The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement banned all enforcement officers and office staff from wearing Meta smart glasses in federal workspaces to prevent the unintentional recording, storage, and external transmission of sensitive information. ICE classified the devices as de facto body-worn cameras, citing privacy and surveillance risks associated with the integrated cameras and microphones capturing bystanders.

To deploy secure, dedicated hardware for operational use, its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, requested 7.5 million dollars in April to develop smart glasses prototypes for immigration enforcement, aiming to equip field officers with immediate individual identification and data access capabilities. Industry analysts note that mass adoption now depends on device trustworthiness, with proposed solutions including clear external recording indicators and processing sensitive data internally to minimize transmission.

On my recent trip to Shenzhen, I walked through Huaqiangbei—the world’s largest electronics market, spanning a network of multi-story malls packed with thousands of stalls. A growing number of those booths are now selling XR eyewear. Take a look at the photo gallery to see what is on the floor. While you will still find plenty of cheap audio and camera frames, established tech brands have a much bigger presence than they did a year ago. In fact, district-wide Smart Glasses sales were up 100% year-over-year during the first seven months of 2026.

My favorite shop this year was in Yuanwang Digital Mall. They had the widest lineup by far. Displays ranged from entry-level camera frames to flagship glasses from Qwen, RayNeo, XREAL, INMO, iFlytek, INAIR, Rokid, MLVision, Holoswim, and Goolton. They even had the only pair of LLVISION glasses I have seen anywhere, and even an Epson HMD.

Huaqiangbei is more than just a massive retail spot—it is an integrated hardware supply chain with an ultra-fast turnaround. Thanks to its hyper-localized prototyping, manufacturing, and assembly network, teams can take a new concept to market in days rather than months. By pairing hands-on floor testing with online sales, roughly 40% of the district's outbound shipments now head abroad to over 190 countries.

We see the same momentum across the rest of China. Across all channels, smart glasses sales hit 909,000 units and 1.88 billion RMB in the first half of 2026, up 85.5% and 98.7% year-over-year. That volume was helped along by national consumer subsidies offering a direct 15% discount (up to 500 RMB) and a new wave of sub-1,000 RMB frames running on-device AI models.

While that total market volume includes physical stores, the latest RUNTO brand rankings only track online sales. RayNeo led the e-commerce charts with an 18.9% share, followed by Rokid at 16.7%. Alibaba’s Qwen took third place at 8.6%, while Alibaba’s Quark came in sixth. Combined, Alibaba's two brands nearly catch Rokid online—and from my impression walking Shenzhen's brick-and-mortar eyewear stores, their physical retail footprint actually beats Rokid and RayNeo already. Huawei took fourth place at 8.2%, with XREAL in fifth and Xiaomi in seventh.

This was Part 3 | Part 2 | Part 1

This is running on the MLVision M6. Because it is based on Android 9 (powered by a Unisoc W527 with 2GB RAM), you can either install APK apps, mirror your screen, or stream video directly to the glasses.

Just received my Solos AirGo V2 glasses. These are my 4th pair of smart glasses (Rokid Display, Rokid Styles, Meta Ray-Ban; also have the Memomind 1s on the way). I will do an unboxing and a full review after a couple of days for anyone interested.

https://solosglasses.com/collections/airgo-v2-smartglasses/products/prime-2-smartglasses-solos-airgo%E2%84%A2-v2

Hello r/SmartGlasses

We are Nimo. We believe that Smart Glasses should, first and foremost, be glasses. That is why the traditional shape of glasses was our starting point—from the front frame to the tip of the temples.

They weigh just 29 grams. Even with prescription lenses, the glasses stay incredibly light at only 35 grams. For us, all-day wearing comfort is completely non-negotiable.

Ask Us Anything about:

• Our design and hardware specifications
• The features in our own companion app
• Our partnership with Mentra (app ecosystem & developer SDK)
• How and when you can get them

Please drop your questions in the comments! We will start answering them today at 5 PM PT / 8 PM ET.

Giveaway: As a thank you to the community, we will raffle off a pair of our Nimo Glasses! Anyone who asks a question by the end of the day will be automatically entered into the giveaway. The prize will ship to the winner as soon as our mass production units are ready.

www.nimoar.com

Here are my notes after spending time with the Nimbo X1, plus a few things I couldn't fit into the video.

 

What is it?

Nimbo X1. Full-color AR glasses built around a custom single-layer silicon carbide waveguide. My unit weighs 49g  on the scale, and it looks much closer to normal eyewear than most full-color AR hardware I've used.

The team started the project in 2025, and the product is now finished and heading into mass production. They're doing an official AMA here on August 20 at 5:00 PM PT  with members of their optics, systems, and product teams.

