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I’ve been wearing display-equipped smart glasses for years. Waveguide smart glasses—the kind that can put maps, messages, and other useful info directly in front of your eyes—promise a future where your phone might feel obsolete. That said, you probably won't see me wearing them while walking down the street anytime soon. The problem? They aren't ready yet. Right now, waveguide glasses are a mix of promise and frustration: futuristic tech packed into frames that are often bulky, inconsistent, or limited in what they can actually do.
Even so, the potential is undeniable. After testing multiple models, I can confidently say that waveguide smart glasses are the future of wearable tech. They just need more polish, standardized features, and better third-party support before they’re worth buying.
With that in mind, I'm here to break down what waveguide glasses are, how they differ from other smart eyewear, and why they could eventually change the way we interact with the world—just not today.
What Are Waveguide Glasses?
Waveguide glasses are smart glasses that project a picture into your eye using a flat lens with a special etched pattern (a waveguide) that redirects light from a tiny projector in the frames. They can have microphones to pick up your voice, speakers to direct sound into your ears, and cameras to take snapshots. They universally come with an AI assistant that uses microphones to accept voice commands, cameras to visually analyze what you're looking at, and speakers to provide answers to your queries.
That's a lot of technology built into a humble-looking pair of glasses that isn't much bulkier or less comfortable than ordinary glasses. That's because much of the processing isn't done on the glasses; that work is offloaded to your phone and the cloud for processing AI features. The glasses' chips mostly handle sorting inputs and outputs, and determining which commands and visual data to send to your phone or AI.
AI Glasses vs. Waveguide Glasses: What's the Real Difference?
Waveguide smart glasses are more advanced than smart glasses without displays. Meta's smart glasses are a good example of this. The Meta Ray-Ban Display is effectively the same as the Meta Ray-Ban, just with a waveguide display (and a graphical interface and unique controller, but I’ll get to those points later). Rokid is another case. Its Rokid AI Glasses have mics, speakers, a camera, and AI features, while the Rokid Glasses have all of those things plus a waveguide display. Yes, those names are confusing. What's more confusing than that, whether they have waveguide displays or not, they're categorically called "AI glasses."
On the one hand, that makes sense because they're all powered by AI and do mostly the same things, with the only real difference being the display. On the other hand, the ability to display visual information separates a TV from a radio. Or a smart display from a smart speaker. The visual element is a big deal. It's also a big expense: Smart glasses with waveguide displays usually cost at least twice as much as their non-visual counterparts. For example, the Meta Ray-Ban Display starts at $799.99, while the regular Meta Ray-Ban starts at $299.99.
I've seen people shopping for smart glasses without even realizing there's a difference between Meta Ray-Bans and Meta Ray-Ban Displays (and calling the latter the former) more times than I can count. So I'm drawing a line to better distinguish between the two smart glasses categories: AI smart glasses with displays are waveguide glasses.
Prism vs. Waveguide Glasses: Which Are Better?
I mentioned earlier that I use display-equipped smart glasses regularly, but the ones I use are a completely different type from waveguide glasses and aren't particularly mobile. Prism display smart glasses use large prism lenses behind separate exterior lenses to redirect light from projectors into your eyes. Both the prism lenses and the projectors are larger than those used in waveguide glasses, enabling them to produce brighter, larger, higher-resolution images.
My current top pick among prism smart glasses, the XReal One Pro, shows a 1,920-by-1,080 picture across a 57-degree field of view. When I use it, it looks like I'm staring at a big TV or a movie theater screen, and it has an ultrawide mode that can show a 3,840-by-1,080 picture when connected to a computer. It requires me to move my head to fully see everything, as if it were an ultrawide monitor.
That said, Prism smart glasses are not AI glasses. They don't run apps, they don't answer questions, and you shouldn't wear them when walking around. You plug them into any device that supports DisplayPort over USB-C, which includes most current laptops, smartphones, and tablets, as well as some adapters that let them work with other sources like the Switch and Switch 2. Then you sit down, arrange the cable so it doesn't get in the way, and watch, play, or work on whatever you want. I recommend these smart glasses to most people for now.
