Samsung and Google’s Smart Glasses Are Meta’s First Real Competition

After months of lead-up, Samsung and Google’s smart glasses—sorry, “intelligent eyewear”—are finally here, marking the biggest splash in the space since Meta’s arrival. Samsung and Google didn’t let us try the glasses at past demonstrations, but now we’ve had the chance to, you know, actually put them on, and the vision of camera-clad, AI-equipped eyewear is looking awfully familiar, though it’s potentially even more focused on funneling your attention to AI of it all. It’s Gemini all the way down Before I get into what Samsung and Google’s smart glasses do, I should note that there are two different collaborating brands at play here. There are the Samsung/Google smart glasses from Gentle Monster and the Samsung/Google smart glasses from Warby Parker. The Gentle Monster-made smart glasses start at $449, and the Warby Parker shades start at $395. They come in six styles and three styles, respectively, and will be available in stores on Dec. 10, but you can preorder them now. To no one’s surprise, Samsung’s intelligent eyewear (its terminology for smart glasses) pulls from a similar playbook as Meta’s line of first-party and third-party-branded smart glasses. The most unique feature set of Samsung’s smart glasses—and any smart glasses, to be honest—is still those that include computer vision, which is the ability to use your camera to ask AI about your environment. A Warby Parker pair of Samsung/Google smart glasses. © James Pero / Gizmodo To test those out, I ran through the typical gamut of demos, asking Gemini how to re-style a room that I was in or who painted a print that I was looking at on the wall (it was Keith Haring, which I already knew). The results were satisfactory, I guess, but there’s always the problem of trying to figure out when exactly I should be using those features. I’ve found them to be somewhat useful while tending to plants in my garden, asking if they look like they’re doing well and what I can do to improve their general health, but most of the time it feels like I’m fishing for reasons to use vision-based AI. The good news is, if you don’t want to use computer vision, there’s plenty of other AI elsewhere that has nothing to do with the camera. One highlight for me was Gemini’s translation abilities. I got to test out the smart glasses’ ability for live translation by having Gemini convert Portuguese (the Brazilian kind) to English, and it was pretty speedy. I felt like I was able to get a handle on what was being said nearly in real-time. Even more impressive is that the glasses can switch between languages adeptly without having to manually select anything. In a demo, two Google representatives spoke two different languages at once, and it was able to keep translating them both to English without any additional input. More Warby Parker specs. © James Pero Would most people typically need to do that throughout their day? Probably not—I don’t think I would—but it’s impressive from a technological standpoint, at least. Elsewhere, the smart glasses have most of the stuff you would expect. There’s turn-by-turn navigation, which seemed to work okay, and pictures and video with a max video resolution of 3K and a 12-megapixel sensor. I didn’t get a chance to shoot much with the glasses, but they seemed to be on par with Meta’s smart glasses, and the video stabilization is decent. Because this is Google we’re talking about, its smart glasses are integrated with Google Home, meaning you can use them to control your smart home, like changing light colors and the like. Most people are just fine shouting out their speakers, but if you have a gap in your smart speaker coverage or you’re not there at the moment and you want to turn your AC, for example, it could be pretty useful. The Gentle Monster shades have a more striking frame style. © James Pero / Gizmodo In the non-AI feature realm, Samsung and Google’s intelligent eyewear seemed solid as well. Audio was plenty loud in my limited testing, but it was hard to tell if it was as clear and nuanced as Meta’s glasses for listening to music. Calling was also clear, though I’ll have to test that one myself to see how well they block out background noise. The hardware also felt fairly nice and light (slightly lighter than Meta’s), and I like the large array of styles—especially the glasses made in partnership with Gentle Monster, which look futuristic. Functionally, the whole thing feels a lot like the experience of using Meta and its many smart glasses. There are, however, some distinctions in another area that people really care about. A small improvement on privacy As important as the features are on a pair of smart glasses, privacy is arguably just as important to consider, if not more so. The reason, in case you haven’t been keeping up, is that smart glasses have been used on various occasions to record people without their consent and, in Meta’s case, have collected user data (videos) for AI training. Those videos, according to Meta contractors who were reportedly tasked with viewing them, contained all manner of sensitive sights, like people having sex, using the bathroom, and even sensitive banking information. While Samsung and Google have pretty much the same ideas as Meta on how to help mitigate unwanted recording—a capture LED that lights up when you’re recording—they have moved the needle on user privacy a bit. For one, Google tells me that its glasses will not collect visual data for AI recording, which is already a step above Meta. The camera is subtle. © James Pero / Gizmodo Secondly, while most queries are saved in your Gemini History, which logs the conversations and commands you lob at Gemini throughout the day, Google says it won’t store visual information there, which is good, seeing as those images could contain sensitive information. Elsewhere, Google is using a similar bag of tricks, like blurring out faces when they’re detected—Meta claims it does this as well—though it’s impossible to know how well those automated filters work. In Meta’s case, reports from the aforementioned contractors would suggest they’re not perfect. Slim. © James Pero / Gizmodo Google also says it won’t allow people to livestream to YouTube with the glasses and that it’s prepared to police the platform and remove videos taken with the glasses that could be considered harassment, though we’ll see how effective those efforts are. Easier said than done. The fact is, there’s not really a pair of smart glasses with a camera out there that has a perfect solution to the issue of privacy. When you put a camera on people’s faces with the ability to record discreetly, they’re going to do what they will, and what they will isn’t always good. Toughest competition in town While Meta has had some strong competition, none have yet been able to exist on an equal plane. Meta, for its many, many, flaws, is a company of vast resources that, with the help of EssilorLuxottica, has the firepower to make smart glasses that feel polished, even if they have a reputation for being perverted. Samsung and Google are obviously on that level, and as a result, I expect their intelligent eyewear to be as polished and feature-rich, especially because they’ve had this long to cook. There’s still a lot I won’t know until I really dig in and use a pair at length, but if early results are any indication, Meta finally has a rival worth sweating over.