Chinese smart-glasses maker Even Realities puts displays first in alternative vision to Meta

A week before Meta Platforms unveiled a new live translation feature for its latest Ray-Ban smart glasses, I was having some Sichuan theatre translated live in front of my eyes courtesy of a pair of smart glasses made in Shenzhen.

Unlike the Ray-Ban frames, the Even Realities G1 glasses use micro-LED projectors and a special layer embedded in the lenses to convey information rather than speakers. It is something I have long wanted in a pair of sleek glasses that I would feel comfortable wearing out in public. The hardware delivers on the promise, although software may not be ready for the world to adopt this sci-fi future just yet.

When Even Realities offered to send me its debut product to try out, I was most excited to see what kind of progress was being made on smart glasses with displays. I categorise these as "visual" smart glasses, as that is how they primarily give feedback, in contrast with "auditory" smart glasses like the speaker-equipped Ray-Ban Meta frames, or "immersive" smart glasses, like Meta's newly unveiled Orion augmented reality glasses or the glasses from China's Xreal.

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The most important thing for a product like this is that they have to feel like regular glasses - i.e. something that people will want to wear every day - a fact not lost on Even Realities co-founder and CEO Will Wang.

"We know that if we were to build smart glasses, we need to actually start from the eyewear market, because that's the market where everybody is already used to wearing glasses," Wang told me at his company's Shenzhen office in July. "If you want people to wear it all day, it needs to be first a really good pair of glasses."

Even Realities sells polarised clip-on sunglasses for an additional US$100. The G1 glasses start at US$600, with prescription lenses costing a US$150 flat fee. Photo: Even Realities alt=Even Realities sells polarised clip-on sunglasses for an additional US$100. The G1 glasses start at US$600, with prescription lenses costing a US$150 flat fee. Photo: Even Realities>

Even Realities is part of a new crop of Chinese companies that see an opportunity to make svelte glasses crammed with tech that consumers will actually want. Smart glasses are having a moment, fuelled in part by the added capabilities of generative artificial intelligence. As happened with smartphones, Chinese companies are quickly iterating to push the product category forward.

Even Realities sees a way to differentiate itself by selling a premium product to overseas markets. The G1 went on sale on August 22 in the US and Europe, where it has international headquarters in Berlin, and the company said sales have exceeded expectations. There are no plans yet to launch the product in China.

The company was founded in September 2023 by Wang, a former Apple engineer who worked on the Apple Watch, and a team of people who moved over with him from JMGO, a Chinese projector company based in Shenzhen.

Design and fashion have been central to the company's approach to building smart glasses from the get-go, and it hired German eyewear designer Philipp Haffmans.

"A lot of companies ... are trying to build a tech product that looks like glasses," Wang said. "But we're trying to actually build a pair of glasses that has tech."

Some investors have already bought into Wang's vision. The company said it has raised more than US$10 million, including funding from top venture capital firms in China, but Wang declined to say who.

As far as the glasses go, the focus on design appears to have paid off. They are comfortable to wear, weigh less than many alternatives, and are stylish enough to be passed off as a normal pair of glasses. The real question for shoppers is whether they want to buy into the single thick-rimmed aesthetic available.

Style is important, because the G1 glasses are not cheap - even by smart glasses standards. On top of the US$600 base price, prescription lenses are an extra US$150, and the clip-on sunglasses are another US$100.

By comparison, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses start at US$300. Speakers, of course, are cheaper than micro-LEDs projectors.

So does Even Realities' tech justify the price of admission? The most appealing thing about the glasses is that they mostly do what is promised, which is stay out of the user's way until needed.

The monochrome green display that makes wearers feel like they are in the Matrix is largely unobtrusive. A dashboard with the date, weather and calendar appears when the user looks up, although it is sometimes a bit too sensitive and triggers with minor reclining and upwards glances.

The live translation of Sichuan theatre worked well during the host's monologues, allowing me to keep my eyes on the stage. Photo: Hawaii Duan alt=The live translation of Sichuan theatre worked well during the host's monologues, allowing me to keep my eyes on the stage. Photo: Hawaii Duan>

Some of the features work surprisingly well in specific contexts. At the Sichuan theatre, the translation handled the host's standard Mandarin well, allowing me to follow the gist of what he was saying. It fell apart during dialogue, though. This feature is best used for one-on-one conversations.

Two of the other most practical features are navigation and teleprompter. Navigation offers turn-by-turn instructions and teleprompter uses voice recognition to scroll through text as the user reads it aloud.

Yet these features are also very limited. Navigation has to be used through the maps service in the Even Realities app and requires a specific destination, making it not so useful on hiking trails, when I most wanted to use it.

The teleprompter feature is clever, but I am rarely in a situation when I would need it. I am more likely to be moderating panel discussions in front of a live audience rather than presenting from a prepared script.

As other AI-powered hardware has illustrated, though, the chatbot is mostly a gimmick. In the G1, it had difficulty registering my questions much of the time, which is strange since the translation feature, which also partially relies on OpenAI's GPT models, had no such issues. It is also easier to read the answers to prompts on a smartphone than on a floating display in a bright room or outdoors. This is an area where audio makes more sense.

Even Realities' product is about as good as smart glasses get right now as an everyday wearable. But the smart glasses race is taking off as many people are also trying to be more mindful about their use of technology by limiting screen time.

That raises the question of whether consumers really want to remove another layer of friction between themselves and the internet. In some cases, that seems to be an obvious benefit: Chinese conversations with the in-laws just got a lot easier. For most of my day, though, the answer is increasingly no.

Companies need to think about how to address shifting consumer needs. Wang believes his company is on to something and buying into an inevitable future.

"Smart glasses eventually will need to have the display, because that's the one point that's going to separate smart glasses with any other gadgets out there," Wang said. "We know that the trend is going to be there, but by the time we get there, you need to create a pair of smart glasses ... that people want to wear all day on their face."

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2024. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.