These stylish smart glasses are a hit. Why am I so disappointed?

They’re so stylish, no one thinks to ask if they’re smart glasses. When I stood on stage about to give a talk at a conference in Rust, Germany, I wore these shoes Even G2 reality glasses To prove a point. In my field of vision, a glowing monochrome 3D text screen projected the notes onto the teleprompter window. I clicked to navigate with a metal ring on my right index finger.

So, my talking points drifted in slow scrolling to match the moments I mentioned key terms as I improvised.

This was my first time trying smart glasses with a teleprompter in a real-life situation where I couldn’t risk failure. The $599 G2 glasses only passed half the test. Although these cameraless smart glasses have the lightweight frame I want, fit my ultra-short prescription, and have a full day of battery life, they don’t work as smoothly as I’d like. That’s why, in the middle of my live speech, I basically abandoned the teleprompter function and improvised the rest of the way.

Smart glasses now Early smartwatches of a decade ago are like a wild mish-mash of ideas put forward by a growing number of companies, mixing features, AI services and interfaces in different combinations. There are no clear standards for Smart glasses so faras is the case for phones, earphones, or even watches.

While Meta stole most of the limelight and market with its AI and chunky technology Ray Ban and oakley glassesThey are not the only forms in the wild. Meta glasses have built-in cameras, microphones and speakers that act as recording devices that are worn on the face. Only one model now has a display. the Meta Ray-Ban displays They have one color screen in one eye, and no lenses that can be made for my high index prescription. They also have a battery life that can’t last a full day, or even just a few hours.

Even reality glasses are a completely different story. The second generation models can fit a wide range of prescriptions, even outside of my prescription range (up to +/-12). Battery life lasts more than a day. They have larger dual displays in monochrome green. They have no cameras at all. Or speakers. Only displays and microphones.

I got a pair of prescription glasses to try, thanks to Evin, and I’ve been on and off since the beginning of the year (prescription lenses cost at least $159 to add to the glasses). I’ve worn them at CES in Las Vegas, and at a German entertainment conference It’s called Uriah. I wore them in New York. I tried it alongside a separately sold $249 smart ring, the Even R1, which controls the glasses and also doubles as a fitness tracker to measure your heart rate.

I love that these glasses are stylish and compact. Very confidential. It fits my eyes and has amazing battery life. I just hope the rest works as promised. Some of the AI ​​features are cool, but I wish there was more.

Thin glasses for everyday look

The most impressive aspect of the Even G2 is its amazingly lightweight frame and design. I showed these glasses to people, and they had no idea they were smart glasses. It looks very unimpressive.

The frame, in particular, is a standout. The metal frame around the lenses and temples is thin, with the only bulge being small bulb-like sections at the ends of the arms, where you’ll find the batteries and touchpads for controlling the glasses. The viewfinders live inside thicker parts of the arm near the lenses, but again, they’re really accurate. The glasses are really lightweight too: at 35g, they feel lighter than my regular glasses.

However, the G2s are a specific type of eyeglass design. They’re a little small for my taste, and come in either square or round frames. After a while, those bulky parts on the metal temples started to make my ears uncomfortable. They charge via an included glasses case that’s larger than the Meta Ray-Bans, but they connect to USB-C in the same way and are easier to fit in a bag.

The R1 ring sold separately is an odd duck. It’s similar to other smart rings like the Oura in that it can track steps and heart rate. But the R1 also has a touch bar on one side that works like a touchpad to control the Even G2 glasses. Double-tapping wakes the screen, swiping takes you through menus, and long-pressing moves back up a list.

The ring is meant to be worn on your index finger, resting before the first knuckle so you can comfortably use the touchpad with your thumb, and that can get awkward. I’m worried it will fall off. When I was giving this presentation on stage using teleprompter mode, holding a microphone in one hand and a remote to control the slide deck in the other, it was very difficult to click the loop.

Fortunately, the glasses have their own touchpad controls, one on the back of each arm. They are often covered by my hair in the back of my ears, but they can move around more reliably. Then you don’t need to get the ring.

Sometimes, the loop stops working. A big issue with both the glasses and the ring is intermittent connectivity, even with multiple firmware updates. Sometimes it looks like a Bluetooth issue. Other times, I wonder if the background connection the glasses have with my iPhone will eventually wear off. Right now, in fact, the ring has stopped working as a touch control for some reason. And sometimes, the glasses don’t automatically dim the little green LED display, making it run much longer than I need to and hindering my vision.

