Smart glasses finally look cool, so where next?

Early smart glasses may have failed their eye test, but their fashion-focused successors are fighting back. Ray-Ban Stories, Vue Lite 2 and Bose Frames Tempo prioritize look and feel, adding only the functionality their stylish looks can handle.

Do they do enough to turn the heads of the social media generation? Maybe, but it depends on your point of view. What’s more certain is that the future of smart glasses is finally coming into focus. ?

Smart specs you want to wear

Given how bad early augmented reality (AR) glasses looked, I’m delighted to see stylish versions now hitting the market. The latest products such as Ray-Ban Stories manage to pack their AR technology into frames that look and feel as good as non-AR equivalents.

The Stories are marketed squarely at the social media story sharing millions, undoubtedly with one eye focused on the metaverse revolution ahead. Wearers can take photos and videos with a quick finger tap to the frame, as well as using the glasses to take phone calls and play music (if you like it tinny). Early PR pushed a cool creative social vibe: Coachella festival goers snapping and sharing their experiences,[1] and a celebrity photographer using Stories for a magazine cover shoot.[2]?

Other style and comfort-conscious products aim to carve out space in different segments of the AR glasses market. The Nreal Air sunglasses are closest to the Stories’ mainstream consumer pitch, offering to immerse you in your favorite shows by streaming your smartphone content onto an impressive HD heads-up display (HUD).[3] You also get access to AR features on Nreal’s Nebula app,[4] such as projecting multiple pieces of live content onto the HUD at the same time.

The Vue Lite 2 are tapping into post-COVID-19 ways of working. They’re marketed to home-workers as a more comfortable wear-all-day alternative to ear buds and headphones.[5] Bose’s Frames Tempo audio sports glasses do something similar for sports enthusiasts.[6] Although the bass needs more work, the Frames’ sound quality is amazing.

Fun as these products are, unfortunately, I’m personally not yet convinced that any of them offer enough advantage to be worth the money. The fact that they are all attractive and comfortable is a big deal, but the AR features still feel too limited or clunky to be much more than a gimmick.

Where to from here?

My reservations don’t mean I’m pessimistic about the future of AR glasses. Far from it. They could be the mass market doorway to life in the metaverse — a huge opportunity for whoever cracks the ultimate trio of design, functionality and cost.

Plenty of developers seem to agree. In addition to the developers already mentioned, in Spring 2022 Google confirmed it is working on new AR glasses,[7] while Chinese giant Xiaomi announced its own smart glasses in 2021.[8] All of them will be hoping to grow the head-mounted display slice of the US$81.5b global wearables market.[9]

Even with all the investment, it may take a few generations of AR smart glasses to get the tech good enough and cheap enough to really take off in consumer markets. It’s hard to make complex technology barely noticeable while still being effective. Most commentators anticipate mainstream adoption is still a decade away.

Smart glasses may never be as ubiquitous as a smart phone, but Apple has proven that when it comes to personal tech devices, style matters as much as substance. By acing the first, Ray-Ban Stories and their competitors move AR glasses an important step closer to becoming a tech product we accept as a valued, even coveted, part of our everyday lives.

The views reflected in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global EY organization or its member firms.

[1] https://hypebeast.com/2022/4/scrapbook-ray-ban-stories-meta-coachella (2022)

[2] https://fadmagazine.com/2021/12/02/rankin-shoots-anya-chalotra-for-worlds-first-magazine-cover-shot-using-smart-glasses/ (Dec, 2021)

[3] https://www.nreal.ai/air (Accessed 2023)

[4] https://www.nreal.ai/nebula (Accessed 2023)

[5] https://vueglasses.com/collections/vue-lite (Accessed 2023)

[6] https://www.bose.co.uk/en_gb/products/outlet/bose-frames-tempo-fr.html#v=bose_frames_tempo_fr_black_row (Accessed 2023)

[7] https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/unlike-google-glass-these-new-ar-glasses-unveiled-at-io-might-actually-be-practical/ (May, 2022)

[8] https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/14/22673144/xiaomi-smart-glasses-announced-microled-display-ar (Sep, 2021)

[9] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-01-11-gartner-forecasts-global-spending-on-wearable-devices-to-total-81-5-billion-in-2021 (Jan, 2021)