More than a decade after its first smart glasses lost the company tens of millions of dollars, Snap is trying again — this time with a £1,995 pair that it hopes will mark the “beginning of a new era in computing.”
Snap Inc co-founder and chief executive Evan Spiegel unveiled the new augmented reality glasses, called Specs, at a tech convention in California. The glasses overlay digital elements onto the real world, allowing users to watch videos, browse the web, play AR games and record what they see — all without needing a tether to a smartphone, unlike Meta’s Ray-Ban and Oakley models.
“Snap announces £1,995 augmented reality glasses a decade after original smart glasses lost tens of millions”
“I’d say it never really gets old,” Spiegel said, describing the moment digital objects appear before the wearer’s eyes. “Privacy has to be built in from the very beginning. Specs only work if people trust them.”
The device, which ships this autumn in the US, UK and France, costs £1,995 in Britain and $2,195 in the United States. That undercuts Apple’s Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, which starts at $3,499, but far exceeds Meta’s smart glasses at $224. A £156 ($200) refundable deposit is needed to pre-order.
But Ben Hatton, a market analyst at CCS Insight, said the price meant the hardware was “unlikely to become a mainstream device any time soon.” Snap’s core audience of younger consumers, he noted, “rarely have this sort of money to spend on a single gadget.”
The glasses are designed to be “wearable for everyday life,” according to Snap, but their battery lasts only four hours on average before needing recharging. A charging case holds up to 20 hours. Unlike Apple Vision Pro, which requires a wire connected to a battery pack, the Specs are self-contained. Hatton said that improved “wearability and mobility” but came “at the cost of lower battery output.”
“Despite the impressive features and experiences available through Specs, glasses with a 4-hour mixed-use battery life and bulky design are not going to replace the smartphone any time soon,” he added.
A built-in light glows when the device is recording, and users control what data is stored, synced, shared or deleted. The privacy measures follow longstanding criticism of smart glasses, which have been used to film women in public without consent. In February, the UK data privacy watchdog, the ICO, wrote to Meta after revelations that data workers in Kenya had to watch videos of people having sex and using the toilet filmed with Meta’s smart glasses.