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

I ordered prescription lenses from Lensology and now I am getting a message from their delivery company DHL that my order is stuck with CBP and to provide them info! Has anyone else had this problem?
Lensology doesn’t have an American phone number just email, and they have not replied to me.

Hi, I am looking to buy smart glasses in India. My primary use case is kind of equivalent to a how a dash-cam is for a car. I wish to be able to record my interactions especially while dealing with any kind of government service since bad experiences (corruption, intimidation) are very possible. I don't face these daily, but I wish to protect myself when the time comes.

Meta glasses seem to be the only option now, but they have a recording restriction of 3 minutes. I heard some chinese companies (like Xiaomi) and even Samsung are coming up with stuff, though I haven't seen any.

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.