'Pervert Glasses' Are Ruining Wearable Tech. The Best Smart Frames Ditch Cameras Entirely

Camera-equipped AI smart glasses like the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 and Oakley Meta HSTN are facing backlash due to privacy concerns, but smart glasses without cameras offer a more optimistic future, according to a tech reviewer. The article argues that built-in cameras are redundant because smartphones take better photos, machine vision features are not essential, and head tracking can be achieved without cameras. The author recommends camera-free smart glasses as a safer and more practical alternative.

Let’s talk about pervert glasses. There’s been some pretty big backlash against camera-equipped AI smart glasses /smart-glasses/150162/the-best-smart-glasses due to reports of creeps, stalkers, pick-up artists, and social media influencers using them to spy on people. It’s a very real risk, especially if you don’t know what you’re looking for, which is why I wrote a guide on how to spot smart glasses in the wild /smart-glasses/165158/are-you-being-secretly-recorded-heres-how-to-spot-smart-camera-glasses-in-the-wild . It doesn’t help that the most prominent camera-equipped AI smart glasses—Meta-powered models like the Ray-Ban Meta /smart-glasses/161982/ray-ban-meta-gen-2 and Oakley Meta HSTN /wearables/160040/oakley-meta-hstn —are also among the most prevalent overall. It would be understandable if you were against smart glasses solely because of their reputation. It would also be unfortunate, because smart glasses can be genuinely useful without having built-in cameras at all. In fact, that’s a growing trend among AI smart glasses /smart-glasses/166115/what-smart-glasses-can-and-cant-do-i-wore-the-top-models-so-you-dont-have-to , and I think they represent a much more optimistic future for wearable tech than anything with cameras. 3 Reasons Smart Glasses Shouldn't Have Cameras There are three reasons some smart glasses have built-in cameras: to let you take photos and videos, to power machine vision features, and to enable head tracking. Allow me to explain why none of these reasons actually make a great case for including the tech. 1. Your Phone Takes Better Photos and Videos The primary use case for cameras in smart glasses is to capture photos and videos. When the camera isn’t being used to creep on people, it's a fun way to save memories without taking out your phone /mobile-phones/119938/the-best-phones . But this functionality is redundant. Yes, with smart glasses, you can take pictures and record video hands-free, but it won’t look as good as if you used your phone. Simply put, the cameras in smart glasses don’t produce great images. The Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 and its contemporaries have tiny cameras built into the end pieces of the frames that can capture 12-megapixel photos and 3K vertical video. That probably sounds like what your phone can do, but not all megapixels are created equal. We’re talking about a very tiny sensor behind a very tiny lens, and size matters a lot in cameras. Larger sensors can capture more light per pixel, allowing them to perform better in low-light conditions. The bigger the sensor, the less noise and fuzz you’ll get when you shoot indoors. The sensors on smartphones are usually much larger than those in smart glasses. They’re also usually much higher resolution, using pixel binning to let clusters of individual on-sensor pixels work together to capture an image that’s lower resolution but takes in more light. As a bonus, they let you switch to taking photos at the sensor’s native resolution, so if you’re shooting in a well-lit environment, you can capture pictures four times the size of what glasses can give you. Similarly, larger lenses can zoom in on your subject much more, letting you frame whatever you want to shoot and capture the most detail. The tiny lenses in smart glasses let you take wide-angle shots, but when you want to capture a friend, a pet, or a meal, you want to get in tight. You can either physically position yourself close to your subject, which is uncomfortable when using smart glasses, or crop, which means the 12MP image is trimmed to a fuzzy fraction of that. Also, with a phone, you can see exactly what you’re shooting and how it’s framed. Unless your smart glasses have an in-lens display or another way to show you a live camera feed, you can’t actually frame your shot. Moreover, you can shoot in landscape format on your phone, and you aren’t limited to vertical photos and videos like you are with Meta glasses. 