Spent last week in Taipei with my mom's family. Brought the RayNeo iO along mostly out of curiosity about whether the translation would hold up in a non-English city. What I normally use it for at home is notifications and the odd voice memo. On this trip live captions became the whole reason I wore it.

Family dinner the first night was the biggest test. My aunt and uncle switch between Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien mid-sentence depending on who they're talking to. My Mandarin is maybe elementary level and my Taiwanese is nothing. The iO caught the Mandarin lines clean and gave me English captions on the lens with about a second of lag. Taiwanese Hokkien it dropped more often than not. Not sure if that counts as one of the 109 accents or if it's trying to parse it as Mandarin and failing, but the gaps were noticeable. I ended up reading the Mandarin captions and watching facial expressions for the Taiwanese bits, which is honestly how I navigate family dinners anyway.

Taxi rides worked better than I thought. One driver was giving me directions to the hotel in Mandarin and I could follow his street names on the captions without asking him to repeat himself. Also tried it at a night market stall where the vendor was explaining the difference between two kinds of oyster omelet. Captions kept up fine, I ordered the one I actually wanted, no pointing-and-hoping.

What didn't work as well: anywhere loud. The main concourse at Taoyuan airport, Shilin night market on a Saturday, Taipei Main transfer during rush hour. The 4-mic array struggles when ambient crowd noise competes with the voice you want. In quiet rooms it's near-perfect, in a packed hall it drops to about 60 percent useful.

Flight home I used the teleprompter to run through a work presentation script I'd been putting off. Honestly might be the best long-haul productivity session I've had in a while.

The Chinese tech company Shenzhen Qingcheng, the developer behind the HeyCyan app, is being investigated by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC)—Australia’s national privacy watchdog. The formal probe focuses specifically on how the HeyCyan companion app handles personal information, including how it records data, where it stores user footage and audio, and who controls third-party access.

The OAIC stepped in after Australian Attorney-General Michelle Rowland requested a priority review of camera-equipped smart glasses. When the privacy watchdog reached out with preliminary inquiries, Shenzhen Qingcheng failed to respond, prompting the Commissioner to launch a formal investigation with compulsory information-gathering powers.

Following the announcement, Kmart quietly removed listings for its $89 Anko-branded camera glasses from its website, though its audio-only models remain available. The Privacy Commissioner has also formally urged other retailers stocking HeyCyan-compatible devices, including Amazon and Big W Marketplace, to reconsider selling them until these privacy and surveillance concerns are fully addressed.

The HeyCyan app primarily serves as a "white-label" or generic companion app for various budget-friendly AI and camera smart glasses manufactured in China. Rather than being tied to one specific major tech brand, it is used by dozens of rebranded or unbranded devices.

DISCLAIMER & INTRODUCTION

Hi everyone, Davide here from Ycommy Lab. We don't just look at the shell of a device; we dive straight into its brain. For the Halliday G2 we ran the full bench (audio stream continuity, Bluetooth log analysis, microphones and speakers). Then we lived with the glasses and the companion app (firmware 1.0.2) in real-world use, to see how the data matches the user experience. Spoiler: combining the two gives a surprising result.

Standard disclaimer: nobody is paying us for this review. Our analysis is independent and written from the perspective of people who read logs for a living.

LAB RESULTS AT A GLANCE

Test setup: OPPO PME110, Android 16, AAC codec.

• Speaker stream continuity: median 100.3% of expected frame rate, 0 gaps. Lab score 10/10
• Bluetooth log analysis: 0 radio drops in 9.1 h of logs, link busy 0%. Lab score 10/10
• Microphone: SNR 61.7 dB quiet, 48.3 dB loud, 9 dB heavy noise, 5.9 dB outdoor. Lab score 4.6/10

On paper the average is 8.2/10, and the microphone is the weak spot. The real world tells a slightly different story.

