Snap Specs are big, bold, and quirky, but now that I’ve tried them, I don’t see them turning me into Tony Stark

I’ve gotta hand it to Snap. Making Robert Downey Jr., A.K.A. Tony Stark/Iron Man, the honorary Chief Customer Experience Officer for its sixth-generation Specs AR glasses, is a stroke of genius. The move instantly transformed the chunky glasses from an object of derision to one of possible envy. After all, if Tony Stark, who fictionally built a robot suit from scratch and compressed access to all his core technology into E.D.I.T.H. sunglasses, loves them, then the AR-capable Specs must be pretty good.

Of course, leaving aside the celeb and hero worship, the truth falls somewhere in the middle. The all-black Snap Specs, announced in July and which I tried this week, are so thick that you can’t help but make a statement about fashion choices when wearing them; they look even more extreme in profile. To be fair, Snap is not pitching its wearable glasses as permanent eyeglass replacements. Sure, the pair I wore accepted snap-in prescription lenses from Lensly ($100), and you may wear them outside, where the electrochromic lenses will auto-dim, and then let them give you directions or guidance on your golf swing, but you won’t be wearing them all the time.

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Though Snap has slimmed down the Specs with each successive generation, they are still big and thick enough to hold all your technology, including a pair of Qualcomm Snapdragon CPUs, storage, and battery. Not having a tethered battery and technology puck is a trade-off even Tony Stark might appreciate, but putting them on does feel a bit aggressive. The good news is that, at 132g, they are lighter on the face than they look, and I might even call them comfortable to wear.

A time and a place to boldly wear them

I appreciate the somewhat limited scope of this enterprise as compared to, say, Meta Ray-Bans or even Meta Ray-Ban Display smart glasses, and as I used them, I could see the potential but also the limits.

Unlike the Meta VR Glasses I wore last week, Snap Specs are not immersive. Instead, the Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) Waveguide lenses offer a relatively narrow 51-degree field of view (an improvement over the last generation). That floating window can stay fixed or follow your head turns, but in my experience, there were many times when my gaze slipped outside the relatively sharp visuals.

The control metaphors are similar to some VR/AR glasses I’ve tried: During the tutorial, I saw floating jewels that I had to reach out and pinch, and a jellyfish that I grabbed and dragged around before throwing it away. Point, press, pinch, and drag are your primary controls. Unlike many VR glasses (think Meta VR, Apple Vision Pro, Samsung Galaxy XR), there’s no gaze tracking, meaning Snap Specs have no idea where you’re looking.

Snap has spent years perfecting what I think is quite an intuitive gesture-based interface. I quickly got used to pinching and holding to activate, touch and press, and grab or press and drag. The main controls were in the palm of my hand; I turned over my hand, looked at my palm, and there was the home button.

Specs uses its two black-and-white cameras, which sit just outside each lens, for world reading and tracking your hands. A third color camera sits in the middle of the frame for capturing photos and videos. Snap has not detailed the resolution on those captures.

To snap a photo, I long-pressed a control button on the top left edge. A quick press launched a 30-second video capture. At some point, I may have filled up the storage because I could no longer capture photos and video.

An AR app journey

I tried several custom-built apps, including a Harry Potter adventure. Like many of the apps, Specs often starts by asking you to find a surface and stare at it long enough for the smart glasses to read its geometry and place an augmented reality element on it.

For Harry Potter, I placed a mailbox slot on the far wall and out flew dozens of letters. I held out my hand and one landed in it. I could use both hands to open it and see the letter telling Harry he was invited to Hogwarts. I also made a desk appear, selected a wand, and practiced spell motions (I'm no wizard, Harry). There was even an owl that would land on my arm, and that I could pet and feed.

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I also navigated to the browser and opened YouTube, where I watched a cute cat video. The audio, which came through the stems, was loud and rich.

I played dominoes, measured some real-world objects, and practiced drawing. For the latter, I placed a real piece of paper on the table and recreated a tutorial image by following projected guidelines that appeared on my sheet.

Snap Specs are not necessarily designed for productivity, but you can, as I did during my demo, connect a physical Bluetooth keyboard. I'm a terrible typist, but honestly found the experience of trying to touch type while watching the smallish virtual screen unnerving. Unlike a physical screen that you can glance up at without really moving your head, you have to look up to see the virtual display. Trust me, you will not be typing your magnum opus on Snap Specs.

More refinement needed

Despite the two AR chips, some of Snap Specs operations seem a bit slow and pokey. I sometimes felt like I was waiting too long for apps to load, and it didn’t always seem to keep up with my hand motions.

Also, the drawing app made it clear that the AR anchoring technology needs some work. I noticed that my guidelines didn’t stay perfectly still, which made my bad artwork even worse.

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I liked that the relatively narrow window could follow my head, but I still think that a 51-degree FoV is a bit small. Then there’s also the quality of the imagery. While Snap has not specified the screen resolution, I noticed that everything looked sharp and color-rich (16M colors), but I also saw some faint rainbowing, which I think might be a product of the waveguide technology.

I didn’t get to try it, but if you want a more contrasty image and do not need to see as much of the real world, you can activate the electrochromic lenses, which basically makes them semi-opaque and look like sunglasses, but also helps for viewing, say, movies and films.

Real world questions

Snap Specs last about four hours on a charge, though I noticed that the lenses I was trying started around 50% and within 45 minutes were down to 13%. The chunky case will add four more charges.

Oddly, Snap chose to put the LTE connectivity option inside that case, which means if you want on-the-go calling and connectivity, you need the case with you. Unless you have big coat pockets, you’ll need a bag or backpack to carry around that case.

Snap Specs will start at an eye-watering $2,195, a price that clearly reflects the effort it took to keep all that technology inside the frames. If you want the LTE case option, it adds another $300. They’re already accepting preorders ($200 down payment) and expect to ship the glasses before the end of 2026.

The frames will also ship in the UK and France for £1,995 and €2,295, respectively. By contrast, the thinner, lightweight, and more immersive Meta VR Glasses start at $1,299, though they do have all the power and compute in a tethered puck.

There’s no question that Robert Downey Jr. makes these frames look cool, but in the real world, Snap Spec owners will have to decide where and when it’s appropriate to wear these camera-sporting smart frames, and if on-your-face compute that doesn’t really approach E.D.I.T.H. levels is worth $2,195.

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