Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks
EDITORS’ NOTE
May 1, 2026: With this update, we added the Viture Beast, replacing the XReal One Pro. We also swapped the RayNeo Air 3s Pro for the RayNeo Air 4 Pro and the Viture Luma Pro for the Viture Luma. Our remaining picks have been vetted for currency and availability. Since our last update, we reviewed and evaluated four new smart glasses for potential inclusion in this roundup. We currently have one pair of smart glasses in PC Labs for evaluation, from XReal.
- Bright, colorful picture
- Very wide field of view
- Built-in head-tracking features
- Ultrawide mode
- No focus dials
- Useless camera
The Beast is Viture’s top-of-the-line pair of smart glasses, standing above the Luma series thanks to its wide array of features. It’s Viture’s first pair of smart glasses to incorporate built-in head tracking for multiple immersive picture modes. Instead of a fixed picture right in front of your eyes, you can now use a virtual screen that floats in front of you and stays put when you move your head. You can also shrink the picture and put it to the side of your vision so you can keep an eye on what’s actually happening in front of you, or (a personal favorite) switch to ultrawide mode for a virtual 3,840-by-1,200 monitor.
Power users: I swear by ultrawide mode when I have to get work done on the go. It lets me research, edit, and produce stories while sitting at a coffee shop, giving me a lot more real estate than my laptop’s screen.
Theater fans seeking immersion: Because the glasses can anchor the virtual display in place and keep it there even as you move your head, it can give the impression of sitting in a theater and actually watching a physical screen. The view does cut off at the edges, so it isn’t quite the complete, eye-filling experience you get from a VR headset, but it’s by far the most immersive way to watch a movie on smart glasses.
Glasses Features
Display, Speakers, 3DOF, Dimmable Lenses, Camera
Connection
Wired
Input Controls
Button
Voice Assistant Compatibility
None
Integrated Display Type
Prism
Resolution
1,920 by 1,200
Field of View
58 degrees
Learn More
Viture Beast
Review
- Bright, colorful display
- Useful AI-HDR mode
- Crisp audio
- Multiple image and sound modes
- Affordable
- Modest field of view
- HDR10 doesn’t seem to improve the picture
The RayNeo Air 4 Pro isn’t the fanciest or brightest pair of AR video glasses, but it’s one of the most value-rich. It includes HDR10 support, which can potentially improve color and contrast detail for certain media on compatible devices, but I didn’t notice much of a difference in testing. That’s fine, because its predecessor already had a bright, sharp picture with some of the best color performance I’ve seen, and that’s still the case here.
Value shoppers who don’t require corrective lenses: The Air 4 Pro is a top value pick for AR smart glasses, as long as its lack of head tracking and dimmable lenses aren’t deal-breakers. Not having focus dials can throw a wrench in the experience if you’re nearsighted, though. If you require vision correction, prepare to spend at least another $80 on prescription lens inserts.
Remote workers and digital nomads: For working away from your desk or watching videos on a flight, these are the most affordable smart glasses you’ll find. You don’t need a ton of extras if you just want a good-looking private display you can take anywhere.
Glasses Features
Display, Speakers
Connection
Wired
Input Controls
Button
Voice Assistant Compatibility
None
Integrated Display Type
Prism
Resolution
1080p
Field of View
47 degrees
Learn More
RayNeo Air 4 Pro
Review
- Shoots videos in 3K
- Longer battery life than the Ray-Ban Metas
- AI assistant provides helpful info
- Minimal sound leakage
- Clear audio quality
- Difficult to frame shots
- Limited bass on audio playback
- AI assistant can make errors
Oakley’s take on smart glasses is a lot like Ray-Ban’s, as both leverage Meta’s technology. Like the Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) smart glasses, the Oakley Meta HSTN features a 12MP camera for capturing content from your point of view, as well as Meta AI to answer your questions. Both pairs supposedly have the same battery life and speakers, but the Oakley Meta HSTN sounds a little better, with less audio leakage, than the second-gen Ray-Ban Meta, and lasted slightly longer between charges in our testing. We prefer the style of the Ray-Bans, but the Oakley Meta HSTN is functionally superior by the thinnest of margins.
Music fans: While no open-ear speakers offer much low-end bass resonance, these Oakleys make mid- and high-frequency music sound pristine, with clear separation. They produce decently loud audio and minimize sound leakage.
People with small children or pets: All of the Meta smart glasses make it easy to capture impromptu moments, but these have the best battery life of the bunch, so you’re that much more likely to be wearing them when a special moment strikes.
Glasses Features
Speakers, Microphone, Camera
Connection
Wireless
Input Controls
Voice
Voice Assistant Compatibility
Meta
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Oakley Meta HSTN
Review
- Stylish design
- 3K video capture
- Helpful AI assistant
- Clear audio quality
- Difficult to frame shots
- Limited bass and lots of audio leakage
- AI assistant can make errors
Like the Oakleys, these Ray-Ban smart glasses utilize Meta’s technology to let you to take photos, shoot videos, listen to music, and make calls. They provide easy access to Meta AI, which can use visual data from the glasses’ 12MP camera to help answer your questions.