The Micro LED screen is large and bright enough indoors and in dim light, but fades in bright daylight. They are 3D and appear in both eyes, looking like panels of green text placed on top of clear lenses. The small waveguide spots on each lens are subtle but show up in light, and sometimes displays can be seen through the lenses as well.

But displays are smart, because they fade away when you’re not looking at them. It’s kind of like the magic of peripheral vision because the green displays appear when you look up. But looking at the rest of the world, as I am writing this review, it seems to be fading away.

AI: Bits and Pieces

I love that the Even Realities onboard software has a unique app to use AI with, a mode called Conversate. However, it’s one of the only useful AI features in glasses for me.

Conversation is a live mode that automatically transcribes the conversation (or whatever you’re listening to), displaying the text on the screen as captions while also listening for random key phrases that the AI ​​deems noteworthy. You are pulled into another pop-up window that loosely defines the term. For example, while I was listening to a presentation on virtual worlds, the term “biomimicry” was defined to me through my glasses. When can I withdraw another statement? I had no idea.

I used the Even G2 glasses in conversation mode for most of the day, listened to other keynote presentations, and was able to save transcripts to the Even Realities phone app. None of this took up much of the glasses’ battery life, impressively, and the onboard microphones had no trouble picking up sound from across the room.

The texts include AI summaries and details of key terms, which is useful. I can also see the conditions of the withdrawn note that were defined during conversation mode. I fell in love with having it as a helpful listening partner, but not being able to control Conversate’s focus on specific phrases to highlight wasn’t great.

But it made me wonder about a future where talking to people could generate useful information to guide me, via subtle pop-up prompts. Even’s conversation mode is a stab in that direction, but in a crude way. I can’t choose other AI services to run on the glasses, only the company’s Even AI service, which doesn’t clearly list the models it uses to work.

There’s also a dedicated AI mode that responds to voice prompts, but it’s worse than anything you might use on your phone. Sometimes it answers in a strange way and with less detail than ChatGPT and Gemini. It also relies on relatively limited screen real estate to display answers, so it’s essentially a one-question-at-a-time experience. Text responses also flow too slowly for my comfort.

Even Realities has a map-based navigation mode on the glasses called Navigate that provides turn-by-turn pop-up directions. However, the fact that none of these modes link to existing phone apps or services is a big downside. I have to order things from scratch and hope the AI ​​delivers them.

Translation on the glasses can handle 35 languages, which is much more than the Meta glasses can do. There’s no need to download language packs either, but you do have to select language pairs from the phone app for it to work. Oddly enough, you can’t do this with glasses.

Teleprompter mode is another one of my favorites, and probably the best next to Conversate. You can cut and paste notes or speeches into the app and then wrap them on the glasses. It listens to what you say and keeps up with it, even skipping ahead if you’re at a later stage. Although this worked well overall, in the live theater experience, I wasn’t able to control the loop well enough to initiate the teleprompter. I had nervous jitters, as well as a less responsive looped touchpad.

And that’s all for Even’s features. seriously. I have a hard time thinking of what else I would use these glasses for, which is why I usually take them off again.

It’s not even a good replacement for a smartwatch. Notifications can appear inside the glasses, but many of them don’t appear for me when paired with an iPhone. Incoming calls are not showing either. I can’t reply to texts (or see them it seems). On the Meta’s Ray-Bans, I can at least take calls and use the glasses like the AirPods. You can’t do that with Even glasses. You can’t listen to music. And you can’t use them as cameras, because there aren’t any.

The good news is that there are apparently a number of developers working on AI applications for glasses that may emerge soon. These glasses are trying to be Pebble watch Of smart glasses in this regard. But I need those features and customization to hurry up and get here. Right now, there’s not enough to do to justify wearing them.

Right form, wrong function

I came away from a test drive of the Even G2 with the realization that smart glasses could be as compact and prescription-friendly (and battery life-friendly) as my wildest dreams. But that comes at a huge cost to everything else. Phones don’t work well with smart glasses right now, no matter which company makes them. The G2 tries, but the wonky phone app, buggy connection, limited customization, and lack of deeper telephony connections to its AI (and lack of support for other AI services) make it feel a step behind.

I can’t wait for Glasses to feel like truly deeper phone extensions, things that can help people on whatever terms they choose with the apps they want. Meta didn’t get there. Even the facts didn’t do that. Perhaps Google will do that with its glasses coming later this year.

I hope other smart glasses have the battery life, prescription lens support, and size advantages. It is urgently needed. It’s very disappointing that these glasses can’t live up to the promise that the rest of the glasses have made so far. I’ll check back later if more applications come along, and see if it can be the pebble I was hoping for for my face.