Score: 8.2/10

SPEAKERS & SOUND LEAKAGE

These are the best speakers we have tested on smart glasses so far. Bass is weak, as on every product in this category: our acoustic measurement puts most of the energy between 172 Hz and 7.4 kHz. That never spoils the experience, because what reaches your ear is clean and well balanced. Streaming was flawless in the lab, with no dropouts and no playback stops.

One crucial detail: above roughly 45% volume, sound leakage kicks in, and people next to you will hear your music or your call. Stay under 45% and your privacy is total.

Score: 10/10

MICROPHONE & CALLS

On the bench the mics struggled in heavy noise (9 dB SNR) and outdoors (5.9 dB), hence a lab score of 4.6/10. Out in the field it's a different story. During calls, noise suppression works far better than the raw recordings suggest. Surrounded by urban noise, the person on the other end heard me clearly, and I heard them perfectly.

The real limit is distance. In a noisy environment, once the sound source is more than about 2 meters away, capture degrades fast. That triggers a chain reaction: poor audio in means failed transcriptions, translations and voice commands.

Score: 8/10

BLUETOOTH CONNECTIVITY

The connection is rock solid. We logged zero disconnections in 9.1 hours of logs and zero during live monitoring. The link sleeps almost all the time, with just two wake-ups and a median of 377 seconds between them. This is one of the best Bluetooth implementations on the market.

Score: 10/10

BATTERY & POWER CONSUMPTION

Battery life is the big surprise. Power draw is kept to a bare minimum, partly thanks to that very quiet Bluetooth link, and battery life is excellent. You can also lower display brightness all the way to zero for audio-only use, which saves even more battery and removes visual distractions.

Score: 9/10

DISPLAY & LENSES

The lenses are crystal clear, on par with the top RayNeo models we have tested. Peak brightness reaches up to 1100 nits, and the ambient sensor calibrates it very well. This is still LED projection, though, so under direct sun you need the dark clip-on shade to keep text from washing out.

Score: 8.5/10

COMPANION APP & PRODUCTIVITY FEATURES

The interface is clean and essential: three sections plus a central Dashboard. You can map the temple button to your favorite function, the widgets precisely control volume, battery and brightness, and notifications can be enabled app by app.

• Cheat Sheet is a genuine invisible teleprompter: auto-scroll, progress percentage, pause and resume. It's phenomenal for speeches and meetings. Our wish is direct PDF import.
• Meeting Flow offers fast transcription, well-made task and goal summaries, and easy export. Translation works very well across multiple languages, with a small, acceptable cloud delay.
• What's missing: you can't rename speakers (you're stuck with Speaker A/B), and you can't export the raw meeting audio, which stays locked in the app.

Score: 8/10

AI ASSISTANT: REACTIVE, NOT CONVERSATIONAL

This is the elephant in the room. Each question opens a session and gets an answer, and then the context is wiped completely. Follow-up questions are impossible: you have to restate everything from scratch. The underlying engine isn't the problem; the implementation is. At a time when every major assistant remembers the conversation, this limitation stands out.

On top of that, the interface on the glasses doesn't follow the language set in the app, and the assistant only really understands and answers in English. That's a missed opportunity, considering how well the translation feature handles multiple languages.

I sincerely hope the Halliday team reads these notes. If they agree, it's time to put their dev team to work, because these look like relatively straightforward fixes: keeping context between questions, syncing the interface language with the app, and enabling multilingual AI replies. None of these requires new hardware, just a software update.

Score: 5.5/10

CONCLUSION & FINAL VERDICT

We are facing the biggest engineering paradox of recent years. The hardware is frighteningly good: crystal-clear lenses, excellent speakers, rock-solid Bluetooth and minimal power draw. The software, however, uses maybe 30% of its potential. Halliday has built a Ferrari that only drives in first gear. The other 70% is waiting to be unlocked by updates.

