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Best Virtual Screen Smart Glasses
Viture Pro XR Glasses
Best Smart Glasses With a Camera
Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses
Another Great Option
XReal One AR Glasses
The idea of smart glasses has been around for decades, but the technology is finally catching up. A computer you wear on your face has obvious potential, not least because it leaves your hands free. Smart glasses can entertain, guide us with directions, help us document our lives, and even teach us about the world around us, but the category is incredibly varied—not all smart glasses have the same features.
As a new wave of smart glasses arrives, we got sneak-peek demos of several and tested just about everything on the market. Before diving into recommendations, I’ll explain what you need to know about this category and give a quick history lesson about the space. There’s some overlap with virtual reality, but we have a separate guide on the Best Virtual Reality Headsets.
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The Different Types of Smart Glasses
Smart glasses are wearable computers shaped like regular glasses, though they’re often chunkier to accommodate their technology. Not every pair of smart glasses is the same, as they can support wildly different functionality. Many can accommodate optical prescriptions, though they may require an additional tiny pair of lenses you wear inside the smart glasses. Some have diopter dials, so you can adjust the focus separately for each eye.
Some smart glasses are as simple as electrochromic (automatically darkening) sunglasses. They may not have other tech in them, but you may see them marketed as “smart glasses.”
The most basic type of smart glasses you’ll find are ones that act like portable screens. These often have displays or projectors to create a screen only the wearer can see, a series of floating windows, or a kind of heads-up display (HUD) layered on top of reality. Most include speakers for audio and simply plug into the USB-C port on your phone or laptop to mirror the screen.
The most popular type of smart glasses are ones with a camera so you can share hands-free video and audio to social media. These typically also have microphones so you can issue voice commands or ask questions of an AI assistant. The built-in camera means the AI assistant may also be able to see what you see and help with translations or directions.
At the top end of the spectrum are AR smart glasses, sometimes described as XR glasses. XR (extended reality) is an umbrella term covering VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), and MR (mixed reality). While some smart glasses only offer audio and cameras, XR glasses almost always have a screen component, though it can range from a small, low-resolution HUD to one or more large, high-resolution floating displays. Features can range from layering translations of the person in front of you over the lens to showing exactly which way to go in the real world when navigating. There’s often an AI component, where you can ask the glasses about the things you’re looking at.
The Pros and Cons of Smart Glasses
The dream of a real-time, video-game-style heads-up display over real life is creeping closer to reality. We’ve seen early examples that can translate text and speech, recognize places, and help you navigate to a destination. You can already use smart glasses as you would a Bluetooth headset, to make and take calls, send messages, and even have video chats. But most of the smart glasses you can buy are focused on mirroring content from your phone or computer and providing you with one or more virtual screens. More recently, we are seeing artificial intelligence seep into glasses; you can query or task them like your phone or smart speaker.
The more technology that needs to be packed in, the bigger and heavier the smart glasses are. Most need to be tethered to a device and/or battery with a wire that runs down behind your ear. They can get warm and uncomfortable and cause motion sickness. Comfort and focus can prove elusive as your eyes adjust to a close-up virtual display that creates the illusion of a screen a few feet away. Let’s not forget the obvious privacy concerns with smart glasses that have cameras and microphones onboard.
HUD stands for heads-up display and refers to information overlaid on your view of the world without obscuring it (usually around the periphery of your field of view), like in video games. Simple HUDs might display the time or mirror notifications from your phone, with more advanced versions capable of translating text on signs or identifying places around you.
DoF stands for degrees of freedom, and at least three degrees of freedom are essential for the tracking that enables spatial computing. With 3 DoF, you can fix virtual screens in specific places so they stay put as you turn or tilt your head instead of moving with you. I find this crucial to avoid motion sickness. This is also what enables you to look around in virtual environments. With 6 DoF, you can move your entire body around in virtual environments and interact with virtual objects.
FoV stands for field of view, and most smart glasses today have a very limited one, around 50 degrees or less, which compares poorly to a fully immersive VR headset like the Meta Quest 3 (8/10, WIRED Review) with its 110-degree field of view. Because of this limitation, the virtual displays in smart glasses are often blurry or feel cut off around the edges, sometimes called fringing.
Controls can be tricky with most smart glasses, including small buttons on the stems. Connected devices, like smartphones, that mirror the screen to the glasses require a separate Bluetooth controller for gaming or navigating because the phone screen is turned off when they are connected. Some smart glasses have apps that offer trackpad and pointer controls. More advanced smart glasses with outward-facing cameras can track your hands.
Compatibility is another minefield with smart glasses, so check that your preferred devices are supported before you buy. Some devices require an additional adapter or dock. The range of available features and how well everything works is also variable in my experience.
Setup and fitting are crucial to get the most out of your smart glasses. Smart glasses with virtual displays tend to be adjustable and often come with interchangeable nose pads and maybe diopter dials to adjust focus. It’s worth spending some time fiddling around to find the right mix of comfort and focus.
