The head of Snapchat operator Snap, Evan Spiegel, presents the new generation of Spectacles in Los Angeles on Sept. 17, 2024.
Andrej Sokolow | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Snap on Tuesday announced its plans to release a sixth-generation of its augmented reality glasses in 2026, as competition in the smart glasses market continues to heat up.
The maker of Snapchat said that its next-generation glasses will be called Specs, breaking with the company’s Spectacles branding that it used for previous versions of its wearable devices. The Specs will use AR technology to let people see and interact with digital imagery that’s overlaid over the physical world.
Snap did not reveal a price or exact launch date for Specs, but the new glasses will be smaller and lighter than their predecessors, the company said. Snap’s most recent Spectacles were released in September 2024 to developers only. That edition of the glasses was available under a leasing model that required users to commit to paying $99 a month for a full year.
The consumer-focused Specs will run on the company’s Snap OS operating systems. Snap said that developers will be able to incorporate Google’s Gemini AI models into programs they develop for the smart glasses, giving coders more AI options to choose from as they write software for the device. Previously, developers could only use OpenAI’s GPT family of AI models to build AR apps for the smart glasses.
“We couldn’t be more excited about the extraordinary progress in artificial intelligence and augmented reality that is enabling new, human-centered computing experiences,” Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in a statement.
When Snap launched its first Spectacles glasses in 2016, the $130 wearable was limited to simple features like helping users shoot short videos that they could post to Snapchat. The company updated its glasses with augmented reality displays in 2021 that allowed users to see virtual imagery overlaid by the glasses over what users saw in the real world.
Since then, competition in the world of head-mounted computers has grown.
Apple began selling its $3,500 Vision Pro goggles in February 2024, while Meta now has a range of cutting-edge products including Quest VR headsets, Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses and the experimental Project Orion AR glasses, which the social media company showed off last fall.
Google, meanwhile, announced its own entry into the space in May when it revealed a $150 million partnership with Warby Parker, which said it will release its own smart glasses sometime after this year.
