Tech companies are starting to place big bets on smart glasses, hoping that consumers will buy yet another tech accessory. After more than a decade of trying, are they finally right?
Ray-Ban Metas sold more than two million pairs of smart glasses in the first half 2025, showing the technology may have finally arrived. But an expert tells WTOP this technology of the future might not be a huge success yet.
“What’s interesting about them is how much they can do, but there’s a lot of stuff they can’t do, too,” said Scott Stein, an editor at large with CNET. He compares them to smart watches in the years right before smart watches took off. In this case, like a lot of smart watches originally, they’re missing one big component: phone compatibility.
“We already have so much flowing through our phones that I think not having the glasses flow through the phones we use and making them easy to understand is a real drawback,” Stein said.
Companies like Apple and Google appear to be nearing smartphone connectivity with smart glasses in the next year or so, according to Stein. But right now, most brands rely on Bluetooth, or they’re wired into something. Stein said while a lot of different companies are making smart glasses, they do different things and are activated in a variety of ways.
“It totally varies,” he said. “Sometimes there’s a little touch pad or a little thing you have to remember to press on the side of your glasses.”
Other glasses use voice activation, and some use a wrist activator.
“It could also be a ring, or (for example) Meta has this neural band for its high-end pair of glasses that uses hand gestures,” he said.
Stein said it’s confusing to remember how to activate the glasses, and doing so also brings safety concerns with it, especially if you’re driving. Battery life is also an issue, with most glasses only running for a few hours before needing a charge. Most brands won’t last the whole day on one charge.
But Stein doesn’t think these flaws should render the glasses useless.
“I think the interesting thing for me is assistive tech. I have a friend whose dad already uses this with his vision impairment, and (now he can) describe things around him that it can recognize with the cameras,” said Stein. “Already there are some hearing aid technologies.”
Stein said he saw a Google demo of smart glasses that could do live translations with the ability to recognize different languages.
“A lot of times now you have to download a particular language pack, but if it could start recognizing things on the fly when you’re going around, or if it could be used to read something when you’re traveling and then translate, I feel like that’s fascinating,” he added.
Stein also saw demos of Project Aura glasses, expected to come out in 2026 from Xreal and Google. The Android glasses feature an in-lens virtual reality screen display.
“You could also use it to connect wirelessly with your PC,” he said. “You could create as many windows as you want, floating around places to basically create a workspace.”
But you also have to be willing to wear them, and Stein mentioned that some smart glasses won’t work with his own prescription lenses, which poses a functionality problem. And if you don’t wear glasses at all, will you be missing out?
“I think the answer is maybe not,” Stein said. “That’s the challenge (because) you might say to yourself, ‘OK, well, why do I want to put something on my face?’ In which case, I feel like companies are trying to split their bets to say, ‘Well, maybe you just get headphones and your watch, or you just use your phone or use a tablet or whatever combination of things.’”
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