A Brief History of Smart Glasses
While prototype facial computers date back as far as the late ’60s, it was Google Glass that popularized the idea of smart glasses. First released as a developer kit, Google Glass is more than a decade old. They gave rise to a serious privacy debate but were also beloved by early adopting “Glassholes.” After failing to take off as a consumer product, Google Glass pivoted into factories and warehouses, highlighting the potential of augmented reality in the workplace.
The first wave of augmented reality glasses looked bad and largely flopped. They were chunky and heavy, were light on features, and made wearers look like cyborg extras from a sci-fi B-movie. The first pair I tried from Vuzix made me question the entire category. There was a lot of hype about augmented reality, but most of these chunky glasses offered relatively low-resolution displays superimposed over your field of view. For smart glasses to truly blend the real world in front of you with the virtual world, they would need cameras, processing power, and some very smart software.
Many players, big and small, have tried and failed to make an impact in this space. The early excitement generated by companies like Magic Leap evaporated amid clunky hardware at high prices. The trouble with some of the most ambitious examples thus far, like Microsoft HoloLens 2 or Apple’s Vision Pro, is that they are relatively big and heavy and, more importantly, horribly expensive. The most successful smart glasses so far, and the only ones we can recommend, are far more focused, less ambitious, and cheaper, though they also fall well short of the original vision.
But there’s a palpable sense that smart glasses are ready for another try. Google’s Android XR opens up the space for developers to make the killer apps needed to drive adoption, and it has begun showing off new AI-powered smart glasses and a mixed-reality headset developed with Samsung, though there’s no firm release date yet. There are many other smart glasses in development, like Meta’s Orion glasses, the new Snap Spectacles, and Emteq’s inward-looking smart glasses. We also saw several at CES 2025.
Think About the Privacy Threat
It’s normal to see someone raising their phone and recording a video outside these days, but that doesn’t quite compare to the discreet recording possibilities of smart glasses. Sure, the cameras may be visible on the frame, and there’s often an LED to indicate when they’re capturing content, but people are already circumventing these visibility measures. Combined with the fact that many of these smart glasses feature AI capabilities that can recognize and memorize objects, they’re a real surveillance risk. Much of this responsibility is being passed on to you and how you use the glasses, so be aware of local recording and privacy laws.
This is a hard question to answer. Smart glasses may not be as expensive as a smartphone, but they’re not cheap. The category is still new, and we’re seeing many new companies come to market while established brands release new models faster than you can say augmented reality. As soon as we finish testing one product, there’s already another model with better features available. Just be cognizant of that fact and invest only if you have the cash and don’t mind the tech being eclipsed within a few months. Alternatively, that also might mean it’s better to wait and watch the space play out in 2025 to see if there’s a clear winner.
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Photograph: Simon Hill
Best Virtual Screen Smart Glasses
Viture Pro XR Glasses
With a focus on gaming, Viture’s Pro XR Glasses and a suite of accessories deliver a big-screen experience on your face. The company has been polishing its hardware for years, from the Viture One XR to the current crop. The Pro XR Glasses can be plugged directly into many smartphones, tablets, gaming handhelds, and laptops via USB-C to mirror the display. They deliver a 135-inch virtual screen at 1,080p resolution, up to 120-Hz refresh rate, a 46-degree field of view, and 1,000 nits of perceived brightness. In short, it’s the best-looking virtual screen at this price. I also appreciate the diopter dials, variety of nose pads, and electrochromic film (dimming lenses) to help you find a comfortable, focused view. The built-in Harman stereo speakers are just OK, and the free SpaceWalker app unlocks more features, including 3 degrees of freedom (DoF), though how well it works and the available options depend on your device.
If you can spend more, Viture’s accessories are worth a look. Viture partnered with 8BitDo (maker of some of our favorite mobile game controllers) to create a Bluetooth controller ($39), and it offers various adapters, a Pro Mobile Dock ($129) that lets you plug in devices like the Nintendo Switch or TV streaming sticks via HDMI, and a Pro Neckband ($299) that is essentially a wearable Android computer for content streaming, remote play and cloud gaming. The Pro Neckband also supports 3 DoF and hand tracking, so you can use gestures to navigate or resize multiple windows and lock them into place.
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Photograph: Adrienne So
Best Smart Glasses With a Camera
Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses
The Ray-Ban Meta glasses (6/10, WIRED Review) come in many styles, allowing you to choose different frames and lenses (including prescription lenses), and they look the most like regular glasses. They don’t have any virtual screen or HUD—instead, you get a 12-megapixel camera, open-ear speakers, and five microphones. There’s 32 GB of storage, and they run for around four hours when fully charged, with a case that can add another 32 hours. They have an IPX4 water resistance rating, so they’ll be OK in light rain. The photo quality can’t match the latest phones, and videos are limited to one minute in length. The Ray-Ban Meta glasses have been updated with enhanced AI and features like video calling since they were first released, but you need to connect them to a smartphone, and Meta AI needs an internet connection.
