These new AI smart glasses are like getting a second pair of ChatGPT-powered eyes

The Ray-Ban Meta glasses have a new rival for the title of best smart glasses, with the new Solos AirGo Visions letting you quiz ChatGPT about the objects and people you're looking at.

Unlike previous Solos glasses, the AirGo Vision boast a built-in camera and support for OpenAI's latest GPT-4o model. These let the glasses identify what you're looking at and respond to voice prompts. For example, you could simply ask, “what am I looking at?” or give the AirGo Visions a more specific request like “give me directions to the Eiffel Tower.”

Another neat feature of the new Solos glasses is their modular frame design, which means you can change some parts – for example, the camera or lenses – to help them suit different situations. These additional frames start from $ 89 (around £70 / AU$ 135).   

If talking to a pair of camera-equipped smart glasses is a little too creepy, you can also use the camera to simply take holiday snaps. The AirGo Visions also feature built-in speakers to answer your questions or play music.

While there's no official price or release date for the full version of the AirGo Visions, Solos will release a version without the camera for $ 249 (around £200 / AU$ 375) in July. That means we can expect a camera-equipped pair to cost at least as much as the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which will set you back $ 299 / £299 / AU$ 449.

How good are AI-powered smart glasses?

While we haven't yet tried the Solos AirGo Visions, it's fair to say that smart glasses with AI assistants are a work in progress. 

TechRadar's Senior Staff Writer Hamish Hector recently tried the Meta AI's 'Look and Ask' feature on his Ray-Ban smart glasses and found the experience to be mixed. He stated that “the AI is – when it works – fairly handy,” but that “it wasn’t 100% perfect, struggling at times due to its camera limitations and an overload of information.”

The smart glasses failed in some tests, like identifying trees, but their ability to quickly summarize a confusing, information-packed sign about the area’s parking restrictions showed how useful they can be in some situations.

As always, with any AI-powered responses, you'll want to corroborate any answers to filter out errors and so-called hallucinations. But there's undoubtedly some potential in the concept, particularly for travelers or anyone who is visually impaired.

The Solos AirGo Visions' support for OpenAI's latest GPT-4o model should make for an interesting comparison with the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses when the camera-equipped version lands. Until then, you can check out our guide to the best smart glasses you can buy right now.

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TCL has launched a new pair of AR glasses with 120Hz OLED screens

There’s a new pair of AR smart glasses on the scene, in the form of the TCL Nxtwear S Plus specs – a follow-up to the TCL Nxtwear S, which we reviewed in the middle of last year – priced at $ 399 / £399 / AU$ 699.

Much like their predecessors, these glasses can be connected to a compatible device like a phone or console – either by a USB-C Display Port, or by using adaptors that you’ll have to pay extra for – so you can enjoy your favorite show, game, film, or app on a large virtual screen.

For 2D visuals, the OLED displays offer Full-HD resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels) on a display that’s the equivalent screen size of a 215-inch screen placed six meters from your face. For 3D pictures you’ll get a resolution of 3840 x 1080 pixels

TCL Nxtwear S Plus being used to play Mario Kart on the Nintendo Switch

(Image credit: TCL)

In terms of improvements that warrant the Plus title, these TCL specs do have a few important upgrades over the originals.

First, they now boast 600 nits of brightness, 200 more nits than the 400-nit TCL Nxtwear S, and 100 more than the 500-nit Xreal Air 2 Pro specs. This should lead to more vivid colors and better contrast in the displayed picture.

The dual displays also now have a max refresh rate of 120Hz rather than just 60Hz which should make the visuals appear much more smooth than before. We kind of wish they went up to 4K, but this is a resolution other smart specs also have yet to achieve at this price point – so our disappointment isn’t exclusive to the TCL Nxtwear S Plus.

Lastly, the new TCL Nxtwear S Plus smart glasses weigh a whole 2g less than their already lightweight predecessors, coming in at 87g instead of 89g. Based on our tests, smart glasses that weigh this little don’t feel noticeably heavier than wearing a pair of regular specs.

TCL Nxtwear S Plus being used to watch a film in a dark bedroom

(Image credit: TCL)

Some things to watch out for

We haven’t tested the TCL Nxtwear S Plus glasses yet, so our advice would be to try them, or read a few reviews, before you buy them because of two main factors: heat and adapters.

When testing the original TCL Nxtwear S smart specs we found that the bridge got uncomfortably hot within about 20 minutes. Other smart glasses like the Xreal Air 2 Pro and original Xreal Air glasses get around this issue by having the front end of the arm get warm instead – so the hot component isn’t touching your face – so it’s possible that these new TCL Nxtwear glasses won’t have the same issue as the old version. 

If the bridge still does get quite warm then you might not be able to enjoy the TCL glasses to their fullest.

The Xreal Air 2 Pro AR smart glasses next to the Xreal Beam hub, they're both on a wooden table in front of a brick wall

You might want to check out the Xreal Air 2 Pro glasses (Image credit: Future)

Adapters are also an issue for a lot of smart glasses. While they can interface with a good number of devices, you’ll need quite a few not-so-optional-add-ons to get the best experience. 

These include special cables that allow you to hook them up to more devices, and adapters that have their own internal battery, so you don’t drain the connected device’s battery as quickly. Picking up all of these extras can add to the cost, which is always a shame when you’re already spending $ 399 / £399 / AU$ 699 on the device itself.