Fashion fanatics: These Ray-Bans have a timeless style with unobtrusive tech cleverly baked into the design. If you want to add smarts to your frames while accessorizing your look, these are the smart glasses for you.
Social media gurus: If you’re looking for a fun new way to share your social media activities, especially on Meta’s platforms like Facebook or Instagram, these are the smart glasses to consider. They make it easy to shoot POV videos without having to hold your phone, and the integrated Meta AI assistant can provide real-time information about your surroundings.
Glasses Features
Speakers, Microphone, Camera
Connection
Wireless
Input Controls
Voice
Voice Assistant Compatibility
Meta
Field of View
100 degrees
Learn More
Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2
Review
- Bright, colorful picture
- Wide field of view
- Focus dials
- Dimmable lenses
- No built-in head tracking functionality
- Clunky mobile app
Viture’s Luma smart glasses line takes everything great from last year’s excellent Viture Pro, like dimmable lenses that block out distractions and focus dials that ensure a comfortable experience for nearsighted users without a prescription lens insert, and adds an even wider 50-degree field of view. The entry-level Luma is the most affordable model in the lineup, and it works great as a wearable display.
Nearsighted individuals: The Viture Luma is a top pick if you need vision correction and want a bright, sharp picture without spending extra on finicky lens inserts. Integrated dials offer support for myopia adjustments up to -6.0
Anyone shopping for personal display glasses: Whether you’re nearsighted or not, the Luma is simply an excellent set of smart glasses. Its bright picture and wide field of view make it a great all-around pick, and as a nice extra touch, its external lenses can dim with a touch to block out distractions.
Glasses Features
Display, Dimmable Lenses, Focus Dials
Connection
Wired
Input Controls
Button
Voice Assistant Compatibility
None
Integrated Display Type
Prism
Resolution
1,920 by 1,200
Field of View
50 degrees
Learn More
Viture Luma
Review
- Adjustable tint
- Good audio quality
- Light and comfortable
- Limited controls
- Mirrored lens makes tint adjustments hard to notice from the outside
- Frame can sometimes squeak
- Not available with prescription lenses
Chamelo makes glasses with adjustable lenses that you can dim or lighten as you want, and the Music Shield is its most sporty option. The big, flaming orange one-piece mirrored lens can be made transparent enough to use comfortably indoors or dark enough to protect your eyes on sunny days—and you can switch back and forth with a simple swipe. These glasses can also play audio from your phone, and they sound better than most competing models. They still don’t beat a decent pair of true wireless earphones in audio quality, but we like the combination of features they provide.
Budget-minded outdoor fitness enthusiasts: The Music Shield glasses are ostensibly for active users. Their IPX4 rating means they are sweat-resistant, so you should be able to wear them for a jog in most weather short of a downpour. They’re a good choice if you want to listen to music or make calls on the go while still taking in the sounds of your environment.
Glasses Features
Speakers, Dimmable Lenses
Connection
Wireless
Input Controls
Touch
Voice Assistant Compatibility
None
Learn More
Chamelo Music Shield
Review
- Waterproof design
- Clear audio quality with good volume
- Fun video recording options
- Customizable action button
- Expensive
- Unimpressive battery life
- Limited bass on audio playback
- AI assistant can make errors
The Oakley Meta Vanguard are the sportiest smart glasses available, and are designed to keep up with you even when you’re running in the rain. They’re fully dustproof and waterproof with an IP67 rating, making them the most weather-resistant smart glasses on this list, and the only pair you can wash with a good dunk. They otherwise have all the same camera, audio, and AI features as other Oakley Meta smart glasses.
Outdoor athletes: If you’re big into outdoor sports and want a pair of sunglasses that let you listen to music, take calls, and use an AI assistant, the Meta Vanguard is it. It’s very expensive, though, so you should consider cheaper alternatives if the IP rating isn’t a big deal for you.
Social shutterbugs: Like other Meta models, the Vanguard includes a camera for taking photos and videos, and microphones for making calls and receiving voice commands.
Glasses Features
Speakers, Microphone, Camera
Connection
Wireless
Input Controls
Voice
Voice Assistant Compatibility
Meta
Learn More
Oakley Meta Vanguard
Review
- Sharp, colorful display
- Neural Band is easy to use
- Good navigation guidance
- Mostly locked to Meta’s ecosystem
- Limited push notification support
- Frustrating interface
- Chunky frames
In terms of engineering, the Meta Ray-Ban Display is an incredible package that represents a generational leap for waveguide display-equipped smart glasses you can wear on the go. Its Neural Band controller provides impressive gesture controls, its display is full color rather than monochrome green like most other waveguide glasses, and it’s packed with useful communication and navigation features, including a very helpful map view.
