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Mobile World Congress Barcelona may be a European technology fair, but over the past few years, Chinese phone companies such as Xiaomi and honor. This year, they’re joined by tech giant Alibaba, which launched its Qwen smart glasses at the show — and after trying them out, all I have to say is that Meta should be watching its back.
Qwen glasses are among the first wearables that Alibaba is building. In addition to Qwen AI’s suite of large language models, the company has brought two different models to the market. MWC.
The first pair, the Qwen S1 spec, has a waveguide display etched into the lenses, and serves as a competitor to Meta Ray Ban screen Form (minus gesture control). My first impression of these AR glasses was that they were light and comfortable to wear – I didn’t know they were smart glasses based on their weight alone. At the end of each arm are interchangeable batteries, which detach easily so you can keep the glasses running longer while you’re on the go.
The battery modules on each arm are easily interchangeable
I activated the glasses with the phrase “Hey Qwennie,” which I picked up with its five microphones. I then asked it to complete a set of basic tasks, including asking the device to take a photo and tell me what I was looking at when I held an image of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia church in front of my face.
I was able to see a miniature version of the image I took on the green screen, and the glasses were able to answer my architectural query by displaying text in the head-up display and through bone conduction built into the S1’s arms. Probably my favorite feature is the turn-by-turn directions. It seems that this feature may become necessary for navigating a crowded city, and much more convenient than using a phone or smart watch.
Here you can see where the head-up display is drilled into the left lens.
I also tried out the teleprompter feature, which scrolled while I read aloud from on-screen text but I have to admit I didn’t find it quite as easy to follow as the similar demo I tried earlier in the week on the MemoMind One glasses. With Qwen’s assistant speaking to me in Chinese, I was able to see and hear the English translation of her words on the screen and in my ears at the same time, though there was enough delay to prevent our communication from being completely smooth.
The second pair of glasses Alibaba brought to the show are the Qwen G1 glasses, which lack the head-up display of the S1, but offer almost the same features thanks to microphones, cameras, and bone conduction.
The G1 glasses do not have the S1’s head-up display.
Overall, I was impressed with the look, feel, sound quality and capabilities of these glasses, which for many people may be their first introduction to Alibaba’s Qwen AI (via the Qwen app, which is integrated with the specs). In China, where pre-orders for the glasses already exist, people wearing glasses will be able to complete tasks like ordering food or calling a taxi completely hands-free.
Alibaba said prices for the G1 glasses will start at around $275 (for comparison, Meta Ray-Ban 2nd generation sunglasses It costs $379), but he didn’t mention how much the more advanced S1 glasses cost. Official sales will begin in China on March 8, with Alibaba promising an international rollout featuring integration with popular global services scheduled for an unspecified date later in 2026.