You Can Finally Buy Snap’s New AR Specs—for $2,150
Snap—maker of the popular social app Snapchat—has a new pair of augmented-reality smart glasses called Specs. For real this time. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel revealed
Snap—maker of the popular social app Snapchat—has a new pair of augmented-reality smart glasses called Specs. For real this time. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel revealed the new glasses at an event during the Augmented World Expo (AWE) tech conference in Long Beach, California. As Snap frames it, this isn’t a prototype or developer device—it’s the first actual consumer version of the Specs AR glasses, unlike the previous generation exclusively sold to developers and creators. The Specs cost $2,195. You can preorder them now with a refundable $220 deposit. Snap says it expects the devices to ship this fall in the US, UK, and France.
Snap has not yet said which apps or features will be available on the new Specs. The company's focus for these glasses is less on content capture and more on the AR experiences displayed on the screen, placed with the right depth and low latency to feel like a moving part of the environment. Snap has shown off lots of experiential features in its previous demo units, like fingerpainting in the air, following map directions, or manipulating a 3D model of a globe. The company says this unit will have some of the same features, including private display screens, Bluetooth capability, web browsing, AI-powered visual assistance, and a “wide variety” of AR experiences that understand the room and the objects around the wearer.
Other than that, Snap won't yet say what these Specs can do. That depends on whether developers buy in to build on the platform. “Specs will become meaningful because of the lenses you build,” Spiegel said onstage at AWE. Courtesy of Snap Specs New Specs Snap’s Specs are chonky, with big rims, honking arms, and thick temple tips. They look something like Meta’s beefy Ray-Ban Display glasses, albeit with more rounded corners. The Specs also have an AR display that covers a 51-degree field of view in the center of your vision, unlike the Display’s bottom screen. The look is a much more refined version of Snap’s boxy AR Spectacles the company has made available to developers since 2024.
They’re also fairly tasteful for a company that doesn’t have fashion partnerships like Meta and Essilor Luxottica or Google’s collaboration with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. “Some might actually say that oversized glasses are on trend at the moment,” Spiegel said to WIRED in an interview ahead of AWE. “For us, it's less about following fashion trends and more about delivering truly standout capability.”
The BriefWire