Memomind One: Head to Head against the Even Realities G2 and the Meta Ray-ban Display
The three compared glasses for today
I was recently selected for the opportunity to beta test, give feedback on, and publicly review the upcoming Memomind One. As a part of this process, I’ve decided to write several posts about them. This is the first one – a head-to-head comparison of the Memomind One versus two of its competitors, the Even Realities G2 and the Meta Ray-ban Displays.
Fair warning: This is going to be a long, detailed comparison: I'm nearly 30,000 characters in. Feel free to skip around and only read the sections you care about.
Disclosure: My Memomind One unit was provided for free by Memomind for testing, feedback, and review purposes. As part of the agreement, I agreed to write and publish a public review. However, I have not been paid or influenced by Memomind in any way that affects the content of the review, and the thoughts and opinions presented here are 100% my own. Memomind has not reviewed this post before publication.
Note: As per Memomind's request, I will note that I received and tested a pre-production PVT sample, and some things are expected to change and/or be improved for the final production version. This is the only request that Memomind had regarding the content of this review.
Let’s jump into it!
The contestants
The three glasses I have here are arguably the three primary options for display glasses in the US market (or at least will be, when the Memomind is publicly released).
Even Realities G2
Even Realities G2, along with the optional ring
Even Realities’ second release of display smartglasses, following the G1. Headline features of these glasses include a thin, lightweight form factor, binocular monochrome displays, a smart ring for control, no speakers, and no camera.
Meta Ray-ban Display
Meta Ray-ban Display, along with the included wristband
The Goliath in this lineup both in size and in reputation. This is Meta's first public release of smartglasses with a display and arguably the one most present in the consciousness of the mainstream out of the three. Headline features include one of the most advanced waveguide displays on the market, but only one, as well as an electromyograph wristband for control, a camera, speakers, and integration with Meta apps in what is the most “smartphone-like” operating system of the three, complete with its own app launcher. Due to the amount of hardware required for its capabilities, it suffers quite a bit in form factor; you’re not pretending to anyone that these are non-smart glasses.
Memomind One
The complete Memomind One package: just the glasses
The new kid on the block, the focus of today’s review. Memomind’s first attempt at smart glasses came out with something looking rather similar to the Even G2, with a similar form factor, similar binocular monochrome displays, similar lack of a camera, but the inclusion of speakers and the exclusion of any external control (at the moment).
So how do these three compare?
Fit, weight, and comfort
Weights: Meta Ray-ban Display (left), Even Realities G2 (center), Memomind One (right)
Meta Ray-ban Displays trail the pack here. They are the heaviest by far (73g) and front heavy. While they fit relatively well, over time their bulk and weight end up placing a bit more pressure on my nose bridge and ears. That said, they still fit well and are comfortable enough that I can keep them on for most of the day.
Between the Even G2 and the Memomind One, it’s a tossup. The Even G2s are marginally lighter (43g vs 50g on my scale), but nearly all of the Memomind’s extra weight is behind the ears, so it balances well.
Even Realities G2 arms, left; Memomind One arms, right
Plus, where the arms rest on your ears, the Even G2 has thin metal strips, whereas the Memomind arms much wider and rounder soft-touch plastic. As a result, you don't really feel any extra pressure with the extra weight of the Memomind.
At the end of the day, both of these are excellent.
None of these three are quite 100% at the level of the very best and lightest non-smart glasses I’ve used, but the G2 and the Memomind One are pretty close. Meta has some work to do.
Meta Ray-ban Display: 7/10
Even Realities G2: 9/10
Memomind One: 9/10
Optical quality/Prescription Quality
This was more of a consideration a few years ago when I first used the Vuzix Blades or even the later Vuzix Z100s, since their waveguides had noticeable hazes and shimmers from inside that made everything a bit less clear. Thankfully, the conclusion is simple here: all three are excellent. I no longer notice a difference in optical quality with any of these glasses compared to non-smart glasses. The waveguide is sometimes visible from the outside of the Even G2 and the Memomind One, but is effectively never visible from the inside when turned off.
I have a mild prescription (-2.0/-1.5), and my prescription option with all three appear to be accurate and well-made. That said, the Memominds have the thinnest lenses for my prescription, followed by the Evens, with the Metas having by far the thickest lenses.
