They’re so sleek, no one even thinks to ask if they’re smart glasses. Standing up on a stage about to give a talk at a conference in Rust, Germany, I wore the Even Realities G2 glasses to prove a point. In my field of view, a glowing monochrome 3D text display brought up notes on a teleprompter window. I tapped to navigate with a metallic ring on my right forefinger. 

And like that, my talking points drifted in a slow scroll to match the moments when I mentioned key terms as I improvised.

This was my first time trying smart glasses with a teleprompter in a real-life situation where I couldn’t risk failure. The $599 G2 glasses only half passed the test. While these camera-free smart glasses have the lightweight framing I want, fit my extremely myopic prescription and have battery life to last a full day and then some, they don’t work nearly as fluidly as I’d want. Which is why, midway through my live talk, I basically abandoned the teleprompter function and improvised the rest of the way.

Smart glasses right now are like early smartwatches a decade ago, a wild mix of ideas thrown against the wall by an increasing number of companies, mixing features and AI services and interfaces in different combinations. There are no clear standards for smart glasses yet, like there are for phones, earbuds or even watches. 

While Meta has stolen most of the spotlight and market with its AI-enabled and chunky Ray-Ban and Oakley glasses, they’re not the only forms in the wild. Meta’s glasses have cameras and microphones, and onboard speakers, acting as face-worn recording devices. Only one model right now has a display. The Meta Ray-Ban Displays have a single color display in one eye, and they don’t have lenses that can be made for my high-index eye prescription. They also have battery life that can’t last a full day, or even just a few hours.

Even Realities’ glasses are a totally different story. The second-generation models can fit a wide range of prescriptions, even beyond mine (up to +/-12). The battery life lasts well over a day. They have dual, larger displays in monochrome green. And they don’t have cameras at all. Or speakers. Just displays and microphones.

I got fitted for a prescription pair to try, thanks to Even, and have been wearing them on and off since the start of the year (prescription lenses cost at least $159 to add to the glasses). I wore them at CES in Las Vegas, and out to a German immersive entertainment conference called Aurea. I’ve worn them into New York. And I’ve been trying them along with a separately sold $249 smart ring, the Even R1, that controls the glasses and doubles as a heart rate-measuring fitness tracker.

I love that these glasses are so trim and compact. So discreet. And that they fit my eyes and have amazing battery life. I just wish the rest of it worked as well as it promised. Some AI features are great, but I wish there were more.

Everyday-looking thin glasses

The most impressive aspect of the Even G2 is its shockingly lightweight frame and design. I’ve shown these glasses to people, and they had no idea they were smart glasses. They seem too unimposing.

The frame, in particular, is the standout. The metal frame around the lenses and arms is thin, with the only bulge in small bulb-like parts at the ends of the arms, where you’ll find the batteries and touchpads to control the glasses. The display projectors live inside thicker parts of the arm near the lenses, but again, it’s really subtle. The glasses are really lightweight, too: at 35 grams, they feel lighter than my regular glasses. 

The G2s are a particular type of glasses design, though. They’re small for my taste, and come in either square or round frames. And after a while, those bulky end bits on the metal arms start making my ears uncomfortable. They charge via an included glasses case that’s bulkier than the Meta Ray-Bans case, but connects with USB-C the same way and is easy to tuck in a bag. 

The separately sold R1 ring is an odder duck. It’s similar to other smart rings like Oura in that it can track steps and heart rate. But the R1 also has a touch bar on one side that acts like a touchpad to control the Even G2 glasses. Double-tapping wakes the screen, swiping moves you through menus, and pressing and holding moves back a menu level.

The ring’s meant to be worn on your index finger, resting before the first knuckle so you can comfortably use the touchpad with your thumb, and that can get weird. I’m worried it’ll fall off. When I was giving that stage presentation with teleprompter mode, as I held a microphone in one hand and a remote to control the slide deck in the other, it was super-hard to click the ring. 

Luckily, the glasses have their own touchpad controls, one at the back of each arm. They’re often covered with my hair at the back of my ears, but they can navigate more reliably. Then you don’t need to get the ring.

And sometimes, the ring just stops working. A big problem with both the glasses and the ring is their spotty connectivity, even with multiple firmware updates. Sometimes it feels like a Bluetooth issue. Other times, I wonder if the background connection the glasses forge with my iPhone ends up timing out. Right now, in fact, the ring just stopped functioning as a touch control for some reason. And sometimes the glasses don’t auto-dim the green micro LED display, keeping it on far longer than I need and getting in the way of my vision.

