The smart glasses race

A marathon not a sprint

We’re seeing lots of hardware coming out. The Snap Spectacles, Meta’s Ray-Bans, to name the most obvious ones. Yesterday Google announced Project Aura. But part of the big challenge for all of us working on the smartglasses space is a lack of users, and consumer adoption won’t mainly be driven by the devices capabilities themselves. The question is what you can do on them. In other words, we need to give people good reasons to try them.

From a business perspective, this is a marathon not a sprint. We’re working hard at Ohi Studio to build in this space long enough to be around when user adoption increases. I think 2027 is going to be a spectacular year, but we have to get there first.

Google: Project Aura

Built by XREAL with Google and Qualcomm, Aura is the most technically ambitious smart glasses product announced so far. A 70° field of view. Optical see-through spatial computing. Hand and voice controls. The full Android app ecosystem, on your face.

With Gemini running the AI layer, putting live translations and navigation overlays directly in your field of view, this doesn’t feel like another VR gadget. It feels like the first serious attempt at spatial computing you’d actually wear every day.

Everyone else

The Meta Ray-Bans are still the ones to beat for mainstream comfort and lowest barrier to adoption. But Snap have been pushing the AR-first angle very successfully, and I have huge hope for the Specs, likely to be announced as a consumer product this summer.

And Apple is coming, probably sooner than people expect. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has them previewing smart glasses later this year, shipping in 2027, four frame styles, no display, built around cameras and Siri as an iPhone companion. When Apple shows up to a hardware category, the conversation changes.

But that’s next year. Right now the question is simple: will people actually buy these? And what will make them stay?