Meta Ray-ban Display: 10/10
Even Realities G2: 10/10
Memomind One: 10/10
EDIT: As has been pointed out in the comments (and was missed as a blind spot on my part initially), one important consideration is that Memomind's prescription range is currently restricted to single vision +4/-4, compared to Meta with +4/-6 or Even Realities with the widest factory range at +12/-12 with the option for progressives. Additionally, there are now third-party providers making lens inserts for Metas that expand the range significantly.
This will have to dictate your choice accordingly - if you don't fit in the range of the Memominds, they're unfortunately not going to be an option for you.
Styling and discreetness
Styling and social acceptance are extremely important for a wearable product to succeed. This is still something that many brands of smartglasses aren’t paying enough attention to.
Meta Ray-ban Displays, left; Even Realities G2, center; Memomind One, right
The Meta Ray-ban Displays fall pretty far behind. I don’t think anyone would claim that you look like you’re wearing normal glasses with these. Unless you’re intentionally going for the puffy glasses look as a stylistic choice, these will draw attention, and not necessarily in a good way.
And there’s the elephant in the room: the camera. Plenty of people are not comfortable with the camera, especially in sensitive social contexts. A camera on any pair of smart glasses is going to hinder their acceptance.
Even G2 and Memomind One both take the opposite approach: their styling is much more stripped down, with thinner frames and good-looking metal strips as their arms. Both are genuinely difficult for others to detect as a piece of wearable technology, even if they’re looking for it. Both are also styled well and give you options for rectangle vs round frames, but Memomind goes one step further and will offer a third, rounded rectangle option, as well as custom frame accent colors. I have to give it an extra point there.
From the top: Meta, Even, and Memomind lens angles.
There is one thing all three of these options do well: they slightly angle their lenses against each other so that the front of the glasses has a subtle curve. Some smart glasses use two coplanar lenses making the front of the glasses look flat, and that makes them look unnatural. No such issues here.
Meta Ray-ban Display: 4/10
Even Realities G2: 8/10
Memomind One: 9/10
The display
This is arguably the headline feature of all three pairs. They each have a HUD.
Meta Ray-ban Display's display. Picture does not do it justice.
Meta Ray-ban Displays use what is arguably the most advanced display out of the three. It is a color LCoS projector projecting into a reflective waveguide. This means several things:
1. It’s color (obviously)
2. It’s slightly higher resolution than the other two, at 600x600 compared to 640x350
3. It is practically impossible to see any light leakage from the outside
4. The waveguide itself is also nearly impossible to see from the outside, with essentially no reflections or shimmers whatsoever from the outside when turned off. The only “tell” is a series of diagonal reflection gratings lining the outside of the lens, which isn’t exactly universally recognizable as a feature of smart glasses.
That reflective waveguide is genuinely one of the coolest pieces of tech I’ve seen in a while.
Problem is, it’s monocular. Now, I actually get along with monocular displays surprisingly well, but at the end of the day, it is still less comfortable, and many people will find it borderline unusable (especially if you’re not right-eye dominant). Also, I’m not sure why, but the claimed 20 degree diagonal field of view feels much smaller than it is.
In contrast, both the Even G2 and the Memomind One use binocular green MicroLED monochrome projectors projecting into diffractive waveguides. They’re…fairly similar to each other. I would guess that the Even G2 has a minor edge in sharpness, and Memomind One has a minor edge in FoV, but both are comfortable to use. Memomind One also has a slightly larger viewing window, i.e. it’s more tolerant of you placing the glasses slightly too high or low without starting to cut off the display.
The downside of the diffractive waveguide is that it guides nearly as much light out from the front as it does towards your eyes, and as a result, you can see an image nearly as bright from the outside as you can from the inside. This isn’t actually a major privacy concern (as I'll get into in the deep dive series), but it is a tell that you are wearing something smart. That said, both Even Realities and Memomind have arranged their waveguide in such a way that someone has to be at least a few degrees below you to catch any stray images being projected out the front of your glasses.
In my experience, none of the three are comfortably usable in full outdoor sunlight. Meta Ray-ban Display solves this by making the lenses Transition lenses by default. Even Realities G2 and Memomind One both solve this by having the option for slick, fitted clip-on sunglasses.
