Last week was CES, the first major tech show of the year, and as with so many early Januaries before it, I found myself in Las Vegas covering the sprawling event. This time, though, I leaned heavily on smart glasses—both while writing stories and navigating the show’s endless floors and halls. The experience was illuminating, revealing just how much the category has matured, as well as how far it still has to go. Here’s what I learned.
Two Kinds of Smart Glasses, Two Very Different Jobs
There are two primary types of smart glasses with built-in displays, each serving a distinct purpose. Waveguide-based models, such as the Rokid Glasses and the Meta Ray-Ban Display, are lightweight, wireless models with completely transparent, flat lenses. They’re safe and convenient to wear when walking around, just like ordinary glasses. The drawback is that waveguide displays typically have a narrow field of view and relatively low resolution. They’re useful for providing quick information, such as notifications and appointments, but not for watching videos or getting work done.
Left to right: Even Realities G2 waveguide glasses, XReal One Pro prism glasses (Credit: Will Greenwald)
Prism-based smart glasses, such as the XReal One Pro and the RayNeo Air 3s Pro, use chunky prism lenses that are separate from their outward-facing lenses to project images directly into your eyes. They can have a very wide field of view and relatively high resolution (usually topping out at 1080p or 1200p), but the lens assemblies typically obscure your view more than waveguide displays. They’re also heavier and use wired USB connections to sources like phones and computers, making them neither feasible nor safe to wear while on the go. Think of them as big personal external monitors.
I used both kinds of smart glasses at CES: waveguide on the show floor to keep track of messages and appointments, and prism while sitting down and writing.
Waveguides Glasses: A Heads-Up Display for the Chaos of CES
The Meta Ray-Ban Display is arguably the most notable (and one of the most technologically advanced) pair of waveguide smart glasses on the market. It offers a full-color display capable of handling video calls and maps, and its Neural Band controller provides a unique, fairly intuitive control system. I’m currently testing it for a full review and had initially been looking forward to using it on the CES show floor. But I didn’t bring it.
The Meta Ray-Ban Display and Neural Band (Credit: Will Greenwald)
Instead, I took the other pair of waveguide smart glasses I’m testing, the Even Realities G2. Here’s why: The Meta Ray-Ban Display simply wouldn’t have been helpful at CES. It doesn’t integrate with my Google Workspace calendar or Slack. While it can show incoming texts and calls, it wouldn’t have displayed my numerous meetings or allowed me to track discussions with colleagues on-site. Most other waveguide models I’ve tried can mirror any phone notification and let you choose which apps appear. The Meta Ray-Ban Display, by contrast, only supports a handful of notifications outside of Meta’s own ecosystem.
The Even G2, on the other hand, is a better fit for the event. Its monochrome green in-lens display is far more limited than Meta’s color screen, and it lacks cameras and the Neural Band for effortless control. But it does offer an optional R1 smart ring for touch-based navigation, which I’m testing alongside the glasses. It’s also far more subtle in appearance—the Meta glasses have thick, chunky frames that a friend, unaware they were smart glasses, described as “a choice.”
The Even Realities G2 smart glasses and R1 smart ring (Credit: Will Greenwald)
The Even G2 is incredibly lightweight, and my review unit came with lenses for my prescription, allowing me to see clearly throughout the show. I barely noticed a difference between wearing them and my non-smart glasses when the display wasn’t up. When it was, the all-green, mostly text interface was clean and crisp. The interface is built around a dashboard with several views to scroll through, such as a simple news feed, a stock ticker, a calendar, notifications, and voice notes. A separate menu activates the glasses’ more advanced features, including the Even AI assistant, the Conversate AI conversation function that takes notes to summarize your discussions, and voice translation.
The Even Realities G2 smart glasses are lightweight, comfortable, and look like regular glasses (Credit: Will Greenwald)
Without the R1 ring, using the glasses requires either voice commands or tapping touch strips that are awkwardly positioned at the very ends of the temples. The R1 serves as its own touch strip for the glasses, allowing me to bring up the dashboard by double-tapping it with my thumb, open the features menu with a long press, and navigate the interface by sliding my thumb up and down, selecting items with a single tap. I initially experienced a lot of false activations with my hand in my pocket, but eventually I figured out how to wear the ring so that the touch-sensitive area would more reliably align with my thumb.
Walking around Vegas, the G2 was very useful for keeping me on task. A double-tap of the ring showed me the time and details of my next appointment, and incoming text messages, Slack messages, and calls popped up reliably. Whether I was in our edit headquarters at The Venetian, in an Uber, or walking around the strip, I stayed connected without looking at my phone or smartwatch.
