A glowing arrow stretches across a courtyard at Snap’s headquarters in Santa Monica, pointing a reporter toward a flashing target. The ball at his feet is real. The game is not. CNET’s Scott Stein spent about an hour in Snap’s $2,195 Specs glasses, and kicking a virtual soccer drill around was one of the things they could do.
Snap unveiled the glasses at a keynote-style event on 16 September, after first announcing them in June at the Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California. The reaction in June was not kind. Social media mocked the size, and the price drew gasps. Mashable noted that Snap has since said it filed more than 7,000 patents while developing the device.
What they are
Specs are augmented reality glasses, effectively a small computer worn on the face. The lenses use custom waveguides and a display technology called LCoS, with a 51-degree field of view. Watching a film should feel like looking at a 115-inch screen from about 10 feet away, according to Mashable. Unlike earlier AR glasses, there is no cable to a phone or laptop and no separate battery pack or processing puck.
They can show live translation in up to 60 languages, so captions appear in your view while you keep eye contact. You wake the onboard AI by saying “Hey Snap”. At the September event Snap also introduced Specs Intelligence, which Mashable described as an agentic personal AI tool for everyday tasks across devices.
Weight is the obvious drawback. The frames come in at 4.7 to 4.8 ounces (132 to 136 grams), well above other smart glasses. Stein said the fit was fine for half an hour, though they sometimes slid down his nose. Prescription inserts snap in and go up to -8. The display is bright indoors but can wash out in strong light, which is why the lenses darken like sunglasses outside.
Price and who it is for
Preorders cost $2,195 with a $200 refundable deposit. A charging case that doubles as a cellular hotspot with Verizon service in the US costs an extra $200 in a bundle. Snap says the glasses will ship later this fall in the United States, the UK and France, and a Los Angeles showroom opened for demos on 1 October.
Snap is not pitching them to everyone. Chief executive Evan Spiegel told Mashable in June that the company would “really start with the developer community” before extending to early adopters. He told CNET he sees Specs as session-based, “almost like a pair of reading glasses you put on to get something done”. Lighter, cheaper versions, he said, are not far off.
The timing is awkward. Meta’s smart glasses have drawn heavy criticism over privacy, and Mashable reported that Apple is reportedly delaying its own glasses launch.
Sources
- SPECS, Snap's First-Ever AR Glasses, Ships Out This Fall
- Snap Specs flagship AR glasses combine display with two Snapdragon chips – Notebookcheck News
- Snap launches its $2,195 Specs AR glasses at an awkward time | Mashable
- I Tried Snap Specs: Really Big, but Also Like Nothing Else Out There – CNET