Meta Ray-ban Display: 6/10, mainly because it’s monocular (would be 10/10 if binocular)
Even Realities G2: 8/10
Memomind One: 8/10
The speakers
Sorry Even, you don’t get a point here.
Meta Ray-ban Display's speakers
As for our remaining two contestants, Meta has been doing audio glasses with Ray-ban for more than half a decade now, and their experience shows. The Ray-ban Displays are excellent as audio glasses with great sound quality (even a bit of bass) and great isolation. They don’t lose much to any glasses in the way of audio, even though the focus of the glasses is the screen.
Memomind managed to put speakers in the One, but it’s clear that they’re working with more constraints here - I mean, just look at the size of the arms. The speakers are smaller and less directed as a result.
Given the constraints, it is rather impressive the quality that Memomind have managed to squeeze out of the speakers. The Harman mode in particular makes the music quality nearly as good as the Meta Ray-ban Displays manage, maybe with a bit less bass.
Instead, the bigger tradeoff here is sound leakage. Memomind falls quite a bit short of Meta here, with any audio volume above the quietest clearly audible to people across a small, quiet room. In practice, if I don’t want people to know I’m listening to music, I’ve ended up having to set the volume to the lowest setting in quiet mode, which makes it just about inaudible from 3-5 feet away and is quiet enough to stay completely hidden in a quiet room. (Even on the lowest volume setting in quiet mode, it’s still clearly audible, which makes me think that maybe the volume settings are just a bit too loud.)
But slightly sub-par speakers are better than no speakers, and that gives the Memomind One a big advantage over the Even G2.
Meta Ray-ban Display: 9/10
Even Realities G2: 0/10
Memomind One: 6/10
Battery life
This is a field where green MicroLED waveguides have traditionally excelled. Both the Even G2 and the Memomind One are no exception. Under regular non-audio usage, I can easily squeeze 3-4 days out of each of them on a single charge. While playing music, I can somehow still get nearly a full day of continuous playback out of the Memomind One. Both of these glasses are at the point where not only have I never run out of battery, I’ve never even had to worry about the battery, which is the highest compliment I can pay to the battery of any device.
Meta Ray-ban Display is a lot rougher on the battery. Due to the more power-hungry display and presumably the more advanced Snapdragon SoC and software it’s running, under regular usage, it’s usually close to dead by noon.
Do note that the Meta Ray-ban Display and the Even G2 both include charging cases; the Memomind One does not. I consider the charging case to be more or less a necessity for the Meta Ray-ban Display. I do not consider it to be a necessity for the Even G2 and the Memomind One, since their battery lasts well over a day and you will have the opportunity to charge every night without ever running out.
Meta Ray-ban Display: 5/10
Even Realities G2: 10/10
Memomind One: 10/10
Interaction model
This one’s hard to compare, because all three take fundamentally different approaches to interaction and it’s hard to say for certain that any are better or worse than each other.
All three can do voice commands, but any interactivity being limited to voice-only is usually sub-par.
Meta has two physical inputs, a camera button and a physical on button. It also has a touchpad on the right arm; moreover, it also has the much-talked-about neural band. Again, this is incredibly cool tech. It also does unlock a wide range of interactions you can perform with your glasses, including navigating menus, tapping fingers to go home or back, and even handwriting. Reliability is surprisingly good for how complex the tech is, but I do get a “missed” interaction here and there.
Even Realities has a touchpad on the pods behind your ears. It also has the smart ring. Both of these can sense taps and swipes, but as far as I can tell, they’re only really usable for swiping along a single axis (as in, up-down only instead of up-down-left-right). They limit the functionality just a bit more than Meta’s solution, being constrained by what you can achieve off of a single direction swipe and taps/long taps alone.
Unfortunately, while I wouldn’t call them unusable by any means, they are the most unreliable and I have the greatest occurrence of “missed” interactions with this. The most common cause of this is because the ring can rotate around my finger, and I sometimes miss the touch-sensitive strip on it as a result. The touchpad isn't a whole lot better because it almost always ends up being covered by my hair; I would personally find it much more usable if it was on the arm instead of on a pod behind the ears.
