CES 2025 is in full swing, and brands from around the world are populating Las Vegas, Nevada to showcase innovations from a wide variety of consumer technology markets, including my personal favorite: smart glasses.
2024 has become quite a successful year for smart glasses, not only due to unexpected mass success Ray-Ban Meta smart glassesbut the past year has also provided some pretty impressive visions of the future, thanks to advertising concepts such as Orion Meta Holographic Glasses and Google Android XR– power frames. The latter uses the multimodal artificial intelligence model Gemini 2.0, previously presented in Project Astra teaser from Google I/O event in May 2024.
Looking ahead to 2025, the next step for smart glasses was clear as day: while AI glasses like Meta, only AirGo3, And Airgo vision will act as the tip of the spear, the addition of display technology will be the feature that will truly pierce the skin of the mainstream.
Just a few days into the new year, we are already seeing several smart glasses with displays catching the attention of many amid the frenzy CES 2025and I predict that these wearables may catch many by surprise by the time Samsung and Meta enter the fray with their own offerings, rumored to be released later this year.
Head-up display could be a big player in 2025: here are the glasses that prove it
It’s been over a decade since the original launch of Google Glass like the Borg, and the smart glasses have managed to pack incredible potential into a frame that you might have to look at twice before you notice anything special about them.
While some smart glasses certainly have an uncanny valley feel due to their thicker profiles or larger temple tips, they have ultimately become incredibly useful and comfortable to wear, and sometimes impressively fashionable.
While the big trend for smart glasses in 2024 was the introduction of AI assistants, 2025 promises to usher in the next generation of these wearable devices by introducing a visual component for reading messages on the go, easily navigating new places, and even subtitles into our lives. , including the ability to translate languages on the fly.
CES 2025 gave us our first real look at this new wave of smart glasses, and here are three impressive products worth keeping an eye on throughout the year ahead.
Halliday smart glasses
Thanks to its unique DigiWindow projection method and active AI agent, Halliday’s glasses were the talk of the town at CES this year, and perhaps rightfully so.
Holliday frames look indistinguishable from regular bifocals, but feature an invisible display (operated by a gesture-controlled smart ring) that projects images directly into the eyes, allowing wearers to discretely and privately send and receive messages, receive navigation tips, and display song lyrics. your favorite songs and act as a teleprompter during speeches or presentations.
However, it’s Halliday’s proactive AI that takes center stage here, a true co-pilot in your daily life that can translate languages, check information, automatically take notes and suggest answers to questions asked of you, all in real time. -time.
While it sounds like a concept you’ll have to wait until the next decade to enjoy, Holliday’s glasses are expected to go on sale at the end of March. Pre-orders are now open on the Halliday website.
Even the realities of G1
The Even Realities G1 is a sleeker option that brings a luxurious, minimalist style to the smart glasses realm. Their thin frames and temples are the last thing you’d expect to see in smart glasses that can project a virtual display in front of you. However, the massive temple tips reveal that there is more to these glasses than meets the eye.
Even the Realities G1 smart glasses use waveguide lenses to display the HUD, offering what the company calls “quiet connections” through notifications, prompts and tools that won’t distract you from the world around you.
Glasses like the G1 and others can seamlessly integrate into your life, giving you a quick and convenient way to interact with your technology without getting lost in it, whether it’s overcoming a language barrier with real-time translation or a few quick answers. to messages mid-meeting.
They are simple, elegant and they are available to order now in panto or rectangular frames.
RayNeo X3 Pro
Perhaps the most advanced smart glasses presented at CES are the TCL RayNeo glasses. The X3 Pro is a follow-up to the impressively forward-thinking X2, which also offered Micro-LED optical waveguide displays, this time returning with a Qualcomm Hexagon NPU for powerful autonomous AI features that can work alongside Qualcomm’s powerful Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1. processor for working with augmented reality capabilities and even hand tracking.
The X3 Pro is everything in one package, and it’s probably most closely related to the Meta Orion more than the other glasses on this list, giving us a taste of tomorrow today.
Its impressive capabilities continue with a built-in high-definition camera for photography, an open-array quad speaker for listening to music, and a full-color virtual display with a 200.00:1 contrast ratio and 154% sRGB color gamut.
Frankly, this is one of the most advanced things you can wear on your face today without taping a MacBook to your head. You can expect these futuristic frames to hit stores in mid-2025, with more release information to follow.
You may not be familiar with the brands listed above, but this isn’t just a simple venture by a few small companies looking to cash in on the smart glasses hype.
Judging by the actions of many smart glasses manufacturers, it seems quite clear that this year will be a big moment for facial wearable displays. However, if that doesn’t quite sell you on it, perhaps the fact that both Samsung and Meta are rumored to be among the first two major companies to try the technology themselves in 2025 is.
Samsung rumored to advertise smart glasses with display could arrive as early as the end of this month when the company unveils for the first time Galaxy Unpacked Event 2025 will take place on January 22.
Alternatively, Meta will likely show off its third generation of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses in September, and is also hotly hinting at including a display on its latest model.
Why heads-up displays are gaining popularity
Having worn smart glasses daily for over a year now, I’m pretty confident in my prediction that we’re looking at one of the next major smart tech products in the future. And the industry’s desire to add a heads-up display to these devices may be just what’s needed to push smart glasses onto the faces of the average Joe or Jane, if only for the sake of convenience.
A mobile phone usage report published Reviews.org in 2024 showed that the average American will check their phone up to 205 times a day, up 43% from 144 times in 2023.
Why not? Our smartphones have become a vital source of information in our daily lives. Thanks to this, we keep in touch with people close to us, follow news or current events, watch entertainment and even play games. Smartphones can do so much that the same report states that on average, Americans spend just over five hours a day on screens.
I’m not here to judge this figure or claim an opinion on whether it’s good or bad. To each his own, that’s my point of view. However, the head-up display offered by smart glasses seems like a natural extension of our obsession with finding devices in our pockets.
For some, this will be a way to stay connected without being too distracted by other functions of the smartphone; for others, it will be a way to distance themselves from the smartphone and take a more relaxed and mindful approach to their activities. digital life.
Either way, both groups benefit, and that’s not to mention the big benefits that can be found in navigation tools or on-demand AI assistance, all without completely ripping you out of the moment by forcing you to pull out your smartphone.