The problem is that the interface and its features are built almost exclusively around Meta services. It can’t show simple push notifications from third-party apps, and outside of basic phone calls and texts, it will only let you know if you get a message through Facebook Messenger, Instagram, or WhatsApp. Its various features and menus are riddled with other annoying limitations beyond notifications, and the frames look pretty chunky, too.
Meta users: The Meta Ray-Ban Display is designed to connect to Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. If you do your chatting through those services, you’ll be satisfied.
Early adopters: If you want a taste of what the future of go-anywhere smart glasses might be like, this is how you can get it. The Meta Ray-Ban Display has one of the best waveguide displays I’ve seen. Moreover, its Neural Band gestures, while not perfect, are far better than most other waveguide smart glasses, which rely almost entirely on physical touch strips and voice commands.
Glasses Features
Camera, Dimmable Lenses, Display, Microphone, Speakers
Connection
Wireless
Input Controls
Voice
Voice Assistant Compatibility
Meta
Integrated Display Type
Waveguide
Resolution
600 by 600
Field of View
20 degrees
Learn More
Meta Ray-Ban Display
Review
The Best Smart Glasses for 2026
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Buying Guide: The Best Smart Glasses for 2026
What Are Smart Glasses?
Smart glasses are eyewear that includes electronic components and can do more than just correct your vision or protect your eyes. As you can imagine, that covers a wide array of devices that can do completely different things.
We can sort smart glasses into a few specific types, with some overlap. Audio smart glasses have speakers built into the frame, allowing them to function as headphones. Augmented reality smart glasses use tiny projectors and lenses to display a picture as if a screen were in front of your eyes. Social media-focused smart glasses feature built-in cameras to let you capture photos and videos, and even live stream.
Captify Pro (Credit: Will Greenwald)
There are some rarer types of smart glasses as well, like Chamelo’s Music Shield and Dusk glasses. They use liquid-crystal lenses to provide an adjustable tint, switching from transparent to sunglasses mode with a tap or via an app. The Chamelo Aura goes a step further by using multiple tinted liquid-crystal films to let you cycle through different lens colors. Some AR glasses, like the Viture Luma Pro and the XReal One Pro, use similar technology with less precise control. Their displays make them bulkier and less suitable for casually walking around, though.
While they have strong connections to computers and video games, blue-light-blocking glasses aren’t actually smart glasses. They don’t have any electronics inside and simply rely on lens coatings to reduce exposure to blue light and reduce eye strain. They can be soothing but are not smart in the vein we’re talking about here.
Audio Smart Glasses for Music and Calls
Audio tech is arguably the backbone of all smart glasses because it’s available on most models. Audio-equipped smart glasses are headphones in glasses form, usually with small earphone-like drivers built into the temples, angled to project sound into your ears. Paired with beam-forming microphones, they let you not only listen to music but also make phone calls and use voice assistants.
Their sound quality is limited by the nature of acoustics and how sound travels, which is why we’ve yet to find any solely audio-focused smart glasses particularly compelling. Because there’s a significant air gap between the drivers and the ears, bass is virtually nonexistent for these glasses. The mids and highs might come through well enough; you don’t get much in the way of lower frequencies. You also don’t get much privacy because sound can leak. These caveats apply to AR smart glasses as well, since they use similar audio technology.
Given how expensive most smart glasses are, we prefer those that provide useful features beyond just audio. If audio is your main concern, you’re better off with a pair of wireless earbuds and a regular pair of glasses.
Social media is all about sharing, and for most shutterbugs, that means keeping your phone out with the camera app open. Camera smart glasses let you shoot, record, and stream whatever you see and hear without having to grab your phone. The idea first hit with the oddball Snapchat Spectacles, which went through three iterations but are currently dormant. Meta has picked up the slack, first with the Facebook and Instagram-friendly Facebook Ray-Ban Stories, and now with the Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses and other fashion-branded variants.
Photo taken with Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses (Credit: Andrew Gebhart)
These glasses also have audio features, so you can use them as headphones, but it’s the camera aspect that really makes them appealing. That same aspect can also make them very unappealing to some. On one hand, they let you capture moments in your life and share them on social media. On the other hand, they can be used to record other people without their consent, which has become an increasing concern.
AR Smart Glasses (aka Prism) for Remote Work, Entertainment
Augmented reality is a technology that can project images over your surroundings, letting you see computer-generated information overlaid in the real world, like a personal hologram. It’s a promising, futuristic concept that is still in development and requires a multitude of components like micro-displays, motion sensors, cameras, and processors to all work together. We’ve seen AR work in limited cases on phone screens, from Google Lens to Pokémon Go. Ambitious head-mounted displays like the Apple Vision Pro can scan the space around you and truly augment it with digital objects you can see and interact with. That latter type of AR is still in its early stages, requiring expensive hardware and offering limited functionality.
