Snap Spectacles take the big leap to AR with new glasses, a new OS, and lots of gesture-controlled mixed-reality

(Image credit: Snap)

Snapchat is taking its Spectacles game to the next level with a complete reimagining that enables augmented reality, gesture control, experience sharing, gaming, and more.

On Tuesday, September 17, 2024, the social media company unveiled its beefy new 226-gram smartglasses, which look almost nothing like any Snapchat Spectacles that have come before.

Unlike previous Spectacles that allowed you to capture and quickly share your world with Snapchat friends, Snapchat Spectacles 5th generation alters your world with augmented reality (AR). It does it with a blend of, at least to Snap, all new technologies.

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First, there's the display system, which we've seen previously on Lumus Z-Lens glasses. It's based on diffractive waveguides, which is the practice of taking projected images and guiding them to the glass lenses in front of your face.

Like those glasses, which we saw at CES 2023, Spectacles 5th Gen with AR uses Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) micro-projectors and something like mirrors to stretch the projected images and guide them across your field of view. Snap claims that the visual will look like a 100-ft screen as seen from a distance of 10 ft away.

There are four cameras used to capture spatial information and let you control the Snapchat Spectacles via gestures. Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel wore the new glasses on stage during the unveiling event and demonstrated the controls, which virtually sit in the palm of your hand. You'll control the Spectacles via pinch and pull gestures with one or both hands. A large screen behind him showed the Spectacles feed, which included menus and other interface graphics. It looks as if the AR imagery did not fill the entire viewport.

Powering the new Spectacles is the new Snap OS and a pair of Qualcomm Snapdragon processors, which Snap says will split the processing tasks. During the demo, Spiegel also used the glasses to take a video of the crowd, so it appears that these spectacles will maintain some of their original utility.

Snap is already lining up developer partners and is promising experiences from ILM for the Star Wars Galaxy, Niantec, and LEGO.

Snap says the lenses are built to share your AR experiences with friends who can watch on their smartphones. The lenses even have auto-dimming to adjust in sunlight. In other words, they're AR spectacles and sunglasses.

As for pricing and availability, US developers can join the Spectacles Developer Program for $99 a month (they have to sign up for a year) for access, which will allow developers to test, play with, and develop for the new augmented reality platform.

The AR glasses look big (as many that use similar technology do), and get, according to Snap, 45 minutes of battery life. However, this form of AR display technology is reportedly brighter and larger while still using less power.

Snap's sudden entry into the AR Smart Glasses space comes as Meta is gearing up for Meta Connect where we expect to get at least a sneak peek at the company's eagerly-anticipated AR glasses project. Will we get as much as Snap just delivered? Time will tell.

Clarifications 9-18-2024: Updated with information Snap shared with us after publish, including price and battery life.

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A 38-year industry veteran and award-winning journalist, Lance has covered technology since PCs were the size of suitcases and “on line” meant “waiting.” He’s a former Lifewire Editor-in-Chief, Mashable Editor-in-Chief, and, before that, Editor in Chief of PCMag.com and Senior Vice President of Content for Ziff Davis, Inc. He also wrote a popular, weekly tech column for Medium called The Upgrade.

Lance Ulanoff makes frequent appearances on national, international, and local news programs including Live with Kelly and Mark, the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNBC, CNN, and the BBC.