The race for regular-looking display-enabled smart glasses is on. Suddenly, a ton of companies are throwing ideas out there, including Google and Samsung, with glasses in development for next year. While Meta has Display glasses now, they don’t work with my prescription yet.
But the Even G2 glasses do. These $599 small-frame glasses by Even Realities also work with a separately $249 fitness ring, the R1, that doubles as a remote control for the glasses.
Even Realities had a previous pair of smart glasses with displays, the Even G1, that I never got a chance to test out. The thin-frame look is so shockingly normal that it’s hard to tell they’re smart glasses. The new G2 model, available now, features a similarly compact frame and includes additional software enhancements, including a conversation-following mode that attempts to listen in and help define topics on the fly.
Weird? Most absolutely.
Wearing the glasses for a bit during a prerelease demo with Even Realities’ founders, I appreciated the large display area the glasses offer. It’s only monochrome green, but the twin micro-LED projectors do a good job of creating a large, readable heads-up display that’s definitely larger than Ray-Ban Display’s single-eye display (with higher resolution and color). It’s also 3D, to some extent. The menus pop out at differing depths.
While I can see a little patch on each lens where the diffractive waveguide catches the side-projected displays, you can’t see any glow through the glasses, and it’s generally hard to even see that anything’s on your lens at all. Meta’s Ray-Ban Display glasses do a better job at being nearly invisible, but Even Realities’ approach is close behind.
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Round glasses aren’t my thing, but I’m impressed by how compact Even G2 fit on my face.
Aiming to be everyday
Where these glasses excel is in their wide range of prescription support, up to +12.00/-12.00, meaning my eyes would be well-supported. Don’t worry, I’m getting a prescription pair to test and review soon.
The Even G2 glasses also have a battery life of nearly two days on a single charge, far exceeding the battery life of other smart glasses I’ve seen. They’re also IP67 water resistant, and except for slight bulges on the ends of the arms, the rest of the glasses are shockingly compact compared to Meta Ray-Bans.
To do this, though, the glasses make compromises. There are no cameras onboard, and no audio either: just microphones and displays. You can use your own earbuds for audio assistance while using the connected phone app. The lack of cameras could be a win for anyone who doesn’t want to feel like a privacy creep.
The separately $249 ring feels like an important piece of the glasses: a side touch pad controls scrolling through menus and starting apps on demand. It also doubles as an Oura-like fitness ring, tracking heart rate and wellness scores.
I’m not sure how any of those fitness functions will compare to a standard fitness tracker, but it’s interesting to see a glasses-to-fitness-tracker connection here, something I expect Meta, Google and eventually Apple to follow (Meta’s already doing a bit of that with Oakley Vanguards).
You can barely see the waveguide on the lenses.
AI translation, teleprompter and conversation assistant
The Even AI onboard glasses features are fascinating, too. Live translation works for 29 languages, and a teleprompter mode scrolls notes or a speech on-screen, pausing and continuing to match your spoken words. This feature, which was on the first Even Realities, is one that CEO Will Wang says has been one of the most popular. Now, the added ring support to help scroll text should make these even better as live presentation glasses.
A “Conversate” mode listens to a conversation you have with someone and starts to pull possibly interesting words or phrases, highlighting definitions and details on-screen while you’re talking… sort of a live helper-whisperer mode. I’m not sure how the function determines what’s important to focus on, and I’m not even sure if I’d ever want to use it, but it’s another curious AI assistance idea for glasses.
It seems that Even Realities is currently producing the most discreet-looking AI-powered smart glasses for everyday wear, which also boast the longest battery life. There’ll be more to come as I test the Even G2 with my prescription.