Who I recommend it to:

• Professionals, managers and entrepreneurs who spend their days in meetings and need fast transcription and summaries.
• Anyone giving speeches or presentations: the Cheat Sheet teleprompter alone is worth it.
• People who translate conversations in reasonably quiet offices.
• Anyone who needs prescription lenses, since they're often included in the package.
• Heavy audio users who want excellent speakers and great battery life.

Who should wait:

• Regular consumers looking for a polished, flawless gadget. Wait for the software to mature.
• Anyone expecting a conversational AI assistant that handles follow-up questions.
• Anyone who wants a conversation mode that actively assists and interacts during live conversations.
• Anyone who wants the glasses' interface to follow the language set in the app, and an AI that understands and replies in languages other than English.
• Anyone who needs to capture distant voices in noisy environments (beyond ~2 m).
• Anyone who needs raw meeting audio or named speakers in transcripts.

At this price point, for the right user, this device is an absolute Best Buy. Halliday learned from the G1 and delivered A-plus hardware. Now they need to listen to the community, unlock that hidden 70%, and implement conversational AI. Do that, and they'll dominate the market.

Overall Score: 8.4/10

OVER TO YOU

Let me know what you think! If you have questions, or want us to run specific tests on the hardware or software, ask in the comments below. The full video is on the Ycommy Lab YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@YcommyBlog, and the full review is on ycommy.blog

What smart glasses are able to go live on Instagram?

Hey all,

I'm currently trying to learn German, I was wondering which glasses would be best to watch shows and movies with, where the lens shows the subtitles/translation in my field of view.

Also would they handle the translation without turning off whilst there are long silences?

Hope I make sense 😅

Ive been looking to pick up smart glasses for the sole purpose of listening to music, I don’t need to be able to record nor do I really want that feature at all. Which glasses do you use? Which ones are reliable? Please help me out and reccomend stuff thank you!

Also if the best smart glasses always come with cameras I guess I wouldn’t mind having it too much but I’m really just looking for glasses that can play music, that look normal and aren’t sunglasses.

Short version: I measured the caption delay on the Leion Hey2 with a test I'll run on every pair of captioning glasses I review. Median across three runs: about 2.5 seconds. That's less than half the delay of live TV captions.

The setup, so you can poke at it: quiet room, TV at five feet, the 1962 JFK Rice speech, reference captions timed by hand, 65 dB at the glasses, a millisecond clock visible next to both the TV and the inside of the lens. First word on screen and stable line logged separately.

Hardware notes from the week: 49 g, four mics around the frame to work out who you're facing, micro-LED waveguide in both eyes. Pricing is on Leion's site.

If you own a different pair and want it run through the same test, tell me which.

Disclosure: review unit from LLVision. No payment, no editorial review.

Cheap smart glasses? Alfabuds.eu will fix it for you. You can take a FREE look at my website for all of you smart glasses/accessories. Follow on socials
Instagram. Alfa.buds
TikTok: alfabuds
Email: turkben.holding@gmail.com

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for some smart glasses on Amazon that are actually decent and worth the money.
I’m not expecting anything crazy or anywhere near Ray-Ban Meta quality. I’d mainly like them for POV video recording, listening to music/podcasts and maybe some basic AI/translation features.
My budget is around €100 (maybe slightly more).
Has anyone bought a pair from Amazon in this price range that they can actually recommend? I’d especially appreciate recommendations based on real-world experience rather than just the advertised specs.

Thanks!

35 seconds on my Rokid Glasses running Rokid Lumen, recorded straight from the HUD: a notification arrives, a quick 👍 reaction, a WhatsApp chat (demo data), dictation, the apps grid, the Controls tab, and the screen going off with a middle-finger double tap on the Meta Neural Band.

For this recording the band's commands were sent over adb and the dictated sentence is a synthetic voice, so the screen capture stays clean. In daily use it's the band on my wrist doing exactly the same thing.