Viture Beast (Credit: Will Greenwald)
Most so-called AR and XR glasses (or anything in the blurry ground between AR and VR, such as mixed reality) are something of a misnomer. They use tiny projectors and thick prism lenses to display a picture in front of you, which is why I refer to any “AR” smart glasses that use this type of display system as prism smart glasses. They can even use built-in motion sensors to affix a screen in one spot, so it stays put even if you move your head, or gives you different views like a simulated ultrawide monitor.
They aren’t truly AR, though. They’re designed solely to serve as personal displays, not to overlay information on your surroundings. While their projection systems are ostensibly transparent, they’re also bulky, and their big, bright, colorful projections are distracting. They’re not exactly safe to walk around in, and the required cable running from the glasses to your preferred device doesn’t make it any easier. They’re best for using while sitting down to watch a video or get some work done, not for augmenting your reality.
I swear by prism smart glasses with ultrawide modes like the Viture Beast and XReal One Pro when I have to work away from my desk. They work just like USB-C monitors, so you can plug them into almost any laptop, some Android phones, newer iPhones, and (with an adapter) most devices that can output video over HDMI. Once you get accustomed to them, they’re really useful.
Recommended by Our Editors
Waveguide Smart Glasses for On-the-Go AR: A Work In Progress
There’s another sub-category of smart glasses that are both wireless and fully transparent, so you can use them on the go. These glasses use waveguides etched into the lenses themselves to display information while maintaining a completely clear view. They’re not really consumer-ready, though. Waveguide projection systems typically have a much more limited field of view and lower resolution than prism smart glasses, and their software is far from polished.
The Even Realities G2’s waveguide display in navigation mode (Credit: Will Greenwald)
I’ve reviewed several pairs of waveguide smart glasses, most recently the Captify Pro, the Even Realities G2, and the Meta Ray-Ban Display. So far, the Meta glasses are by far the most technically advanced, with a color display and a unique Neural Band wristband controller that detects hand gestures. However, it’s locked down in Meta’s ecosystem and doesn’t support third-party push notifications like every other pair. The Even G2 is the most broadly useful thanks to push notifications and much better transcription and translation functions, and currently has the most potential for new functions thanks to the addition of a third-party app store called Even Hub. The Captify Pro is designed specifically for users who are hard of hearing, and is limited purely to providing live captions and translations, but its much simpler interface can make it more accessible to less tech-savvy users than the other glasses. They all have pretty heavy limitations and steep learning curves, though, which is why I still can’t wholly recommend any pair of waveguide smart glasses just yet.
Watch These Smart Glasses Translate Language in Real Time | All Things Mobile
Waveguide display glasses can provide visual data to anyone, but they’re particularly beneficial for those with hearing difficulties. Most can provide live captions of anyone you’re talking to, and can usually translate languages as well (though translations tend to be much less accurate than simply transcribing speech). There are actually some purpose-specific waveguide display glasses designed only to provide captions, but they’re usually classified as assistive devices like hearing aids, and can be much more expensive than the glasses on this list (the XanderGlasses, for example, cost $5,000). From that sub-category, the only pair I’ve reviewed so far is the Captify Pro.
Smart Glasses vs. VR Headsets
Meta Quest 3S and 3 (Credit: Will Greenwald)
We’re still far away from AR smart glasses that can, say, recognize a cafe you’re staring at and pop up its customer reviews. In the meantime, if you’d like a taste of true AR with apps and games you can actually use, the Meta Quest 3 is your best bet. It’s a fully enclosed VR headset (meaning you shouldn’t try to use it in public), but its color pass-through cameras let you see the real world well enough to toss images and 3D models around a room. The Meta Quest 3S is a more budget-friendly option to consider and also has color pass-through cameras, but its display isn’t as sharp. For more, check out our comparison of the Meta Quest 3 versus 3S.
Apple doesn’t make smart glasses, but its Vision Pro is the most advanced AR/VR headset available, with support for eye-tracking, hand-tracking, voice control, and seamless mobile app integration, all in one streamlined package. Like the Meta Quest 3 and 3S, though, you shouldn’t wear it outside of the house, and at $3,499, the Vision Pro is out of reach for most people.
The Samsung Galaxy XR, with hand gesture controls (Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Samsung has its own answer to the Vision Pro, the Galaxy XR, and it’s a much more reasonable (but still pricey) $1,799. It’s also the first device to use Google’s Android XR platform, which is designed not just for headsets, but any wearable display. It’s being joined this year by XReal’s Project Aura, the second officially released Android XR device and the first pair of smart glasses on the platform. We’ll have to see how they, and Android XR in general, affect the smart glasses field over this year.
