Jan 14, 2025

Smart glasses makers are promising lightweight, stylish frames with limited features that should offer an alternative to bulkier mixed-reality headsets now on the market. Credit: Rokid Smart glasses attracted a lot of attention at last week’s  Consumer Electronics Show , with a range of devices on display that combine lightweight frames with functionality such as heads-up displays and AI-powered assistants. These contrast with the mixed-reality headsets that created a buzz early in 2024, including  Meta’s Quest 3 and  Apple’s Vision Pro  – both of which are much heavier devices designed for shorter periods of use. Apple’s Vision Pro headset captured a lot of attention in 2024, but lighter-weight smart glasses were the rage at CES 2025. JLStock / Shutterstock “This year, the focus definitely seemed to be more on smart glasses than on headsets, in part because the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses were a huge hit last year,” said Avi Greengart, president and lead analyst at Techsponential. Smart glasses require “purposeful compromise,” when it comes to balancing functionality with a lightweight form factor, and “different vendors are making different decisions,” to achieve this, said Greengart. Halliday’s smart glasses , for example, project text and images  directly into the wearer’s field of view. This is perceived as a 3.5-in. screen that appears in the upper-right corner of the user’s view, and remains visible even in bright sunlight, Halliday claims. A “proactive” AI assistant — which requires a Bluetooth connection to a smartphone —  enables features such as real-time translation in up to 40 languages, live navigation for directions, and teleprompter-style display of notes. Halliday’s smart glasses come in three different colors. Halliday At 1.2 ounces, they’re even lighter than Meta’s glasses (which at 1.7 ounces are only marginally heavierthan regular Ray-Bans). Halliday’s smart glasses are available for preorder for $489, with shipping expected to begin at the end of the first quarter of this year. Even Realities  also offers a minimalist take with its G1 smart glasses, which start at $599. These include a micro-LED projector that beams a heads-up display onto each lens, while an AI assistant enables live translation and navigation when paired with a smartphone. Another vendor in the space, Rokid, recently  announced its Glasses , a  lightweight (1.7 ounces) aimed at continuous use through the day. In addition to a simple green text display and intelligent assistant, Rokid’s device also packs a 12-megapixel camera for image and video capture into the frames. Nuance Audio  — owned by Meta’s Ray-Ban partner, EssilorLuxottica — has an even more focused product: glasses that integrate a hearing aid into the frames. “When you need a bit more help hearing someone, you turn them on and the glasses amplify the sound of the person you are looking at and direct it to speakers on the glasses stems that are aimed at your ears,” said Greengart. Meta is rumored to be have an updated version of its Ray-Ban devices slated for release later this year. They his will reportedly feature a simple display to show notifications and responses from Meta’s AI assistant. Meta has sold more than a million Ray-Ban smart glasses to date, according to  Counterpoint Research stats . “Most of these glasses are ones that I wouldn’t mind wearing out in public,” said Ramon Llamas, research director with IDC’s devices and displays team. “We’re finally seeing designs that look and feel less bulky, and we’re getting into a bunch of styles instead of the usual wayfarer design.” Other glasses, such as  Xreal’s One Pro  and  TCL’s RayNeo X2  (marketed as “augmented reality” rather than “smart” glasses), are heftier and act as a portable display, with the ability to watch videos and access apps when tethered to a laptop or smartphone. Although demand for smart glasses is still in its infancy, shipments are expected to see a compound annual growth rate of 85.7% through to 2028, according to recent IDC  stats . These “extended reality” devices will soon be the second largest category within the broader AR/VR market, IDC predicts, with several million devices sold each year. Mixed reality headsets – such as Apple’s Vision Pro and Meta’s Quest products – will continue to account for the largest share of the AR/VR market, according to IDC, with extended reality smart glasses in second place. IDC Though many of the devices shown at CES are largely aimed at consumers, some smart glasses are also being tailored to enterprise customers ( Vuzix  being an example). As the technology matures, Llamas sees a growing range of business use cases for smart glasses: capturing visual information hands-free, for instance, or live translation, which could also be useful for business travelers. “This is where having access to business apps can help, especially if you can speak into those apps to execute a task and the smart glasses can handle that,” said Llamas. “I think we’re still a ways off from that actually taking place, so for now, expect smart glasses to be mostly within the realm of consumers — specifically tech enthusiasts and cognoscenti.” Related content