Actually using the Specs is kind of like using a hybrid of smart glasses and a VR headset. In front of your eyes, you can see menus, app windows, and elements of whatever app (“lens”) you’re using, like the digital dominoes.

Those elements appear over whatever you’re looking at with your eyes through the lenses of the glasses, which have waveguide displays that can show “16 million colors” and “sharp, high-resolution visuals” (Snap hasn’t specified the exact resolution). Thanks to hand-tracking tech in the Specs, you can pinch and drag to manipulate parts of the interface, such as resizing a window or moving a domino onto the game board, and Snap says you can even snap your fingers to take a picture in the Specs’ Snapchat app.

Clever. You can also have windows follow along as you move your head, in case you want to keep a window in your vision no matter where you’re looking.

You can access a home button, a Control Center-like menu, and status information like the time by holding up your palm in a setup that reminds me of the ill-fated Humane Pin. In my limited testing, it was all rather finicky.

I often had to pinch a few times or make sure my hand was placed in just the right spot to get something to work the way it should. I never quite nailed the two-part action of flipping my hand up and then using my other hand to press the home button.

While standing in the sun, it was much harder to see the augmented reality graphics. Snap has beaten competitors like Meta to shipping a pair of glasses with displays in both lenses, letting it deliver a true AR effect and not just another flat screen.

But by putting the AR display dead center in your vision, the Specs’ 51-degree field of view becomes a major limitation. It meant that digital elements kept slipping out of sight during my demos, which ruined the illusion that they were actually in the real world.

While watching Lanterns on HBO Max in a browser in a moving car, I had to shrink the window to make it easier to see in front of me. While playing dominoes, I had to keep physically turning my head to see my dominoes and the playing board and back again.

Because it’s 2026, the Specs also have a dedicated AI chatbot assistant, but in my limited experience it was slow and inconsistent. With a “Hey Specs” command, I asked it to show me funny cat videos on YouTube, as suggested by a Snap rep.

I had to ask it twice because it didn’t pick up the command the first time. When the command worked, it then took about 15 seconds for the Specs to pull up a YouTube page with search results for funny cat videos.

Watching that video also revealed to me a bizarre social interaction that people will have to come to grips with if AR glasses gain any sort of traction. On that YouTube page, I picked some random cat video collection, and it played in the background while the Snap rep kept talking to me.

Even though the Specs were playing audio through the onboard speakers, the Snap rep standing right next to me said they couldn’t hear anything. That made me feel weird — these glasses theoretically let you watch and listen to a private video while staring somebody else straight in the eye.

Even when I wasn’t watching the video, I found myself constantly distracted from the in-person conversations I was having during the demo because my eyes were caught up with what they were looking at while my hands were focused on arcane gestures for tasks that only I could see. I didn’t feel very present.

Like Meta glasses, which are currently grappling with a “pervert” glasses reputation, the Specs also let you take photos and record video. They too have a privacy indicator light, and it’s arguably more prominent than Meta’s take: Instead of a light that’s off to the side, the Specs’ light is right in the center of the glasses.

But I don’t know if, given the growing pushback against Meta’s glasses, a blinking light is enough to deter concerns about potential unwanted recording. That bar in the middle is the privacy indicator light.

In 2024, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel told The Verge that there is an opportunity for computers to evolve to “support the ways that humans have long interacted socially by looking at each other eye to eye with much more natural interaction.” Today, Snap has a simpler message: It says that its vision with Specs is to “make computing more human.”

But even in my controlled demos, I found that Specs were actually more computer than other hardware; the glasses are unmissable on my head, and the digital content that only I could see was getting in the way of me interacting with the other people in the room. Still, these headsets are coming.

Meta is working on a pair, Google has a new glasses initiative, OpenAI has reportedly considered smart glasses, and Apple is apparently planning to announce Ray-Ban Meta-like smart glasses next year (and it’s worth noting that former Apple CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly praised AR in the past). It’s clear they all see the next frontier as glasses with tech like cameras and screens that sit on your head.

Specs will be the first real test of what AR glasses can be. But even after Snap’s years of work, they still might be coming out too soon.

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