Why You Shouldn't Buy Waveguide Glasses Just Yet
Waveguide smart glasses are the future because they focus on visual information. After all, depending on how fast you read or can understand a diagram, a visual response to a question can be understood much more quickly than a spoken one. For example, a map with a route and big arrows that tell you when to turn is a lot more useful than having directions read to you. Likewise, subtitles that appear as a person speaks will keep you more engaged in a conversation with a language barrier, rather than waiting for the translation to be spoken. You could look at the ingredients in your fridge and immediately get a recipe for a meal you can cook with them. Waveguide smart glasses can perform these tasks, to varying degrees of success.
None of those degrees is successful enough to reliably count on in day-to-day use, though. The functionality is limited, fragmented, unpolished, and in some cases practically unusable. It depends on the waveguide model. But even the best of the best that I've tested have had many issues. And it starts with the waveguide display itself.
Green-Only Displays Kill the Experience
Waveguide display smart glasses have one big thing in common: The color green. The Even Realities G1 and G2, Rokid Glasses, and Vuzix Z100 have monochrome screens that project the color green, and that's it. That's fine for text and simple drawings, but downright stifling for anything else.
This is the biggest issue with most current waveguide glasses, and it's hard to get past. The Even G2 is one of the most usable waveguide smart glasses I've tested, but I have a hard time recommending it because I know color displays will be the standard within the next year or two. The monochrome waveguide display will go the way of black-and-white TVs.
I'm confident in this because I've already used a few smart glasses with color waveguide displays. The Meta Ray-Ban Display is the most prominent, and it has the best picture quality of any publicly available waveguide smart glasses I've tested. The latest Snap Specs also feature color displays and look great, though they’re currently only available as developer hardware. I wouldn't be surprised to see new, user-ready Specs show up in stores by the end of the year, though.
Even with color, waveguide displays could use a little more time in the oven. Their resolutions and fields of view are very limited. The Meta Ray-Ban Display can only cover 20% of your field of view with a 600-by-600 image. Those aren't a lot of pixels to work with, and they can usually only appear in the center of your vision. Higher resolutions and wider fields of view would give these glasses a lot more options in how and where they show you information. For example, you could see a tiny map in the corner of your eye while walking down the street with your vision otherwise unobstructed, then sit down and read a news story in the middle of your sight.
Besides those improvements, color waveguide displays have to shrink further. The color waveguide glasses I've used have been much bulkier than monochrome waveguide glasses, seemingly because the microprojectors they use are larger than green-only projectors. Your taste might vary, but I found the Meta Ray-Ban Display to be just a bit too big to pass off as regular glasses. Before I even explained what they were to a friend, he called me wearing them "a choice."
Controls That Don't Work Like They Should
Waveguide glasses are also AI glasses, so you can use your voice to control them. That said, for any kind of precision or speed, you should be able to directly interact with the visual interface. After all, tapping is faster than speaking, with or without AI. Control schemes for these glasses are still developing, and there hasn't been a really good, consistent system for them yet.
Most waveguide glasses, like the Even G1/G2 and Rokid Glasses, rely on tiny touch strips on the temples. They work well enough for simple scrolling and menu selection, but they're also very finicky. Even offers the R1 smart ring as an alternate control method, using it as a touch surface for easier, more intuitive swiping. It's a $250 accessory on top of a $600 pair of glasses, though, and is awkward and inconsistent.
Then there's the Meta Ray-Ban Display, which has the best control system and interface I've seen in the category by far. It uses a wristband called the Neural Band that detects hand gestures from electrical impulses in your arms. The Neural Band lets you control the glasses by using the side of your index finger as a touchpad, swiping your thumb in different directions to navigate menus. Tapping your thumb to that "pad," or to the tips of your index or middle fingers, is another gesture. You can even adjust volume or zoom by holding your thumb and index finger together and rotating your wrist. It works relatively well and is aided by a polished interface that's easy on the eyes, thanks to the color display.
Even the Neural Band has issues; swiping and wrist-turning gestures were inconsistent in my tests. The band itself is also a bit awkward, because you need to wear it further down your arm than you would a smartwatch or fitness tracker. However, you can't wear it so far down that wearing one of those devices on the same arm doesn't feel cramped and weird. There's a lot of potential here, but it needs to be more comfortable and reliable.
