Wearing smart glasses takes a toll on your face—on your nose, on your temples, and on your poor screen-addled eyes. Luckily, makers of smart glasses seem to have taken note of that unique bodily onus, and they’re basically racing to make the lightest pair of smart glasses they possibly can.
Take this recent pair from a company called Mojie, which is teasing smart glasses that weigh just 25g, and still have a screen inside. To put that weight into perspective, the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 AI glasses, which don’t have a display, weigh around 49g, are double the weight of this pair from a Chinese upstart. In fact, 25g is about the weight of a regular pair of glasses without any smarts at all. This announcement of Mojie’s smart glasses comes on the heels of Lenovo’s reveal that it would sell a pair of smart glasses that weigh 38g. For an even more stark comparison, it’s worth pointing out that the Meta Ray-Ban Display, Meta’s full-color display smart glasses, weigh around 70g, meaning they won’t be winning the lightest pair of smart glasses accolade any time soon.
That’s a huge weight difference between smart glasses, obviously, but there are some tradeoffs here, too. Meta’s Ray-Ban Display may be on the chunky side, but they also have a single full-color waveguide display inside the right lens. That’s unlike the smart glasses from Mojie and Lenovo I just mentioned, which use a monochrome waveguide that just shows information in a Matrix-like green. This pair from Mojie also doesn’t have a camera or speakers, which greatly reduces the weight burden on the frames. That’s just how tech typically goes—it’s pretty damn hard to get slimmer and lighter without sacrificing something.
© Raymond Wong / Gizmodo
More and more smart glasses companies are toying with the idea of offering pared-down smart glasses that come with a screen but drop features like cameras and audio. Even Realities sells its G1 smart glasses with a waveguide and microphones, but have a camera or speakers. These are smart glasses, emphasis on the glasses part, and Even Realities is planning to announce a second-gen pair this week. And speaking of diverse options, Mojie is teasing a pair of full-color waveguide glasses that weigh 38g, which is obviously a lot more than its super-light 25g pair, but a hell of a lot lighter than the Meta Ray-Ban Display.
Clearly, the message isn’t just that smart glasses are getting lighter; companies are taking a shotgun approach to figuring out a form factor that people want, and that means experimentation with adding or subtracting hardware and features. Do people need cameras? Maybe some, but not all. Do they need to listen to music on their smart glasses? Maybe not everyone, and for the people who do feel okay going speakerless, the screen is going to be the most important part. I’m personally fine with the experimentation. Gadget diversity is something we should welcome.