The show halls and press events were another story. Like all waveguide smart glasses, the G2 connects wirelessly to a phone, and a separate wireless connection pairs the R1 ring with the glasses. All of that wireless linkage between my head, hand, and pocket worked fine outdoors, on casino floors, and in hotel corridors. In exhibition spaces, where dozens, if not hundreds, of companies were choking the wireless bands with their own devices, the G2’s connections completely choked. I stopped getting notifications almost as soon as I entered any hall, and I lost the ability to control the glasses with the smart ring as well. My short-term calendar data remained on the glasses, allowing me to still check when my next appointment was, but I had to reach behind my ear to double-tap the touch strip on the glasses to do so. I couldn’t do anything else with the glasses on the show floor.
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This isn’t a weakness on the glasses’ part, though. The G2’s connections stayed admirably consistent everywhere else I went. It just happens that CES exhibition spaces are some of the most Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-congested places you will ever find. Unfortunately, the loss of connection meant I couldn’t use functions like the Conversate feature while at the show.
That said, simply having my notifications, calendar, and a clock in a pop-up display I could summon with my thumb was really useful at CES. It would have been more useful if I could have used the glasses to transcribe the discussions I had with company representatives at their booths, but again, the show is a wireless torture test.
Prism Glasses: A Portable Office for Getting Work Done
I’ve been hyping prism-based, wired display glasses for several years now. Since they’re essentially wearable monitors, they don’t require nearly as much refinement as waveguide glasses with their wireless connections, AI features, and limited display space. With prism-equipped smart display glasses, all you have to do is plug them into your device of choice and put them on (and enable external display or screen mirroring on your device as needed).
The XReal One Pro (Credit: Will Greenwald)
The XReal One Pro is my current top pick for prism glasses. Thanks to built-in motion tracking, it can set what it’s displaying virtually in space relative to you. In other words, instead of being locked in front of your eyeballs, the picture stays fixed in place, like a TV or movie theater screen, even as you move your head. It really adds to the immersive experience when playing games and watching movies.
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Better yet, the glasses can appear as a 32:9 display when connected to a computer, providing a view similar to that of an ultrawide monitor. I have a lot of windows and tabs open when I work, and I generally need either an ultrawide monitor or two standard monitors to be productive; my laptop’s 14-inch screen simply isn’t enough. Plugging the One Pro in gives me two full monitors’ worth of space at my disposal.
I already regularly use the One Pro when I’m in PC Labs and when I’m working at coffee shops (along with a mechanical keyboard and a mouse, because, yes, I am That Guy). It’s no surprise that the glasses were every bit as useful at CES when I was writing stories and sorting photos.
What Smart Glasses Can (and Can’t) Do Right Now
Covering CES with smart glasses wasn’t a revelatory experience. I already know just how useful the XReal One Pro is when working, and while the Even Realities G2 showed helpful information, it was also hamstrung by the wireless nightmare that is CES. Still, both enriched my ability to navigate the show and produce coverage, to varying degrees.
As I noted in my list of the top smart glasses at the event this year, the category seems to be in a holding pattern at the moment. I do, however, expect to see some big moves at CES 2027 or at manufacturer-specific events later this year and early next year, which is when we can expect to see glasses powered by Android XR begin to emerge.
Android XR is Google’s mixed reality platform for both headsets and smart glasses, and it could be the unifying force needed to push the category forward with consistent features and functionality (not to mention better interfaces and control schemes). I tried Google’s Android XR development kits last month, and they showed a lot of promise. I also tried XReal’s Project Aura prism glasses, and they impressed me more than Samsung’s Galaxy XR headset. That’s because Project Aura incorporates Galaxy XR-like features, including surprisingly accurate hand tracking, into a much smaller, lighter, and more wearable design, powered by a tethered phone-sized device.
I’ll definitely be using smart glasses at other trade shows and conventions. As I mentioned, the XReal One Pro is a regular piece of gear for me, so it’s safe to say I’ll be wearing it or similar pairs when I sit down at a keyboard to put together a story. And if Project Aura and Android XR recognize their potential, I might not even need to plug the glasses into a laptop in the future, and instead may be able to do everything through an Android-powered, phone-sized hub.
About Our Expert
Will Greenwald
Principal Writer, Consumer Electronics
Experience
I’m PCMag’s home theater and AR/VR expert, and your go-to source of information and recommendations for game consoles and accessories, smart displays, smart glasses, smart speakers, soundbars, TVs, and VR headsets. I’m an ISF-certified TV calibrator and THX-certified home theater technician, I’ve served as a CES Innovation Awards judge, and while Bandai hasn’t officially certified me, I’m also proficient at building Gundam plastic models up to MG-class. I also enjoy genre fiction writing, and my urban fantasy novel, Alex Norton, Paranormal Technical Support, is currently available on Amazon.
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