AR development department.

Snap has struggled over the past few years with volatile stocks and a recent decline in North America User participation. Although the company was launched more than a decade ago It is still not consistently profitable. In April, he also underwent surgery A round of layoffs. Will the specification be the product that changes everything and ushers in the next evolution in computing? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.