Memomind One currently has the most limited interaction model of the three. Interaction with these consists of just a single button under the right hinge and turning your head. The single button can differentiate between single clicks, long presses, and double clicks, and turning your head is, well, turning your head. But because there aren’t many distinct input modes, there also isn’t much active interactivity with the glasses. There is only a single “menu”-like function (the quick launch menu) using a combination of a double click and turning your head to select, and the rest of it just consists of cycling through configurable homescreen cards and opening the voice assistant.
There's no doubt: The degree to which this interface limits interactivity is a weakness. Memomind is going to be much more restricted in what functionality they can add going forward, because there simply isn't enough of a variety of inputs the glasses can accept. Here's the flip side to that, though: because the control scheme is so simple and relies on a physical button, it is the most reliable and feels the most tactile. I don’t recall ever having a single “missed” interaction with these glasses.
I still have to give it the lowest score out of the three due to how much it limits functionality, but if you’re happy with the more limited interaction, the Memomind is arguably the one that feels the best to use.
Meta Ray-ban Display: 9/10 (Highest functionality, high reliability)
Even Realities G2: 8/10 (High functionality, middling reliability)
Memomind One: 6/10 (Low functionality, exceptional reliability)
Notifications:
Meta’s advantage is that with the limited selection of apps it can display notifications from, they have been able to put more development into making the notifications more interactive; for example, opening a Messenger notification puts you straight into the Messenger app in the glasses and allows you to respond without pulling out your phone.
These positives are massively outweighed by the fact that Meta only allows notifications to be displayed from a limited selection of apps - primarily basic phone apps (like SMS) and Meta's own apps (like Messenger). This is a huge miss and is the primary reason I stopped daily driving mine (creep factor aside).
Notification configuration pages of Even Realities G2 (left) and Memomind One (right)
Even Realities and Memomind both allow notification display from any app, and you can toggle individual apps on and off. Both have high notification reliability, too, with no notifications being missed (which was a problem I had on earlier glasses from Vuzix).
The only downside is that there is effectively no interaction with the notifications; all you can do is view them. That said, I tend to want to pull out my phone to respond to notifications if I have to, anyway.
Meta Ray-ban Display: 4/10
Even Realities G2: 9/10
Memomind One: 9/10
Calls
Meta and Memomind both support answering calls straight from your glasses. Meta goes a step further and supports dialing calls straight from your glasses; Memomind does not, probably due to the more limited interactivity model. Call quality is excellent on both.
Rather amusingly, one available input to accept or reject a call on the Memomind is to nod or shake your head.
Even Realities does not support calls at all, obviously.
Meta Ray-ban Display: 10/10
Even Realities G2: 0/10
Memomind One: 8/10
Transcription, Translation, and Teleprompter
All three have a full suite of transcription and subtitling tools, real-time translation, and a teleprompter function.
Meta trails a bit here because they have the fewest languages available, just six including English. More languages are on the way, but you apparently have to be part of the early access program to use them right now.
Even Realities and Memomind One both have a pretty wide selection of languages. Both also translate quite fast. Even Realities still pulls ahead just a bit because Memomind is arguably displaying the translation a bit too fast; what that means is that Memomind will often try to display a translated sentence before the sentence is complete and before it’s even heard all of the context. As a result, the translation has to update and change when more of the sentence is heard and more context is captured. The stochastic, rapidly changing translated text is often harder to read. (This is one of my main feedback points to Memomind and I am expecting this to improve by the time of the production release.)
Meta Ray-ban Display: 6/10
Even Realities G2: 9/10
Memomind One: 8/10
AI voice assistant
We’re just talking about the plain-Jane voice assistant here, the one you call up to ask a question.
Even’s is probably the weakest. I don’t know what model they’re using, but it’s more rigid in what it can take as input and what it can generate as output, and the output isn’t quite as accurate for more complex prompts.
Meta and Memomind are both more on each other’s level here. Both have rich voice assistants powered by advanced models that are flexible and accurate in both their input and output. Meta’s is obviously powered by Meta AI’s proprietary models; Memomind apparently has the capability to call upon several frontier models, but the primary is Gemini.
Meta Ray-ban Display: 8/10
Even Realities G2: 6/10
Memomind One: 8/10
“Passive” AI features
I’m defining this as AI features that stay on constantly, listening and analyzing throughout your entire day without requiring you to actively call upon it. Yes, yes, I know, huge privacy violation – but comparing the three, I don’t think it’s quite so black and white.