2. Machine Vision Belongs on a Screen, Not in Your Eyeglasses Using cameras, smart glasses can scan your surroundings and feed the image to an AI server that can provide information about it. At its best, it can translate text in foreign languages, identify birds, and tell you more about the street you’re on or the restaurant you’re looking at. When it’s accurate, it can be very handy. It’s also already on your phone, which can probably do it better. On your phone, you have your pick of AI models and services, rather than being limited to the platform the glasses support. You also get visual results on a full-color touch screen instead of only through audio or, at best, through the smart glasses’ display that isn’t nearly as easy to interact with as a phone screen. 3. Head Tracking Works, But Is Barely Utilized The third use case for cameras in smart glasses is actually useful, but very limited. Cameras enable head tracking and AR environment scanning, working with embedded motion sensors in the glasses to recognize where you are and how you’re oriented. This is called six degrees of freedom, or 6DOF, and it’s integral to VR /vr-1/75926/the-best-vr-headsets and mixed reality headsets like the Apple Vision Pro /vr-1/162141/apple-vision-pro-m5 and Meta Quest 3 /vr-1/149345/meta-quest-3 . However, it’s almost completely absent on smart glasses. Display-free glasses like the Ray-Ban Meta have no reason to track your head movements. Even display-equipped glasses like the Meta Ray-Ban Display /smart-glasses/162778/meta-ray-ban-display at most have limited three-degrees-of-freedom 3DOF tracking that senses your head’s orientation, but not its position, and that relies entirely on motion sensors, no cameras required. 6DOF tracking will be much more useful on the upcoming XReal Aura /smart-glasses/165087/i-wore-googles-android-xr-glasses-heres-what-impressed-me-most and Snap Specs /smart-glasses/165638/snap-reveals-2195-specs-augmented-reality-glasses-would-you-wear-them , both of which will have 3D interfaces that can show information not just in front of you, but all around the room. The Aura is a pair of bulkier prism-display smart glasses primarily designed for stationary use with a tethered control device. The Specs are completely self-contained and have waveguide displays, so they can be used on the go, but to be brutally honest, they look ridiculous enough that I’m not sure I’d want to wear them in public. The Waveguide Pivot: Why the Next Generation of Smart Frames Ditches the Lens I mentioned waveguide displays /smart-glasses/164363/waveguide-smart-glasses-are-clearly-the-future-once-they-fix-these-3-big-problems earlier, and they’re one of the big reasons I’ve been excited about smart glasses ever since the category started gaining traction a few years ago. Waveguide displays use special patterns etched into the lenses that redirect light from projectors in the frames into your eyes. They’re completely clear when they aren’t showing anything, but can give you notifications, captions, translations, and directions whenever you want. Waveguide glasses sound awesome on paper, but they have a ways to go before I can recommend them to anyone without several warnings about awkwardness, steep learning curves, and unreliability. I’m confident they’ll get there; it'll just take some time. Hopefully, when they do, they won’t have cameras on them. Thankfully, that’s a trend I’m seeing in many current and upcoming waveguide glasses—at least five smart glasses manufacturers are making waveguide models with no cameras whatsoever. I’ve reviewed the Captify Pro /smart-glasses/164679/captify-pro and the Even Realities G2 /smart-glasses/164322/even-realities-g2 and its predecessor, the G1 /wearables/157273/even-realities-g1 , and they very pointedly don’t have cameras. In fact, before the whole pervert glasses label spread, an Even representative told me that the company decided against including a camera specifically for markets like Japan, where they were already frowned upon. I’m also currently testing the Xgimi MemoMind https://zdcs.link/zn75g4 glasses, and they don’t have a camera, either. In fact, the MemoMind website specifically highlights not having a camera as a feature, not an omission. RayNeo has just announced its iO Smart Glasses https://www.rayneo.com/ , another waveguide pair with a display and AI features, but no camera. Similarly, the recently announced Halliday G2 https://zdcs.link/QKwqnE will also be camera-free. Both glasses are slated to come out later this year. Ultimately, I think smart glasses have a promising future. They can be incredibly useful in many different ways, none of which actually require a camera, and could leave you labeled a pervert.