Many WIRED folks have tested the Ray-Ban Meta glasses with varying degrees of success, but WIRED editor Adrienne So raved about them as a useful combo of sunglasses, Bluetooth headphones, a hands-free camera, and a handy AI assistant. If you’re OK with Meta—there’s a lot to unpack there—the ability to livestream and upload directly to Instagram or Facebook might also be tempting.
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Photograph: Simon Hill
Another Great Option
XReal One AR Glasses
For some folks, the Xreal One smart glasses are a better buy than the Viture. They are slightly larger and heavier, but you get a bigger, 147-inch virtual display at 1,080p resolution, up to 120-Hz refresh rate, and a 50-degree field of view. It doesn’t get as bright though, with just 600 nits of perceived brightness. The XReal One also lacks diopter dials, though you do get nose pads and electrochromic film (dimming lenses). XReal’s X1 chip, built into the glasses, allows for 3 DoF so you can pin the screen without an accessory or app. You can also tweak settings like screen size and distance, IPD (interpupillary distance), calibration, and button mapping on the glasses. The built-in Bose stereo speakers deliver richer sound than Viture’s Harman speakers, and while XReal’s free Nebula app unlocks more features, it’s underbaked and downright janky compared to Viture’s SpaceWalker.
The XReal One is a big step up over the XReal Air 2 Pro, and there are some accessories you can snag to enhance the experience. That includes the upcoming XReal Eye ($99) camera, which sits below the bridge of the nose and supports 12-megapixel photos and video recording (1,080p at 60 fps). I haven’t tried it, but it looks a little odd. XReal has promised to add AI capabilities, including image recognition and communication via voice commands, in a future update, and that would boost the potential utility of the Eye add-on. There’s also the Beam Pro ($199) Android computer for content streaming, remote play, and cloud gaming, and it has dual 50-megapixel cameras to create 3D videos. It’s also worth noting that the company sells the XReal Air 2 Ultra ($699)—6 DoF AR glasses with front-facing cameras built into the frames—and the upcoming XReal One Pro ($599) offers a wider 57-degree field of view and goes up to 700 nits. We haven’t tested either.
Other Smart Glasses We’ve Tested
We’ve tested several more pairs of smart glasses—some good and some bad.
Rokid Max 2 Glasses for $529: The Spider-Man style lenses give these comfortable smart glasses a bit of character, though they won’t be to everyone’s taste. They project a 215-inch screen (1,080p, 120 Hz, 600 nits, 50-degree FoV) and boast diopter dials for focus adjustments, but I struggled to eliminate blurring around the edges, and instead of stylish electrochromic dimming, there’s a clip-on plastic blackout shield. I also tried the Rokid Station 2 ($299), which adds an Android TV interface to access entertainment apps but also a trackpad and air mouse for easier control. The original Rokid Station ($139) is a more basic portable Android TV.
Even Realities G1 for $599: The Even Realities G1 Smart Glasses (6/10, WIRED Review) are perhaps the closest smart glasses with a projected HUD that could pass for regular glasses, but they don’t have cameras or speakers. WIRED reviewer Chris Haslam praised them as smart glasses you’ll want to wear, with a hugely impressive HUD projector that displays crisp, green digital text (640 x 200 pixels). They provide notifications and boast AI assistance for turn-by-turn navigation and audio language translation, but neither feature works perfectly, and the Perplexity-powered AI service can be slow to respond to queries.
RayNeo Air 2S for $400: TCL-owned RayNeo has a lot of models, and while the Air 2S glasses are cheaper than our other virtual screen picks, I found them inferior in design, fit, and comfort. They offer a 201-inch virtual screen (1,080p, 120 Hz, 600 nits), but it is blurry around the edges. RayNeo’s software, required for 3 DoF, is very buggy and unpolished. The 2S are only slightly better than the older TCL RayNeo Air 2 XR Glasses (5/10, WIRED Review) with enhanced sound, brightness, and adjustability, but they suffer the same failings.
Amazon Echo Frames for $300: The Amazon Echo Frames (3/10, WIRED Review) are a bit old now, but you can still purchase them. Too bad they don’t do much. They work as sunglasses, filter blue light, and are IPX4-rated. Tech-wise, they have a speaker and microphone in each temple, and you can use them to query or command Alexa, as you would with a smart speaker, but there are no cameras here, making them far less capable than the similarly priced Ray-Ban Meta glasses.
Lucyd 2.0 Bluetooth Sunglasses for $149: The Lucyd 2.0 Bluetooth Sunglasses (7/10, WIRED Review) are much like the Echo Frames, with a choice of frames and lenses. They connect to your phone and act like a Bluetooth headset, with speakers and microphones in the temples, enabling you to listen to music, get audio directions, and query your AI voice assistant.