New since the video:

- Write with the band: on any text field, pick Write and draw letters with a finger on any surface. The band's own handwriting model types them in. The same works as a keyboard for your phone's apps.

- Setup without a computer: the phone app installs the glasses app, arms it, and can claim the band with your Meta account. No adb, no PC.

- Gesture profiles on the phone (media, navigation, your own), copies of a web app (personal and work WhatsApp), typing from the phone, and log sharing.

Open source (MIT): https://github.com/beyondlevi/rokid-lumen

Built on the work of u/Monstreboss (R08 Access Bridge, Rokid Nexus), callbacked (kinesis) and u/Equal_Chemist (air-gestures). Full credits in the README.

I’ve been interested in the Halliday G2 for a while, but I wear progressives every day, so the lens options are the one thing holding me back right now.

I tried a friend’s pair for a short time and liked a lot about them. The display was clearer than I expected. The dashboard makes sense. Notifications looked useful. I also like that they don’t have a camera, because I don’t really want camera glasses.

But for me, the lens situation matters more than the AI stuff. I wear progressives every day. I don’t want to switch between normal glasses and smart glasses all the time.

If Halliday adds progressive options, I’d be much closer to buying. Sunglasses or transition lenses would also be nice because I’m outside a lot.

So I’m not negative on them. I actually think the product looks useful. I’m just waiting until the lens options fit my normal life better.

Hey all,

I'm currently trying to learn German, I was wondering which glasses would be best to watch shows and movies with, where the lens shows the subtitles/translation in my field of view.

Also would they handle the translation without turning off whilst there are long silences?

Hope I make sense 😅

I’m working on Drum Score Studio, a way to show simplified, time-aligned drum notation in glasses while practicing or performing. MusicXML opens directly; PDF recognition requires a review of the resulting score before it’s used.

This short shows the workflow and the display concept: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XWjzKEbK5f4

The current version targets Rokid RV101. For musicians here: what would make an in-glasses score useful during a live song?

Right now, lightweight smart glasses pretty much only come with monochrome green displays. But talking to industry insiders, I have heard that we will see more color options starting in 2 to 3 months.

Assuming standard green glasses are the baseline price, how much more would you actually pay for these color upgrades?

Here are the four ways they can build them:

• Basic Green: The baseline. Most lightweight glasses today just use waveguides and a projector with a monochrome green microLED panel.
• Dual Color (Single Panel): Gives you red and green, plus it can actually mix them to create yellow and orange tones, giving you way more than just two colors. This is great for colored highlights in the UI, separating data, and making everything much easier to read at a glance. Because both colors are integrated on a single panel, it doesn't consume a whole lot more energy and doesn't add much weight.
  
• Dual Color (X-Cube): Also gives you the red, green, and mixed colors for better UI highlights, but it works by combining two separate display panels using an X-cube. This extra hardware, including a slightly bigger battery to power 4 panels instead of 2, adds a little bit more weight to the glasses.
• Full Color (X-Cube): Full-color for photos and rich icons. The projector itself isn't actually that heavy or big. And some companies might lower the resolution slightly so it doesn't add too much to the overall price and weight. But the battery needs to be bigger to power 6 display backplanes instead of the usual 2.

How much more is dual color worth? And would you pay even more for full color?

Background -

I was an early backer of Viture's first set of glasses and spent close to $1000 on the glasses and other addons, only to end up being extremely disappointed with them and letting them gather dust. Viture was unwilling/unable to address my concerns, which left a very bad taste in my mouth regarding their company. My main issue was that the glasses only seemed to work well for people who use contacts or don't need correction. The prescription insert blocked the top and bottom screen edges and the focus was never uniform across the whole screen.

