A computer for your face

TL;DR: After teasing the idea for over a decade, Snap unveiled Specs yesterday, a $2,195 pair of AR glasses it hopes will eventually replace the smartphone. But the reception has been frosty, with criticism of their price and bulky look—and they come right as rivals like Meta and Apple race for the same space on your face.

What happened: The standalone glasses come with a full AR display that, per Snap, feels like a 24-inch monitor. Under the hood they run two Qualcomm Snapdragon chips and offer (only) about four hours of battery life.

That makes Specs more like a portable version of the Apple Vision Pro than the Meta Ray-Ban Display, which only has a small HUD-like screen. Snap says Specs can stream video, run games, throw up walking directions, and answer questions about whatever you’re looking at. The aim, according to CEO Evan Spiegel, was to “build a totally new type of computer.” Pre-orders are open now in the US, UK, and France, and the glasses are expected to ship this fall.

The post-phone pitch: Spiegel’s wager is that we’re all sick of staring down at screens. “Almost 20 years since the launch of the iPhone, people are ready to think about computing differently,” he told CNBC. Specs might also be a timely play: The smart glasses field is filling up fast, with a waitlist for Meta’s Ray-Ban Display glasses, Google’s Warby Parker collab also coming this fall, and Apple’s rumored display-free glasses that could land as soon as 2027.

Not a good look: Unsurprisingly, analysts have zeroed in on the eye-watering price that will “likely keep adoption limited." (For comparison, Meta’s AR glasses are $799.) Snap’s stock fell about 9.6% as of this morning, a sign of investor skepticism as the company continues to lose cash.

And beyond the sticker shock, there’s also been plenty of cringing at the clunky design. Snap rolled out a sleek ad campaign featuring celebs like Jack Harlow, Kaia Gerber, and Jimmy Butler donning the frames—but here’s how they actually look in the real world.

Bottom line: Snap has thrown its hat in the ring of the smart glasses race with some high-spec hardware. But the winner may not be whoever ships the best device—just whoever makes something useful that the average person actually wants to be seen wearing. —WK