Noise leakage can also be a problem for smart glasses with their open-ear speakers, though the TCL Nxtwear S Plus glasses have a Whisper Mode that promises to keep noise leakage from their 0.5mm stereo speakers to a minimum . We've yet to use any smart glasses that don’t have a problem with audio escaping to the people around you, even if they have their own version of Whisper Mode, but hopefully the TCL Nxtwear S Plus specs will convince us that smart glasses don’t have to be noisy.

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Samsung Glasses could be the name of a new pair of Samsung smart specs

Rumors of some kind of Samsung smart glasses have been swirling for years at this point, but it looks as though the wait for an actual device might soon be over: Samsung has filed to register “Samsung Glasses” as a trademark in the UK.

This comes from UploadVR (via Android Central), and the filing comes with a description of the categories the product covers: virtual reality headsets, augmented reality headsets, headphones, smartphones, and smart glasses.

That covers a lot of ground. Virtual reality or VR means fully enclosed digital experiences, augmented reality or AR means looking at the real world with digital graphics overlaid on top, mixed reality or MR is enhanced AR where the digital elements and real elements interact, and extended reality or XR is used to mean VR, AR and MR all together.

Exactly which category the Samsung Glasses might fall into remains to be seen, but we know that the company is working on several different products offering these technologies, after previously being responsible for the Samsung Gear VR.

What to expect

Samsung itself has confirmed that it has an XR headset in the pipeline to rival the Apple Vision Pro, but it's not expected to appear until later in 2024, so that Samsung has time to get features such as display sharpness as good as they can be.

The term “glasses” really doesn't sound like a headset, anyway. Could it be that Samsung is also working on a pair of AR specs? We've seen suggestions of this in previous years, though no confirmation from Samsung itself.

Or, we might be talking about more basic smart glasses: able to take photos and videos, an on-board smart assistant, but no fancy augmented reality. See our Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses review for Meta's recent entry in this product category.

Right now it's not clear exactly what to expect – but it looks very much like Samsung will soon launch a device that you can wear on your face. Its next big launch event should be for the Samsung Galaxy S24 phone, sometime in January.

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Want a pair of AR glasses? Now’s the best time to finally buy some

If you've been looking to pick up a pair of AR glasses but have been put off by the price then this year's best Black Friday deals might be able to lend a hand. There are some big savings to be had on a wide range of deals.

The popular Xreal Air glasses are currently $ 271 at Amazon – down from $ 379 – and the recently released  RayNeo Air 2 glasses are $ 30, now down to $ 349 at Amazon. Best of all every deal below is the lowest ever price these AR glasses have ever been. So no matter which pair or bundle you pick up you'll be getting a bargain this Black Friday.

If you're after something a bit more immersive, you might instead prefer this year's Oculus Quest 2 Black Friday deals. Otherwise, scroll down to see some AR glasses discounts.

Today's best Black Friday AR glasses deals

Xreal Air glasses: was $ 379 now $ 271 at Amazon
The Xreal Air AR glasses are currently over $ 100 off for Black Friday which is a really solid deal. Connect these AR specs to a compatible smartphone, tablet, or laptop and you’ll be able to see the screen on a massive virtual display. There’s a really fun gadget and normally quite pricey, so this is a deal you don’t want to ignore.View Deal

Xreal Air glasses + Xreal Beam: was $ 449 now $ 379 at Xreal
To make the Xreal glasses better you can pick up this bundle that includes the Beam. It’s a portable power source that phones can wirelessly cast to, meaning you won’t drain your phone’s battery as quickly and it allows you to connect the specs to a wider range of gadgets. Just remember to use the $ 70 voucher for a full discount.

If you already have the glasses, the Beam on its own is $ 10 off. It was $ 119 but is now $ 109 at Xreal.View Deal

Xreal Air glasses + Xreal Adapter: was $ 369 now $ 309 at Amazon
This bundle includes the Xreal Airs and an adapter that makes it easier to connect the Xreal glasses to iPhones (if you have an HDMI to Lightning converter), and game consoles like a PS5 and Xbox Series X.

If you already have the glasses, the Adapter on its own is $ 10 off. It was $ 49 but is now $ 39 at Xreal.View Deal

Rokid Max glasses: was $ 379 now $ 299 at Amazon
Instead of the Xreal Air glasses, you could opt for the Rokid Max specs. These glasses do offer several benefits including better field-of-view and are slightly lighter, though we found they can get uncomfortably hot during use which can be distracting.View Deal

RayNeo Air 2 glasses: was $ 379 now $ 349 at Amazon
We’ve yet to try these specs out, but $ 30 on a pair of AR glasses that launched this year isn’t bad. We have tried the related Nxtwear S AR glasses and thought they were fine, though they weren’t faultless so we’d recommend checking out some reviews before picking up this RayNeo gadget.View Deal

I've had the chance to test a large range of AR glasses like the ones above, and I think they are really fun gadgets – I love using them, and my friends and family who have tried them think they're awesome too.

On a commute, or just when you and your partner want to use the TV at the same time you can slip on a pair of these and have a large full HD display floating in front of you. Unfortunately, they're normally too expensive for what you get. Spending around $ 400 on a wearable display is a lot, especially when you need to pay extra for add-ons that are optional in the loosest sense of the word (to get the most out of these specs you need an adapter or two).

These Black Friday deals bring the prices down to more reasonable levels; they're literally the cheapest these glasses have ever been. If you want to find out more about these AR glasses then check out our full Xreal Air review, Rokid Max review, and TCL Nxtwear S review.

If you are thinking of getting a pair of AR glasses, I'd also suggest checking out our Black Friday headphones deals page. The audio from these glasses is pretty weak, and it leaks too. For a better and more private experience, a pair of good Bluetooth headphones is a must.

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