r/SmartGlasses

Almost every time I walk into a room wearing smart glasses, someone comments on my "Meta glasses," even when I'm wearing something completely different.

It seems like people who are not deep in the smart glasses space tend to paint in broad strokes and lump everything in with Meta, for better or for worse.

Given I've bought and used over 20 smart glasses over the past 6 months, I thought it might be fun (and maybe useful for some) to put together my perspective on which ones I think are genuine alternatives to Meta Display. Or, if you take Meta out of the picture, which glasses make the most sense for different use cases.

I originally thought I would settle on just a couple of winners, but I ended up with five: MemoMind One, RayNeo iO, Even Realities G2, Mira Glasses and Rokid Glasses. Contrary to what I expected when I started this exercise, I actually think there is a rational and clear reason (IMO) to buy any of these five.

I shared my full thought process and the pros and cons for each in this video if that's useful:

https://youtu.be/l__tI1sz8Fs?si=htr2v08aIm5JBmmf

Fully my own opinions. No sponsorship, no affiliate links, etc.

The TL;DR version:

• MemoMind One: the most complete camera-free display package with good speakers.
• Even G2: probably the closest thing here to normal everyday glasses, combined with what I think is the most mature ecosystem for adding functionality.
• RayNeo iO: the lightest and most comfortable pair I've tested, while still doing most of what I want from display glasses and giving you free long-term memory.
• Mira Glasses: the most effective real-world AI assistant I've found, with the best memory recall/retrieval directly in the glasses, along with excellent translation and contextual AI.
• Rokid Glasses: the best all-around display option I've tested that isn't Meta Display, particularly if you don't want to give up the camera.

One important tradeoff: four of the five give up the camera entirely, and all five use monochrome green displays rather than Meta Display's full-color display.

Note that I also considered and mention INMO Go3, INMO Air3 and RayNeo X3 Pro but they did not make the 5 I landed on for different reasons.

Curious if this broadly resonates with folks? Also happy to answer questions on any of these.

Spent last week in Taipei with my mom's family. Brought the RayNeo iO along mostly out of curiosity about whether the translation would hold up in a non-English city. What I normally use it for at home is notifications and the odd voice memo. On this trip live captions became the whole reason I wore it.

Family dinner the first night was the biggest test. My aunt and uncle switch between Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien mid-sentence depending on who they're talking to. My Mandarin is maybe elementary level and my Taiwanese is nothing. The iO caught the Mandarin lines clean and gave me English captions on the lens with about a second of lag. Taiwanese Hokkien it dropped more often than not. Not sure if that counts as one of the 109 accents or if it's trying to parse it as Mandarin and failing, but the gaps were noticeable. I ended up reading the Mandarin captions and watching facial expressions for the Taiwanese bits, which is honestly how I navigate family dinners anyway.

Taxi rides worked better than I thought. One driver was giving me directions to the hotel in Mandarin and I could follow his street names on the captions without asking him to repeat himself. Also tried it at a night market stall where the vendor was explaining the difference between two kinds of oyster omelet. Captions kept up fine, I ordered the one I actually wanted, no pointing-and-hoping.

What didn't work as well: anywhere loud. The main concourse at Taoyuan airport, Shilin night market on a Saturday, Taipei Main transfer during rush hour. The 4-mic array struggles when ambient crowd noise competes with the voice you want. In quiet rooms it's near-perfect, in a packed hall it drops to about 60 percent useful.

Flight home I used the teleprompter to run through a work presentation script I'd been putting off. Honestly might be the best long-haul productivity session I've had in a while.

What do you want to know?!