Snap's fifth-generation Spectacles have a richer, more immersive display. They're even smoother to use. They weigh less than their predecessors and last longer on a charge.
These are exactly the kind of upgrades you'd expect from a product line that's technically eight years old. But the market for Spectacles—and AR glasses in general—still feels as young as ever.
Snap has an idea how that could change: developers. These new Spectacles, announced Tuesday at Snap's annual Partner Summit in Los Angeles, won't be sold. Instead, Snap is repeating its playbook for the last version of Spectacles in 2021 and handing them out to the people making AR lenses for Snapchat. But this time there's an extra hurdle: You have to request access through Lens Studio, the company's desktop tool for building AR software, and pay $1,188 to rent a pair for at least a year. (After a year, the subscription costs $99 a month.)
Yes, Snap charges its developers $1,188 to develop software for hardware that has no user base. Still, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel believes the interest will be there.
“Our goal is to empower and inspire the developer and AR enthusiast community,” he tells me. “It's really an invitation and hopefully an inspiration to create something.”
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Photo by Nalani Hernandez-Melo for The Verge
Without the vibrant developer ecosystem Snap aims to create, my demo of the new Spectacles felt a lot like my demo of the last Spectacles in 2021. One lens showed flowers growing where you point your hand, while another depicted the anatomy of a human body in 3D space. I could open a browser and see that exact website load in a floating window.
While the hardware for Spectacles has improved, the software is still pretty basic for a standalone device. This is where Snap is clearly hoping developers will help it come up with compelling use cases. For the most part, everything I experienced was in line with what I've come to expect from AR hardware demos over the years: lightweight, playful apps that show off the hardware, but aren't experiences I'd come back to in my free time.
There were a few new apps to try out, such as Snap's OpenAI-based chatbot My AI, which I didn't spend much time with. A new AR lens I tried out used OpenAI's technology to generate 3D animations based on voice prompts. Aside from displaying Bitmojis for account profiles, there was noticeably little integration between the operating system and Snapchat itself. (You can apparently call someone using Snapchat through the glasses, but that wasn't part of my demo.)
Photo by Nalani Hernandez-Melo for The Verge
The first thing you notice when you put the new Spectacles on is the improved display quality and user interface. Colors are richer and resolution is higher. The Snap OS that powers the glasses has been completely redesigned and feels significantly more polished, even if it's still based on the bare essentials. The Spectacles' main navigation is done via hand tracking and voice control, which sometimes felt inherently slow, but was never so sluggish that it felt buggy.
Snap says this model has a 46-degree field of view (up from 26.3 degrees on the previous version) and its waveguide displays show 37 pixels per degree—a measurement Snap believes is the right way to gauge the quality of AR displays, which is about 25 percent better than before. The glasses' physical lenses automatically tint when you look into direct sunlight, so you can see what's projected onto your surroundings outdoors.
During my demo, the field of view was noticeably wider than before, but still a far cry from what you'd expect from regular glasses. Even more baffling, Snap's own demos underscored this fact: a golf simulator I tried was limited to a frustratingly small area of the real world around me. Ultimately, this limited field of view makes augmented reality significantly less engaging than the real world, which in turn makes putting on a 4-ounce pair of smart glasses feel unnecessary.
Snap has invested heavily in improving the hardware of Spectacles. There are two liquid crystal and silicon-based projectors on each side of the frame that direct graphics into the custom waveguides. Two custom Qualcomm Snapdragon processors distribute power and heat along the frame, aided by a vapor chamber in each temple. And two infrared sensors track hand movements to adjust the glasses to Minority report-Style pinch and pull gestures.
The fourth-generation Spectacles from 2021 overheated several times during my demo, but this latest version didn't crash once, even when I wore them outside during record-breaking Los Angeles heat. Snap says battery life has improved from about 30 to 45 minutes on a single charge. It comes with a USB-C cable that allows for continuous power when plugged into the glasses' arm.
While Snap has vague ideas about what Spectacles will be used for, it appears to be leaving it up to developers to work out most of the possible use cases themselves. “We're trying to be the most developer-friendly platform in the world,” Spiegel says, adding that he doesn't see Spectacles as a viable business until the end of the decade. (Snap doesn't disclose how many pairs of these Spectacles it's making, but my sources put the number at around 10,000.)
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Photo by Nalani Hernandez-Melo for The Verge
Snap launched the first Spectacles in 2016. Since then, major players – especially Meta – have indicated that they are also building AR glasses. Apple is working on it independently of the Vision Pro, and Google is developing AR glasses together with Magic Leap and Samsung. When I ask Spiegel about the growing competition, he simply replies: “Excuse me, which of them has AR glasses?”
“We are trying to be the most developer-friendly platform in the world”
That's a point he can't make much longer. Meta will unveil its long-awaited prototype AR glasses, codenamed Orion, at its Connect conference next week. (Like Spectacles, they won't be sold commercially.) Meanwhile, Meta has seen some early success with its partnership with Ray-Ban in the smart glasses space. On Tuesday, the company announced a new 10-year deal to manufacture smart glasses with Ray-Ban's parent company, eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica.
Ultimately, I'm skeptical why developers would want to build software for Spectacles now, given the lack of a market and the cost of accessing a pair. Still, Spiegel believes enough of them are excited by the promise of AR glasses and want to help shape that future.
“I think it's the same reason why developers were so excited about the first desktop computers or why developers were so excited about the first smartphones,” he says. “I think this is a group of visionary technologists who are really excited about what the future holds.”
Spiegel may be right. AR glasses could be the future, and Spectacles could be well positioned to become the next big computing platform despite increasing competition. But a lot still has to happen before Snap's vision becomes a reality.