Features Are All Over the Place
Even if you can easily control your waveguide smart glasses, they need to actually do something useful to be worthwhile. There is no single consistent feature set across the various models, but standard features you'll typically see include an AI assistant, live speech captioning and language translation, displaying and responding to texts and other notifications, making phone calls, playing music and podcasts, taking photos and videos, and navigation.
These features are pretty mix-and-match. The Even G2 doesn't output sound, so you can't listen to audio or make calls. It also lacks a camera, which means it lacks machine vision and can't take photos or videos (though I think that is a pretty even trade-off since it helps ensure privacy both for you and others around you, and makes the glasses much lighter and stealthier).
The G2’s limitations don't come close to the Meta Ray-Ban Display's massive omission, though. Meta's waveguide glasses don't support notifications. It will notify you if you receive a phone call, a text, or a message through Meta's supported social apps, but nothing else. No Discord, no Slack, no Bluesky, nothing. It's so limiting that, while I was excited about seeing how the latest, hottest waveguide glasses could help me when covering CES, I left the Display at home and took the Even G2 with me instead. I didn't miss the camera (I had my phone) or the audio (I had my earphones), but I would have missed every message from my colleagues at the show through Slack if I brought the Meta glasses. The Even G2's messages popped up reliably at the show, at least outside of the Wi-Fi-choked halls.
For the features the two glasses share, and that most other waveguide glasses have, they're extremely inconsistent. The G2 and Rokid Glasses offer fairly reliable live captioning and translation in dozens of languages, while Meta's glasses offer only four. The Meta Ray-Ban Display has very good navigation with an easy-to-read map, but only in some regions. Meanwhile, the G2 is slower and much less accurate. And the Rokid Glasses? It lacks navigation functionality. Rokid Glasses does, however, have a feature that displays lyrics, but it isn't compatible with any streaming services available in North America. As for AI, Meta and Even use their own LLMs, while Rokid lets you choose between ChatGPT and Qwen for both spoken interaction and machine vision.
Also, there’s little to no app ecosystem for these glasses. The Meta Ray-Ban Display has several built-in apps that tie into Meta's services like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, but there’s no app store. On that note, I don't see much in the way of third-party additions coming to the glasses. Even and Rokid's waveguide glasses also lack app stores; they have just core features built into their interfaces.
This entire category needs to open up so other developers can create software that extends the glasses' functionality and offers alternatives if you aren't satisfied with the default feature set. This isn't happening on current waveguide glasses. It is, however, happening in future smart glasses.
Next-Gen Waveguide Glasses: Android XR, Snap, and Apple
Google's Android XR platform is still in its early stages, but it's the most promising advancement in waveguide glasses. It's Google’s wearable display platform, both for mixed reality headsets like the Samsung Galaxy XR and smart glasses. So far, the only Android XR-powered smart glasses announced are XReal's Project Aura, which uses a prism display and a wired hub instead of a waveguide display and a wireless phone connection. As a result, it functions much more like the Apple Vision Pro or Galaxy XR than waveguide glasses. However, Android XR also supports waveguide glasses. In fact, I was able to try out Google's waveguide development kits along with Project Aura last year.
The waveguide devkits have color displays, which is good, but they're otherwise bare-bones in terms of features and interface. Of course, that's what devkits are for: They’re the hardware developers use to make software for the platform, and that manufacturers use as a reference in designing actual products. In my demo, the glasses were controlled entirely via a phone, and I didn't see a menu system on their displays or any controls on my end. They seem to be exploring different methods, including possibly using Pixel Watches' sensors for gesture recognition. We’ll have to see when Android XR waveguide glasses actually start shipping, or at least when they're finally announced.
I'm most optimistic about Android XR because of Google's track record with platforms for other device categories. Android is a top phone platform, Google TV is a top smart TV platform, and Wear OS is a top smartwatch platform. All encourage third-party software development, and ensure that apps made for them will work across all similarly equipped devices; if an app runs on a Google Pixel 10a, it’ll run on a Motorola Razr+ or a Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra. Consistent compatibility across models and manufacturers means a much wider user base, which gives developers even more reason to invest in making apps for them. Just as Android stabilized the non-iPhone smartphone market by ensuring all Android phones had access to a huge app store, Android XR could do the same for smart glasses.