Even Realities does not appear to do any sort of passive AI. Even AI only appears when you call on it. The closest thing to a “passive” AI is when you specifically turn on AI Cues, which gives you assistance and context throughout a conversation. This is an approach that will make a lot of people happy.
Meta…well, we have no idea what they’re doing, really. They don’t have any passive AI features that you as a user can take advantage of. Beyond that, there is speculation that they are constantly listening and analyzing for their own internal purposes anyway, as well as possibly even making secret use of the camera, and that’s really not good for your privacy if true.
Memo AI+ highlights (Introduction only)
Memomind is the only one that has Memo AI+, a paid feature that openly and visibly constantly listens and captures your entire day. They use this to generate daily summaries, goals, etc in an attempt to help you organize your thoughts and record your day, as well as to inform their AI assistant. The summaries tend to get a bit poetic at times (I got an analysis of my emotional state from Memo AI+ happening to capture song lyrics I listened to on my drive to work, which was a bit unnecessary), but the wishes actually work surprisingly well (I got recommendations for a home theater projector after discussing it with my family).
Now, many people are going to be understandably wary of an always-on AI listening to your entire day. There are several key points here, though:
1. Memomind is being open and transparent about it; they’re not trying to hide it. In fact, the glasses have an indicator light that turns on whenever the microphone is active, accordingly, the indicator light is on for the entire day if you enable Memo AI+.
2. You have privacy options to filter out certain categories of subjects, like work, finances, relationships, etc. as well as to block it from listening to certain times of the day (such as if you're at work). If you turn on any of those filters, any content detected to be categorized under them will not be used to inform the AI summaries or wishes.
3. You can simply turn it off. In fact, being a paid feature, I imagine many people are going to leave it off.
At the end of the day, it’s a neat novelty to me, but I imagine how useful you’ll actually find it depends a lot on your use case and what you want out of your glasses. At the very least, it’s an approach to always-on AI that I like far more than something secretly and invisibly working in the background.
Meta Ray-ban Display: ???/10
Even Realities G2: NA/10
Memomind One: 7/10
SDK and third-party app support
This has always been a pain point for smartglasses and continues to be. Any glasses that do this well are going to have a major point in their favor.
Even Realities is leading the pack here at the moment. They have Even Hub, a platform for third-party developers to create and publish apps for the Even G2, which you can then download from their app. It's obviously not as rich of an app ecosystem as, say, iOS or Android is, but it is growing fast, and I've seen the app list expand from a couple dozen at launch to a couple hundred apps in the few months it's been out.
Meta has apparently released their SDK to developers, but currently for consumers there is no way I can find to actually try out any third-party apps. I'm hoping this comes soon.
As for Memomind...well, it's still very early days, but at the moment there is no third-party app, API, or SDK support. Memomind appears to exploring ways to make it happen, but the rumors I've heard are that they are still actively working a lot of things out to try and figure out what the best approach is.
Memomind, please don't mess this up.
Meta Ray-ban Display: 2/10 (based on promise)
Even Realities G2: 8/10
Memomind One: 0/10 (Currently)
Pricing and availability
And finally, let’s talk about what is quite possibly the biggest factor in whether anyone will buy these: the price. Their respective price points are:
Meta Ray-ban Display:
- $799 (including neural band, no prescription)
- +$200 (prescription)
Meta’s price point comes almost entirely from the advanced tech they’ve crammed into the glasses, with the reflective waveguide and the neural band included. Frankly, from a utility standpoint, I do not believe they are worth that much.
A massive point against them is that since their supply is so constrained, the only way to purchase them is through an in-person demo at Best Buy. This makes it far more difficult for just anyone to buy a pair, and they are still not available outside of the US.
Even Realities G2:
- $599 (glasses alone)
- +$159-??? (prescription)
- $249 (ring)
- $99 (sunglasses)
Even Realities has the widest range of prices depending on what options you spring for. I’d consider the $600 price for the glasses, the $160 price for the prescription, and the $250 price for the ring fair enough. The $100 price for the sunglasses is pretty steep. The problem is, for the entire Even Realities experience, you kind of need to buy the whole package (minus prescription if you don’t need one, obviously), and that brings the cost of the Even Realities package up above the Meta Ray-ban Displays.
