Tried out Snaps Spectacles: Until the ear becomes soft

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A chunky frame, a wide black bar in front of the eyes and no lightweight: Snap's Spectacles have reached their fifth generation and are now also available in Germany. The style is "intentionally iconic", says Daniel Wagner, Senior Director Software Engineering of Snap's Spectacles program, at a demonstration in the Hamburg office. Everyone should be able to see immediately which Spectacles they are. The predecessors were also eye-catching, but rather colorful and round. heise online was able to try out the glasses.

The boxy Spectacles are real augmented reality glasses. You can play with them, paint in the air, talk to friends via video call and try out the lenses familiar from Snapchat. Videos and photos are among the basic functions. Nevertheless, it is not yet a finished product for consumers. Snap wants to appeal to developers with the subscription model in which the glasses are available. For a price of 110 euros per month, support is available at –, which primarily includes communication with the development team at Snap.

AR glasses with traction

A Snapchat account is required to set them up, but then they are actually a stand-alone device. For example, if you want to make a phone call to a Snapchat contact, you need to link it to your account; the call is made via the app.

The glasses are made for wider heads. Narrower faces can clamp pins between the temples and front to make them fit more snugly. The interpupillary distance is measured. The Spectacles have a 46-degree augmentable range, explains Wagner. The field of vision is actually hardly restricted, you can move around the room relatively normally and safely when wearing the glasses – no fear of tripping. The Spectacles feel very different to a headset like Meta Quest or Apple Vision Pro, which make you feel much more isolated from the world. If the ground is pulled out from under your feet when playing with these glasses, replaced by the universe or similar scenarios, it can make you feel dizzy. Such effects are no longer possible with augmented reality and Spectacles.

More cameras against the T-Rex pose

Since the fifth generation, both straps have been equipped with processors – Snap does not reveal exactly which ones, only that they are from Qualcomm. Wagner says that this improves heat dissipation. The earpieces don't get really warm during our test, which lasted less than an hour, but the ears do.

In addition to the two front cameras, there are two downward-facing infrared cameras. They improve hand tracking, which is used to control the glasses. According to Wagner, your arms would otherwise quickly fall off if you had to constantly hold them upwards. Internally, they call it the "T-Rex pose" if you always have to hold your hands directly in front of the camera. Snap states that the glasses weigh 226 grams.

The Spectacles menu is shown on a floating display. You control it with pinch gestures with your fingers. You can exit the apps via a user interface in your hand. There are virtual buttons for exiting and returning to the main menu.

Flowers grow from the ceiling, golf balls roll along like this

To see how well the glasses capture their surroundings, we select an app that makes flowers grow in the room at the touch of a finger. Plants like ivy grow on the walls and clusters of flowers hang from the ceiling. The Spectacles are therefore able to distinguish between walls and ceilings and even recognize the wide pipes that run along the ceiling.

Another app allows you to paint together in the room in Together mode. Both participants see the same air structure. There is a game in which you have to break boxes flying towards you. A browser can also be used virtually, but the controls are very fiddly. The keyboard floats small in front of you and it is difficult to hit the right keys. Nevertheless, websites can be read easily in the mobile version while you still have a good overview of the room you are in. The lenses can darken. This happens electrochromatically with Spectacles. What we know from normal glasses or Meta Ray-Ban glasses is a photochromatic darkening, i.e. a reaction.

When golfing with Spectacles, you use your smartphone as a club. However, hitting the ball with force is also a bit of a challenge. It lies in front of you on the normal floor. Only when you look up does the screen appear, showing the green over which the ball then rolls (or flies, if you're better).

Artificial intelligence is still moving in

AI arrived at Snap very early on in the form of an AI chat friend – My AI. The company has a partnership with OpenAI for this. There are no plans for in-house developments for the time being. However, My AI can also be accessed via the glasses. So you can ask questions about objects that you see. This already works with Meta's Ray-Ban Glasses, but not in the EU because Meta AI is still being held back in this country. For regulatory reasons, as Meta assures us. To put pressure on the regulators, as others believe.

Snap is still working on many practical functions, such as navigation. However, it is also hard to imagine anyone wanting to use the device to explore a new city all day. Augmented reality is not that far along yet. Yet. It is easy to imagine that Spectacles will soon become part of the new device category that Mark Zuckerberg, for example, is talking about. So far, he has only shown his Orion as a prototype to selected people. Snap is further ahead. But after 45 minutes, not only does the battery run out, the tester's ear also goes limp – in the truest sense of the word, it simply falls off under the weight and no longer holds the glasses.

(emw)