The other name that could shape the future of waveguide glasses is Snap. Remember when Snapchat Spectacles were just camera glasses for social media, and then they disappeared? Snap has been working on new Spectacles that do more than just take pictures. Snap Specs are now waveguide smart glasses loaded with the same features as the Meta Ray-Ban Display, Even G2, and Rokid Glasses, and even have their own operating system, Snap OS 2.0. However, they aren't actual products yet. The currently available Spectacles '24 is only for software devs. They’re also kind of bulky and ugly, as devkits are wont to be.
I’ve tried them out, and they seem very promising, with motion-sensing and hand-tracking AR similar to Project Aura and the Galaxy XR, but with a waveguide display (with an incredible 46-degree field of view). They could be game-changing, solving basically all of the current problems waveguide glasses face, but they must hit the market first. Snap plans to announce "lightweight" and "immersive" AR glasses this year, but we'll have to actually see what the full package will look like, what it will do, and how much it will cost.
Then there’s Apple. Its powerful Vision Pro could eventually extend to waveguide smart glasses. There's also been constant chatter about Apple making its own smart glasses. Assuming the glasses exist, the biggest factor for them will be price; the Vision Pro might be an incredible piece of hardware, but it's $3,500 and well outside most people's budgets. If Apple Glasses launch for $2,000 and the new Spectacles and Android XR waveguide glasses are priced between $600 and $1,000, they'll probably be dead in the water.
Either way, those are three potential futures for waveguide smart glasses that will move the category forward far beyond what’s currently available. Android XR, Snap OS, and whatever Apple's working on could make today’s waveguide glasses completely obsolete. Even if they don't, the green-only waveguide glasses will lose their luster when improved color displays replace them.
Live Captioning Glasses: Simple and Expensive, But Useful
I can't wholeheartedly recommend any general-use waveguide glasses to most users today, but there is a separate sub-category among them that might be worthwhile to some as they are now. Some waveguide glasses are designed specifically to provide live captions to users who are hard of hearing. They're much simpler and easier to use than the glasses I previously mentioned. They also can't do nearly as much, and are surprisingly more expensive.
The Captify Pro glasses are purpose-built to show live captions while someone's speaking, plus sounds like laughter, alarms, and music. Those captions can be in English or one of more than 40 other languages, and they can be translated from even more languages.
That is the entirety of what the Captify Pro can do, and that's the point. You don't need to deal with a slew of functions and a menu-driven interface to go through them. You just have to put on the glasses, press a button, and start reading what people around you are saying. They're simple, which might make them less useful in the broadest sense but much more usable for people who need them.
I’m currently testing the Captify Pro, and part of that testing will include seeing how well my mother can use it. She has difficulty hearing, and, more importantly, she isn't a smart glasses expert who can intuit and/or navigate any wearable device's interface. I wouldn't even have her try the Meta Ray-Ban Display, Even G2, or Rokid Glasses. If she can put the Captify Pro on and start reading captions without my help, I'd consider that a massive victory in design.
That focus, and the sense that they're almost (though technically not) a medical device, means these limited glasses are very pricey. The Captify Pro is currently available for $799, down from the original $899 price. That's as much as the Meta Ray-Ban Display, for a device with a fraction of the features. And that’s on the cheap end of live captioning glasses: A similar pair, the XanderGlasses, is $4,999. And all of them have monochrome-green displays, too.
It’s the reliability and ease of use that matter here, and that's what makes live captioning glasses so potentially useful now. If the Captify Pro provides captions simply and reliably, I would definitely recommend it to anyone with hearing difficulties or to anyone who knows someone with hearing difficulties. It's a very specific use case, but it would still be an easy recommendation. I'll have a final verdict soon.
Prism Glasses Today, Waveguide Glasses Tomorrow
If I'm using display-equipped smart glasses today, they're going to be prism glasses, and I'm going to be sitting down and locked in. However, I'd love to have light, wireless, unobtrusive smart glasses that let me see the information I want on the go. Waveguide glasses can potentially fill that role, but they aren't ready yet. Captioning glasses have short-term potential, but for broad use with lots of features, waveguide glasses still have some evolving to do. I still cling to my dream of a video game-like mini-map in the corner of my vision as I walk around town, and I think we're closer than ever to it. It's just going to take some time.