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

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.

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.”