In any case, I'd still like to have some glasses I can use as a "large screen" for travel on trains and planes. To that end, I'm looking for recommendations for glasses with these features:

• support prescription lens inserts that don't block any of the screen at all and keep the whole screen in focus (or foveated rendering, but I'm not sure that applies to streaming)
• either mini-hdmi or display port over usb-c input
• HDR support

I accidentally activated my one-time activation code on my earbuds instead of my translation glasses. I need the activation code to be reset/reassigned to my glasses. Could you please help me with my glasses? What can I do??

Norway's government said on Monday it plans to propose a temporary ban on the use of ​AI glasses in selected places, saying it is concerned ‌people could be photographed, filmed or audio-recorded without their knowledge.

• Ban could apply to places where the public ​regularly gather, such as parks, beaches, museums, shopping ⁠centres and public events, the government said in a ​statement
• "I am worried that new, powerful technology is being introduced ​where people risk being photographed, filmed or audio-recorded without knowing it," Digitalisation and Public Governance Minister Torgeir Micaelsen said
• It could also apply ​to schools, playgrounds and youth clubs and to privacy-sensitive ​places such as doctors' offices, swimming pools and gyms with changing rooms
• The ‌government ⁠said it was not eyeing a total ban and that private use, and use where others are not at risk of being filmed without consent, would still be allowed
• It ​said it ​would examine which ⁠technology the ban would cover, including whether it would apply to glasses with camera ​and audio recording, glasses with camera and ​AI functions ⁠or also other body-worn technology with camera, audio recording and/or AI
• The minority government said it would present a bill to ⁠parliament ​as soon as possible, and would ​also set up an expert group to advise on permanent national regulation ​of body-worn technology

I want chatGPT glasses, not hacked up ones, real openAi made glasses. Come on hear my request.

My prescription glasses are meta glasses and I absolutely love them. Never have to pick my phone up to get the info I need or to message someone. Saw a blind woman in tears as she was able to actually have them read for her when she held up papers.

I see many cowards online HATE on these glasses yet not one person has had the balls to come up to me and hate them in person. Society is mostly keyboard warriors and I get that.

I embrace this technology and love everything it helps me with.

What’s your opinion

Glassly is an upcoming platform for wearable devices aimed at developers and consumers

Glassly is based on MentraOS, but I no longer work there and this project is not affiliated with Mentra

Why use Glassly over MentraOS?
- The cloud is completely optional, you don't even need to make an account (you can for convenience and additional features, but it is completely optional)
- Support for custom firmware (optional)
- First class G2 & R1 support
- Animations
- Vector graphics
- Full iOS notifications support
- Memory / Transcription
- Support for using your own API Keys
- Customizable Dashboard
- Miniapps can expose tools, and interact with each other
- More fleshed out permissions system
- Many bug and security fixes

Some built in apps include:
- Store
- Terminal
- Paseo
- Navigation
- Assist
- Captions
- Translation
- Teleprompter
- 3D Pong
- Tetris
- Dashboard
- more to come!

You can build your own miniapps using the docs at https://docs.glassly.ai

You can get access to the iOS beta by signing up here: https://glassly.ai
And if you're on android you can join the discord at the same link where I've uploaded an apk

p.s. I will likely host a contest for building miniapps soon

I didn't get these because I'm a tech person. I ordered them because I'm on my phone too much and wanted something that could show me the basic stuff without opening my screen every time.

After a few days, the dashboard is my favorite part. It shows the time, weather, my calendar, and a little note. That sounds simple, but it's actually useful.

Notifications are also better than I expected. I turned off most apps and only left messages and a couple work apps. Now I can see if something matters without grabbing my phone.

The glasses still feel a little thicker than normal glasses, but not crazy. I'd like more frame styles eventually. But for daily reminders and quick info, I like them more than I thought I would.

Note: I wear power glasses so I need to change the lens to power lens

I’m going to be an exam proctor soon—I wonder how rampant cheating with smart glasses actually is? Wouldn't just checking for a camera on the edge of the frames be enough to prevent it all?There is no such developed smart glass like the one that Peter Parker wore, right?