I've seen them answering technical questions in the community already, being upfront about the challenges they hit during development and how they worked through them. I wanted hands-on time with the hardware, so I asked for a unit.

 

The SiC waveguide is the interesting part

This is the main reason people here will care about the X1.

Instead of an RGB stacked glass waveguide, Nimbo is using a single-layer SiC waveguide that's 0.7mm thick . SiC's higher refractive index allows full color through a single layer — no RGB stack, which helps keep the optical structure thin and avoids the front-facing rainbow fringing you get with multi-layer glass.

SiC is widely seen by people in the industry as where waveguide tech is heading. Nimbo is one of the first teams to actually ship a product around it.

So, does it actually look good? To my eyes, yes.

Peak brightness is rated at 2000 nits , although the default firmware caps it at 1500 unless you manually unlock it. I could still read navigation prompts and notifications outside in afternoon daylight. Obviously, that's very different from saying the display overpowers direct sunlight. 

One thing I noticed while filming: through-the-lens footage doesn't look exactly like what I see with my eyes.  My camera picked up some chromatic separation that I couldn't see while wearing the glasses. SiC seems to be particularly tricky to capture accurately on camera, so don't judge the display entirely from recorded footage.

 

Display, FOV, and tracking

Resolution is 640 × 480 per eye , with a 30° FOV .

I know what half the comments are going to say: 30° isn't huge. For contextual use — notifications, navigation, teleprompter, translation, quick AI interactions — I found it usable. I wouldn't describe this as an immersive headset. It's much more of a contextual HUD.

Nimbo describes video playback as a 90-inch-equivalent virtual screen . That felt reasonable at a normal viewing distance, but don't read "90-inch" and expect an IMAX experience.

Out of the box, tracking is 3DOF . The hardware can support lightweight VIO-based 6DOF experimentation, with a 500 feature-point ceiling, but that's not what ships by default. If you want to push it further, that's currently developer territory. There are already 6DOF products on the market, so this is a clear trade-off Nimbo made.

 

The developer access is unusually open

This is the part that will interest this subreddit the most.

The software is built on a heavily trimmed 64-bit AOSP  base, and standard Android apps can run directly on it.

More importantly, the openness goes beyond just saying "we have an SDK." There's system-level signing access , SDK documentation for the display, 32MP camera, microphone array, IMU, and 3DOF tracking pipeline, plus access to underlying hardware interfaces and raw sensor streams .

So if you want to experiment with your own sensor fusion, use the camera + IMU for spatial projects, or build something at the system level, you have more access than you'd normally expect from a consumer device.

For input, you can use touch gestures on the temple arms, or connect a Bluetooth trackpad or smart ring.

That said, there's a big difference between an SDK looking open on paper and actually being pleasant to develop with. I haven't had enough time with the developer stack yet to judge how far that openness really goes in practice.  That's the part I'm most curious to dig into next.

 

Battery life: depends heavily on what you're doing

Battery is 310mAh .

For mixed use — notifications, occasional AI assistant, translation — I'm getting around 16 hours .

Continuous video is closer to an hour . This makes more sense as an all-day device for short interactions, not something you wear to binge watch.

It supports pass-through charging through a 2mm magnetic USB-C cable . I've used it with a battery pack in my pocket while working at a desk, and that works fine.

 

Prescription lenses and a few practical things

You send in your prescription and the lenses are bonded to the waveguide before shipping. Current support is 0 to -6.50D .

No magnetic snap-on prescription lenses yet, which is worth knowing if your prescription changes frequently. No native sunglass or photochromic options at launch, although tinted third-party lenses can be bonded.

 

So who is this actually for?

After using it, I think the X1 makes the most sense for two groups.

The first is people who want lightweight full-color AR primarily for contextual information — navigation, translation, notifications, teleprompter, AI.

The second, and probably more relevant to r/augmentedreality: developers who want to get deeper into the hardware than a normal consumer SDK allows. 

There are obvious trade-offs. The 30° FOV will be too small for some. 3DOF out of the box will be another sticking point. And if your main use case is hours of continuous video, the battery isn't designed for that.

But the combination of SiC optics, 49g form factor, AOSP base, and system-level access is interesting. I'm not ready to call it a must-buy until I've spent more time with the developer tools, but it's one of the more genuinely open AR platforms I've seen in this form factor.

Nimbo's team will be doing their AMA on August 20 at 5:00 PM PT , so some of the deeper optics and SDK questions are probably better thrown directly at them.

 

Drop your questions below. I'll answer whatever I can from actually using the glasses.

I’ve been thinking about the moments when Meta glasses run low while you’re out — especially during a commute or drive, when the charging case isn’t with you.

This is a visor-mounted charging setup I’ve been testing. The idea is to give the glasses a dedicated place in the car and let them charge while parked.

Curious whether this would be useful for you, or if you’d still rather just carry the case.