My full package with the glasses, prescription, ring, and sunglasses through an optician partner came out to $1050 (the optician managed to get me a $50 discount).
Memomind One:
- $399 (non-prescription, sunglasses included, Kickstarter price) ($599 after Kickstarter)
- $499 (prescription, sunglasses included, Kickstarter price) ($798 after Kickstarter)
Memomind’s $399 Kickstarter price point is…a steal, frankly, compared to the other two. Technically, it comes with the least and doesn’t have any form of external control. But the price includes sunglasses and you get the “full” Memomind experience. Plus, for just $10 more, Memomind will even customize your frames with custom color inserts for you.
At their full retail price of $599 and $798, it’s going to be more of a challenge since they’re fighting directly against the Even G2 at that price. It would have to come down to whether you value the speakers or the option to buy a ring more at that price.
Meta Ray-ban Display: 5/10
Even Realities G2: 7/10
Memomind One: 9/10 (Kickstarter), 7/10 (Retail)
Conclusion
| Category | Meta Ray-ban Display | Even Realities G2 | Memomind One |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fit, weight, and comfort | 7/10 | 9/10 | 9/10 |
| Optical/prescription quality | 10/10 | 10/10 | 10/10 |
| Styling and discreetness | 4/10 | 8/10 | 9/10 |
| Display | 6/10 | 8/10 | 8/10 |
| Speakers | 9/10 | 0/10 | 6/10 |
| Battery | 5/10 | 10/10 | 10/10 |
| Interaction model | 9/10 | 8/10 | 6/10 |
| Notifications | 4/10 | 9/10 | 9/10 |
| Calls | 10/10 | 0/10 | 8/10 |
| Transcription, Translation, and Teleprompter | 6/10 | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| AI voice assistant | 8/10 | 6/10 | 8/10 |
| "Passive" AI features (not counted in score) | ???/10 | NA/10 | 7/10 |
| SDK and third-party app support | 2/10 (based on promise) | 8/10 | 0/10 (currently) |
| Pricing and Availability | 5/10 | 7/10 | 9/10 (At Kickstarter pricing) |
I could go ahead and tally up the points, and declare that the one with the most points is the best. That would be Memomind with 100/130, compared to Even with 92/130 and Meta with 85/130, by the way. But that would be assuming all of these categories are weighted equally, and they’re not, so I don’t think a direct score comparison is valid here.
What I will say is that among the three compared, the Memomind One is the one that does just about everything well, with no major gaps in capability and no huge compromises in any one category. Even Realities is close, since at the end of the day, the Memomind One is a fairly similar pair of glasses to the Even G2; however, the lack of speakers on the Even G2 presents a rather important capability gap that the Memomind One fills, even if it does so a bit imperfectly.
Furthermore, being as slim, discreet, and stylish as it is, it's a pair of smartglasses on the market that I have zero qualms about putting on every day and going out in public with. The same could be said for the Even G2; it can't be said about many others.
As for the Meta Ray-Ban Displays? There’s no question. The Meta glasses are an impressive demo of cutting-edge tech, but I’d take either of the Memomind One or the Even G2 for everyday wear any day of the week. After having used the Memomind One and the Even G2, I just don’t think that the way the Meta was designed and executed is ready for prime-time as a pair of everyday glasses yet.
Going forward
My experience with the Memomind One has left me extremely impressed, and they’ve become my daily driver smartglasses out of all three of my options since I’ve gotten them. I am 100% planning to back the Kickstarter with my own money and get a second pair for myself (unfortunately, my favorite Nomad style out of the three was not available as an option to beta test).
If there is anything I'm hoping for out of them, the biggest is that Memomind will take third party app/API/SDK support seriously and release an SDK as soon as possible. A rich app platform is going to be important to succeed against Even Realities.
Despite how much I've already written, this is far from what I have to say on the subject, and I had to trim out a ton of content to make it fit the character limit. My first draft of my review was 3x the character limit! Following this, I am planning to do much more detailed, deep dive analyses into the Memomind One and not only how well it was executed, but why it was designed as it was. These will be posted over in r/MemoMindAI to avoid cluttering up this subreddit. Hope to see you there!
[AI statement: No artificial intelligence (AI) was used in the creation of this work.]