Snap’s newly announced AR Specs may seem similar to other smart glasses, but Snap CEO Evan Spiegel says that’s the wrong way to think about the product. Specs, he says, is “a new kind of computer, a computer that sees.”
Shortly after unveiling the specs at AWE, Spiegel sat down with Engadget to tell us more about the device we got a glimpse of on stage. The CEO has repeatedly referred to Specs as “the computer” and that is fundamental to understanding how Snap is positioning the product (and justifying the price). Specs, Spiegel said, “is able to envelop the computer in the world around you and bring the computer into the world, which is very important if you want to make the computer feel more human.”
But Snap will have to do more than just persuade people to buy a computer for their face. When Specs goes on sale later this year, the company will face a very different environment than when it first started testing camera-enabled glasses in 2016. For one thing, it has a lot of competition now. But today, suspicions of smart glasses are on the rise again, as there have been public cases of people misusing the technology.
There’s a Meta for everything, too. The company was recently caught with a facial recognition feature not removed from its Ray-Ban sunglasses (which it quickly removed after outside researchers discovered it).
Spiegel, not surprisingly, is not a fan of face recognition.
“There are certain use cases, like facial recognition, that we don’t allow for Lenses, and one of the benefits of having our developer ecosystem and our developer tools is that we’re able to measure the Lenses that are shipped and available on Snap to make sure they comply with our guidelines,” he told Engadget.
He also said that he hopes that people will look at Specs in a different way than it is now. “I think AI glasses are often used to record content, that’s kind of the purpose of the glasses as they’re being sold,” he said. “That’s not the intent of the specs. In fact, I think that might be a powerful use case.”
Spiegel said he thinks people will feel more comfortable around Specs if they understand that the wearers may be “using a computer, not surreptitiously recording videos.”
Specs will also be launched at a time when many governments and regulators are scrutinizing social media companies’ child safety records. Earlier this week, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the UK would ban children under 16 from social media, including Snap. Spiegel said that while he expects Specs to be “mostly used by adults,” the company has built in some parental control features for people who want to share the Specs with their teens. “You can swipe to change a little [in the Specs app] and limit the world of lenses they can use when using Specs,” he explained.
At $2,195, the Specs will be more expensive than any other smart glasses currently on the market. And it’s more expensive than most headsets, save the Apple Vision Pro, which Spiegel drew a vivid comparison of during his keynote. I asked if Snap’s goal is for the Specs price to drop eventually and he said it’s the company’s long-term goal.
“That’s something we’ve focused on a lot over time, because we want the specs to be as accessible as possible,” he said. “In terms of computers, it’s an incredibly powerful new computer, and we’re trying to price it in a way that makes it something that beginners and developers and people who are really interested in this technology can afford.”
Aside from the price, the big question before the specs reveal is how much Snap will be able to change its design. Spiegel was wearing the new specs throughout our interview, and after seeing them up close I can confirm that they are much more refined than the developer version from 2024. The arms are still thick, though, and stick out slightly from Spiegel’s head. But from the front, they’re noticeably smaller and rounder than the boxy, more angular frames we’ve seen in the past from Snap.
When he spoke, I could easily see his eyes through the lenses, although I could see a rainbow-like reflection in the embedded waves when he turned his head. I also saw lenses where the dimming feature was enabled and they looked completely black, like dark sunglasses.
Unfortunately, Snap isn’t offering demos of the glasses yet, so my thoughts are limited to what I was able to see during a quick chat with Spiegel. But I’m looking forward to seeing how Snap’s “computer” will look and fit on different faces.
