Sabrina Ortiz/ZDNET
The success of Meta Ray-Bans has helped demonstrate there's a demand for lightweight, everyday glasses packing additional tech. Snap is getting in on the action with all-new Specs AR glasses that address the biggest pain points of their predecessors.
Next-gen Snap Specs
At the Augmented World Exhibition (AWE) 2025 this week, Snap announced its next-generation, AI-centered Specs. Packed into a lighter form factor and powered by Snapdragon, these Specs use advanced machine learning to understand the world around you and offer AI assistance in your everyday life. They also offer entertainment-gear AR experiences such as shared games and a portable workstation for browsing, streaming, and more.
Also: I tested smart glasses with built-in hearing aids for a week, and didn't want to take them off
The fifth generation of Spectacles was released in 2024 but was only available to developers, who could build new experiences using the glasses. Snap shares the public launch of Specs will be in 2026.
When I tried the fifth-generation version myself, I was very impressed with the realistic AR experience and how well it felt anchored in the three-dimensional world around me. My biggest complaint was the sheer weight of the glasses, making this update most welcome. Beyond the hardware, the software powering the experiences -- Snap OS -- also got a myriad of upgrades.
Snap OS with AI assistance
In the era of AI, AR glasses would not be considered useful unless they could also provide AI assistance. To meet that demand, Snapchat is including deep integrations with OpenAI and Google Gemini, which developers can use to build multi-modal AI-powered Lenses that the Spectacles community can access. Snap provides some examples of developer use cases, such as using AI to provide text translation, current conversion, suggest recipes, and more.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET's parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
... continue reading