Snap’s latest augmented reality glasses feature an all-new (but still very large) design, a wider field of view, and all-new software that supports full hand tracking capabilities. However, the company is initially only making its fifth-generation Spectacles available to approved developers who agree to a one-year, $99 per month subscription.
It’s an unusual strategy, but Snap says it’s taking the approach because developers are currently in the best position to understand the capabilities and limitations of augmented reality hardware — and they’re also the people most willing to commit to hefty subscriptions, costing $1,000 or more, to get their hands on the technology.
According to Sofia Dominguez, Snap’s director of AR platform, developers are the biggest AR enthusiasts. They’re also the ones who will ultimately create the experiences that other Snapchatters will be excited about. “This is not a prototype,” Dominguez tells Engadget. “All the components are in place. We’re ready to scale up when the market comes, but we’re doing it carefully and we want to bring developers along on our journey.”
Snap gave me an early preview of the glasses ahead of its Partner Summit event, but these Spectacles don’t feel like prototypes like the first AR-enabled Spectacles announced in 2021. The hardware and software are significantly more powerful. The AR displays are sharper and more immersive, and they already power more than two dozen AR experiences, including from big names like Lego and Niantic. (Snap says Star Wars developer Industrial Light & Motion is also working on lenses.)
Glasses
Needless to say, these glasses are huge. Almost comically large. They’re significantly wider than my face, with brims that hang over the edges of my head. Tiny adapters gave them a snug fit around my ears, but I still felt like they would slip off my face if I shook my head too quickly or bent over.
Still, the new frames look a bit more like actual glasses than the fourth-generation Spectacles, which had a thin, angular design and dark lenses. The new frames are made from thick black plastic and have clear lenses that darken when you step outside — sort of like transition lenses.
The fifth-generation Spectacles are the first to feature clear lenses. (via Karissa Bell of Engadget)
The lenses incorporate Snap’s waveguide technology, which works with a liquid crystal-on-silicon microprojector to enable the AR functionality. Each lens also includes a camera, microphone, and speaker.
Inside each arm is a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. Snapdragon says the dual-processor setup makes the glasses more efficient and avoids the overheating issues that plagued the previous model. The change seems to have worked: Neither Spectacles heated up during the nearly hour-long demo I ran, though they did get slightly warm to the touch after extended use. (The fifth-generation Spectacles have about 45 minutes of battery life, up from 30 minutes on the fourth-generation model.)
Snap’s latest AR Spectacles are very thick. (Engadget’s Karissa Bell)
Snap has also made significant improvements to the Spectacles’ AR capabilities. Projected AR content was clear and bright. When I went outside into the sunlight, the lenses darkened, but the content was nearly as clear as it was indoors. With a resolution of 37 pixels per degree, it wasn’t possible to distinguish individual pixels and blurry boundaries like you can with other AR hardware.
But the most notable improvement over Snap’s last pair of AR glasses is the wider field of view. Snap says the field of view has nearly tripled since the previous generation of Spectacles, widening the window of viewable content to 46 degrees. Snap says that’s the equivalent of having a 100-inch display in the room, and in my demo it felt a lot more immersive than anything I’ve seen in 2021.
The fourth-generation Spectacles (above) were narrower and not as bulky as the fifth-generation Spectacles (below). (Karissa Bell, via Engadget)
But it’s not fully immersive. I still found myself peering around the room looking for AR effects that I knew were around me, and I also had to physically move around my space to fully see the AR effects. For example, when I tried the human anatomy demo, which showed a life-size model of the human body and its various systems, I couldn’t see the entire body at once. I had to move my head up and down to see the upper and lower body.
Snap OS
Another big improvement to the latest Spectacles is the addition of full hand tracking: Snap has completely redesigned the underlying software that powers Spectacles (now called Snap OS), so that the entire user interface can now be controlled by hand gestures and voice commands.
The main menu can be displayed in the palm of your hand, similar to Humane’s AI Pin, and you can close the app or return to the lens explorer carousel by simply tapping the corresponding icon. You can also launch and interact with lenses with pinch and tap gestures. Snap still calls these experiences Lenses, but they look and feel more like full-fledged apps than the AR lens effects you’ll find in the Snapchat app.
Lego has a game where you pick up blocks with your hands to build objects, and we’ve also tried a mini-golf game where you putt a golf ball on an AR course, and Niantic has created an AR version of Peridot, a Tamagotchi-like character, that you can place in locations around you.
Snapchat’s AI assistant MyAI interface on Spectacles. (Snap)
You can also interact with Snapchat’s generative AI assistant, MyAI, and “paint” the space around you with AR effects. Some experiences are collaborative, so if two people wearing Spectacles are in the same room, they can view and interact with the same AR content together. If you only have one pair of Spectacles, others around you can get a glimpse of what you see through the Spectacles mobile app, which lets you stream what you see to your smartphone, similar to how you cast VR content from your headset to a TV.
The new gesture-based interface was surprisingly intuitive — I struggled at times with lenses that required more precise movements, like picking up and placing individual Lego blocks, but the software never seemed buggy or sluggish.
There are even more interesting use cases on the way: Snap is again partnering with OpenAI to enable developers to create multimodal experiences for Spectacles. “Developers will soon be able to bring (OpenAI) models into their Spectacles experiences, which will allow us to really get started on more actionable camera-based experiences,” Dominguez says. “These AI models will help give developers, and ultimately end customers, more context about what they see, hear, and see.”
Will AR hardware become a hot topic?
CEO Evan Spiegel has been touting the potential of AR glasses for years, but it’s long seemed like an out-of-reach vision. But if the company’s 2021 Spectacles showed that AR glasses are finally possible, the fifth-generation Spectacles feel like Snap is finally getting closer to producing AR hardware that’s not experimental.
For now, there are still some significant limitations. First, the glasses are still large and somewhat unwieldy. While the fifth-generation Spectacles look a lot like regular glasses, it’s hard to imagine walking around in them in public.
But that may not be much of a problem for the people Snap wants to reach most. As virtual and mixed reality go mainstream, people are becoming more willing to wear the necessary headgear in public; some have worn Apple Vision Pro headsets on airplanes, coffee shops and other public places. As Snap points out, at least its Spectacles don’t cover the entire face or obscure the eyes, and Domingas said the company expects the hardware to get smaller over time.
Snap’s fifth-generation Spectacles are its most advanced and ambitious products yet. (Karissa Bell, Engadget)
But the company will also need to find a way to bring the price of Spectacles down: A pair reportedly costs thousands of dollars to manufacture, which is why Snap is currently sticking with a subscription model, but even AR enthusiasts are unlikely to shell out more than $1,000 for glasses with less than an hour of battery life.
Snap seems well aware of this: The company has always been forthright in admitting that it’s in the long game when it comes to AR, and that hasn’t changed. Dominguez reiterated that the company is purposefully starting with developers because they’re the “most ready” for devices like the fifth-generation Spectacles, and that Snap intends to be ready when the consumer market catches up.
It’s not the only company finally bringing AR hardware to fruition: Meta is reportedly planning to show off the first version of its long-promised augmented reality glasses at its developer event next week. The company’s glasses, called Orion, also likely won’t be available anytime soon. But the attention Meta brings to the space could still be beneficial for Snap as it tries to sell its vision of an AR-enabled world.
