GoKawiilI first put on a pair of prototype Android XR glasses nearly a year and a half ago. We still have months to go before any Android-powered smart glasses are available, but Google is finally ready to show off the progress it’s made. That starts with Project Aura, a dark pair of sunglasses that sits somewhere between a full headset and a lighter pair of mixed-reality glasses.
There have been a handful of hardware updates since I last tried out Project Aura in October. The glasses, made in collaboration with Xreal, now feature a carrying case and a new design for their compute puck. Google was mum on the chip inside, aside from the fact that it’s more powerful than the previous puck. The puck also has a fingerprint scanner, so you can unlock the device more easily. And in addition to a waist clip, there’s now a lanyard so you can wear the puck around your neck, in case you’d like to channel peak Gadget Dad vibes.
You won’t look cool in these glasses, but the target audience for Project Aura isn’t the average Joe in the same way that Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses are. They’re a starting point for XR diehards who want a more portable and discreet version of a headset. Case in point: navigating Aura’s interface is nearly identical to the Galaxy XR’s.
Project Aura now has a carrying case and a new compute puck. Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge
Last time I took Project Aura for a whirl, I mostly tried playing a tabletop game in a mixed-reality space, viewing multiple app windows in your space, and wirelessly mirroring a laptop display a la the Samsung Galaxy XR and Apple Vision Pro. This time around, I got to see a few vibecoded, spatial computing experiences. One let me make 3D AR doodles. Another would bring up the molecular structure of any real-world object I “pinched.” Neither was particularly unique, but the point is that you no longer need a full-on headset to experience or test vibecoded spatial apps. Mirroring a display was as easy as plugging the glasses into the laptop with a USB-C cable. At this, my eyes widened. Instead of needing to buy a second monitor, you can carry one around in your pocket. You don’t have to rely on spotty Wi-Fi either. I’m never going to be one of those people who schlepps a headset onto a plane or to the office, but this? This I would do.
A slightly more gimmicky — but still cool — feature is the adaptive transparency mode. The opacity of Project Aura’s lenses can be tweaked lighter or darker with a press of a button. The neat thing is the glasses can tell if you’re looking at content versus trying to interact with people. So say you crank up the opacity for a more immersive working environment, but then your spouse asks you a question. When you look at said spouse, the glasses will automatically revert so you can see them clearly. When you look back at your second digital screen, you’re back to full opacity.
Aura is an intriguing project, but it isn’t what I expected to be demoing this week. Last year, Google made a big splash by announcing that it had partnered with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker to design some stylish pairs of smart glasses that would presumably take on the Ray-Ban Meta. Today, Google (along with Samsung) unveiled the designs of the first pairs, which are coming this fall. There’s a very Y2K-y ovular pair from Gentle Monster and a “not legally Ray-Ban” style pair from Warby Parker.
Neither pair was available for me to see or try in person, though. Instead, Google had me demo many of the features that will be coming to these audio glasses using some generic prototypes. Asked for price or specs, I likewise got almost nothing. The only tidbit I got for you is that they’ll be lighter than the roughly 49 gram prototypes I tested updated Android XR features on. Samsung’s close involvement as a partner is also being more heavily emphasized this year. These aren’t “Google smart glasses” or “Warby Parker smart glasses,” these are “Google/Samsung/Warby Parker-or-Gentle Monster smart glasses.” Good luck keeping it straight.
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