The era of smart glasses is here – sort of. Meta’s glasses have seen great success in recent years despite privacy concerns, and several players have released their own versions. However, unlike smartphones, smartwatches, or even headphones, smart glasses aren’t an obvious technological advancement that everyone should buy. Most people don’t even need glasses, and others simply feel uncomfortable when there is someone with recording glasses in front of them. Additionally, not all companies realize what the true capabilities of smart glasses are. Most of the time it feels like they are trying to provide a solution to a non-existent problem.
At IFA 2025, a large number of companies introduced white label smart glasses. They all had comparable features, 12MP cameras, and similar battery life. Some players have become more interesting than most in the market – like Rokid, L’Attitude and even XGIMI with its new MemoMind brand – thanks to bold designs, unique features and more investment in R&D. But buying smart glasses in 2026 still has major drawbacks. It’s not that these companies don’t do a great job with their offerings; the products themselves just haven’t figured out what they’re supposed to be. Smartwatches, for example, have been slow to transition from luxury items to everyday fitness devices. On the other hand, smart glasses currently feel like they’re in an identity crisis.
Not useful for everyone
Marketing exists for a reason: to convince people to buy new products. However, how can you convince yourself to use smart glasses when you don’t need a prescription? Sure, you can add sunglasses options, but when you only have an interior display on a regular lens, what’s the point really? Besides that, what makes smart glasses interesting is when they’re fashionable, which was a big appeal of XGIMI’s MemoMind One. As another example, one of the reasons why Ray-Ban glasses from Meta are popular is that you can forget that they are smart glasses. It’s easy to see them as just cool Ray-Ban designs with an added twist.
Still, that doesn’t mean much if you think you’d be uncomfortable if they sat on your nose for hours. Not to mention the fact that they all have a battery that stays near your ears and needs to be recharged regularly. On top of that, even if you have to wear glasses all day and you decide to make them smart, you can still have problems if you need complex vision correction. Your lenses may need to be larger, the brand might not support your astigmatism or other conditions, and you might also be limited to certain frames and styles. Take it from me; I was super nearsighted with varying degrees of eyes. It’s definitely not a great experience, and making my glasses smart wouldn’t have helped me at all.
Poor performance
To make smart glasses usable, they should not be too heavy. Usually they weigh between 35 and 50 grams. With limited space for powerful processors, batteries, cameras, and sometimes internal displays, businesses must make decisions. For MemoMind, XGIMI decided to opt for smart glasses without a camera. With this, you avoid privacy issues, but you also save battery by not constantly performing a demanding task. If you want a camera, audio, AI, smart display, and automatic data transfer, you’ll be trading off battery life, which could make for an unsatisfactory experience.
On top of that, most of these smart glasses rely on a smartphone to connect them to a cloud for AI functionality, to answer questions on the web, and to transmit data from your device. Their built-in processors aren’t powerful enough to perform these tasks on their own or operate at speeds comparable to your phone. Smart glasses are essentially like a smart watch with slower performance and fewer features available. So, early adopters need to be patient for most of the tasks they want their glasses to perform.
Lack of features (and purpose)
There are still some things that smart glasses can currently do on their own. They can perform live translations, work as teleprompters (if they have an internal screen), take photos and record videos (if they have a camera), play audio (if they have speakers), share notifications, and use AI. For anything more demanding than all that, they’ll rely heavily on your phone. Although the experience with AI smart glasses is improving dramatically, the truth is that we still don’t know where it’s going, how most companies treat the data we give them, and even how long it will remain “free.”
On top of that, in a real-world scenario, you don’t keep translating everything live every time, you don’t use a teleprompter to talk to your friends, and you probably listen to music with your AirPods. If you need to respond to a message or take a phone call, you must use your phone. To get an in-depth look at the information, you need a (bigger) screen, and if you’re working out, you need something else to track your health data. In 2026, smart glasses simply won’t be of much use on their own. It’s better to have a good phone on hand than to have people carry around another accessory they need to power on and connect to their device.
Privacy issues
People have become much colder towards other people with cameras around them. You might see people taking photos of your food or recording long videos. Yet these images and recordings are taken on phones, which have been around for decades now. Smart glasses are still new and there are situations where it can be very different, especially because most of their models have image and sound recording capabilities.
With a phone, everyone knows what the gesture is when someone is recording you. With glasses, it’s not as simple. Smart glasses’ cameras aren’t exactly easily visible, and you might not necessarily realize that someone is recording your audio with their glasses. Then, if the privacy issue isn’t big enough when it comes to how you interact with the people around you, there’s the question of where your data actually goes.
Can you tell if all of these companies – from brand new ones to well-known players – are storing all your information securely, without selling it to third-party companies? Or that your images aren’t analyzed by real people on the other side of the world (or, sometimes, in your own neighborhood)? This AI boom has been about collecting data first and asking permission later. Smart glasses follow the same rule, and having more of them isn’t really a good thing.
The main players have not yet joined
Finally, another downside to buying smart glasses in 2026 is that not all the big players have joined this market – and we’re talking specifically about Apple. The company was responsible for the evolution of the phone industry, the earphone industry, the tablet industry and the smart watch industry. The company also had a chance to disrupt mixed reality headsets in a similar way, although it seems the Apple Vision Pro ultimately didn’t get very far.
Rumors suggest that Apple plans to join the smart glasses race in 2027. Besides Apple, Samsung and Google recently previewed their new smart glasses, created in partnership with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, but they are still not available. OpenAI is also expected to create a few hardware products in the coming years, and judging by the designers and engineers it has hired, smart glasses could be one of its new devices.
Regardless, these major players are still experimenting with these new technologies; many of them aren’t even officially confirmed. For now we have a market filled with a very successful product made by Meta and several other brands simply trying to copy its style. Once big companies join the race, more options will be available, and they could provide better direction to a category that’s still trying to figure out where it should actually go — or if it should even exist at all.
