Glasses want to be the next big wearable. It’s not clear to me that they will achieve it.
One of the big debates this week in Xataka’s Slack has been starred by ‘Project Astra’, Google’s plan to have the definitive voice assistant and be closer than ever to ‘Her’. They showed it working on a cell phone, but it also did so through glasses.
The demo? Astra explaining to us through them what we were seeing. She even dared to analyze very specific parts of the image, such as one of the parts of a speaker, to give us details about them.
It was clear to me that the Rabbit R1 would be a failure. It was clear to me that the AI Pin would be too. I felt alone in a storm hype in which I saw nothing but smoke. And, with these glasses as wearables In the medium term, I have practically the same clear points: they have a very difficult time becoming something mainstream. Here I am referring to glasses as a day-to-day device with an assistant included, concepts such as Vision Pro or Meta Quest 3 are a separate case.
Meta opened the season. I have been a user of Ray-Ban Stories since their launch. They are great sunglasses (they are still Ray-Ban). Otherwise… I have literally used them three times for multimedia purposes.
As a photo and video camera they are of no use to me: without a halfway decent processor and a sensor that is not tiny, the quality is very poor. As headphones, it’s not just that they are far from my AirPods Pro 2, it’s that they don’t even compete with 50 euro headphones.
And, in the event that I upgraded to the Ray-Ban Meta (with Meta AI assistant), I think it would not be necessary for you to describe to me what I am already seeing. Some of the examples that Meta gives us on its website are:
- “Hey Meta, look and describe this landscape in an inspiring way.”
- “Hey Meta, look and describe what I’m seeing.”
- “Hey Meta, look and tell me how much water these flowers need.”
- “Hey Meta, look and translate this text into English.”
Saving, perhaps, the issue of translation (the only thing that separates the Ray-Ban Stories from the new Meta) the uses are so specific that. From my perspective, I am unable to imagine them as something of mass adoption. In fact, it is nothing more than the materialization in glasses format of technologies such as Google Lens. An app that I use a few times a year.
More usage scenarios will emerge, they will be useful in certain circumstances and we will be able to ask, in the middle of a restaurant, what is on our plate (because asking the waiter is not an option). But those scenarios will be specific, very specific. And perhaps not enough to spend significant amounts of money.
Technical limitations. Smart glasses have a format that poses serious challenges. The first is hardware. Introducing camera sensors with their corresponding lenses is quite complicated, as long as we want these glasses to have a “normal” format. They are born as a device with cameras and audio “that complies”, but not as a replacement for the cell phone or headphones.
The same thing happens with the battery. Video recording is one of the most demanding power demands for any electronic device. My Ray-Ban Stories barely last about 3 hours of intense use, and in the case of the new Ray-Ban Meta Facebook maintains the figures: it promises about 4 hours. This is not something that can change in the medium term and represents a relevant limitation for the format.
That the battery lasts a long time should not only worry you at the time of purchase: you always have to think ahead. Those theoretical 4 hours, in 3 or 4 years of use, will probably be closer to 2 hours. With advances in batteries the numbers will increase, but the limitations in this aspect are clear.
A very intrusive format (for some). It is true that the majority of the Spanish population wears glasses to improve their vision, but in my case I understand wearables as something that I can wear all day without hardly realizing it.
In the case of people who do not wear glasses, opt for this format that can generate visual fatigue, more intrusive than a smart watch, and reserved for specific uses. I am convinced that, if I were a user with glasses, my point of view would be different (pun intended).
In the case of a watch, a ring or a bracelet, we talk about format mainstream: comfortable, for everyone and those that we forget after a few hours.
Let’s talk about privacy. For this type of device to preserve our privacy, it is necessary that they only record when we tell them to. But… who hasn’t accidentally activated Google Assistant or Siri and heard something that perhaps we didn’t want to tell them? With smart glasses, the precautions to take are even greater.
We are giving the company permission to see (and analyze) what we see, something that should not worry us when they do it consensually (your smartphone does exactly the same when you open the camera), but that in the case of glasses requires special care.
Only time will determine if I am wrong or not in my reasoning, but in my case everything starts from the same point: smart glasses do not come to solve a problem or to cover or generate any need that we do not have covered (the latter, for me , is the key to the commercial success of any product). They come to perform, in a less complete way, functions that our smartphones already perform. Of course, in a format that leaves our hands free.
Image | Xataka
In Xataka | Xiaomi glasses are being a brutal success in China. And they haven’t gone on sale yet.