The micro LED display is big and bright enough indoors and in dimmer light, but it gets washed out in bright daylight. It’s 3D and shows up across both eyes, looking like panels of green text overlaid on top of the transparent lenses. The small waveguide patches on each lens are subtle but do show up in light, and sometimes the displays can be seen through the lenses, too.

But the displays are clever, because they fade away when you’re not looking at them. It’s a bit of peripheral-vision magic because the green displays appear when you look up. But looking down at the rest of my world, like when typing this review, they seem to fade away.

AI: Bits and pieces

I love that Even Realities’ onboard software has a unique application to use AI with, a mode called Conversate. However, it’s one of the only useful AI features on the glasses for me.

Conversate is a live mode that auto-transcribes a conversation (or whatever you’re listening to), displaying the text on-screen as captions while also listening for random key phrases the AI considers noteworthy. Those get pulled out into another pop-up window that defines the term loosely. For instance, as I listened to a presentation on virtual worlds, the term “biomimicry” was defined for me on-glasses. When would I get another phrase pulled out? I had no idea.

I used the Even G2 glasses in Conversate mode for most of a whole day, listening to other keynote presentations, and was able to save the transcripts into the Even Realities phone app. None of this used much of the glasses’ battery life, impressively, and the onboard microphones had no problem picking up audio from across the room.

The transcripts include AI summaries and key-term breakdowns, which is helpful. I can also look over the pulled-out terms of note that got defined during Conversate mode. I kind of fell in love with keeping these on as a helpful listening partner, but not having control over Conversate’s focus on particular phrases to define wasn’t great. 

But it made me wonder about a future where talking with people could generate helpful information to guide me, via subtle pop-up prompts. Even’s Conversate mode is a stab in that direction, but crudely. I can’t choose other AI services to run on the glasses, just the company’s own Even AI, which doesn’t clearly list what models it uses to function.

There’s also a dedicated Even AI mode that responds to voice prompts, but it’s worse than anything you’d use on your phone. It sometimes answers in a strange way and with less detail than ChatGPT and Gemini. It also relies on relatively limited display screen real estate to show answers, so it’s basically a one-question-at-a-time experience. The text replies also roll in pretty slowly for my comfort.

Even Realities has an on-glasses maps-based navigation mode called Navigate that provides pop-up turn-by-turn directions. Not having any of these modes hook into existing phone apps or services is a huge downside, though. I have to ask for things from scratch and hope Even AI delivers.

On-glasses translation can handle 35 languages, far more than Meta’s glasses can do. There’s no need to download language packs either, but you do have to select the language pairs from the phone app to make it work. Oddly, you can’t do it in glasses.

Teleprompter mode is one of my other favorites, and maybe the best next to Conversate. You can cut and paste notes or speeches into the app and then roll them on glasses. It listens in and keeps up with what you’re saying, even skipping ahead if you’re at a later point. While this worked well generally, in a live stage experience, I couldn’t control the ring well enough to get the teleprompter to start up. I had nervous jitters, combined with a less-than-responsive ring touchpad.

And that’s about it for the Even’s features. Seriously. I’m struggling to think of what else I’d even use these glasses for, which is why I’m usually taking them back off again.

They’re not even a good replacement for a smartwatch. Notifications can appear in-glasses, but many still don’t pop up for me when paired with an iPhone. Incoming calls don’t show up either. I can’t respond to texts (or apparently see them). On Meta’s Ray-Bans, I can at least answer calls and use the glasses like AirPods. You can’t do that on Even’s glasses. You can’t listen to music. And you can’t use them as cameras, because there aren’t any.

The good news is that there are apparently a number of developers working on AI apps for the glasses that could emerge soon. These glasses are trying to be the Pebble watch of smart glasses in that respect. But I need those features and the customization to hurry up and get here. Right now, there’s not enough to do to justify wearing them.

The right form, the wrong function

I’ve come away from my Even G2 test drive realizing that, yes, smart glasses can be as small and prescription-friendly (and battery life-friendly) as my dreams desire. But that comes at a severe cost to everything else. Phones just don’t work well with smart glasses right now, no matter what company makes them. The G2 tries, but its wonky phone app, buggy connectivity, limited customization and lack of deeper phone hook-ins to its AI (and lack of support for other AI services) keep it feeling a step behind.

I can’t wait for glasses to actually feel like truly deeper phone extensions, things that could assist people on the terms they choose with the apps they want. Meta hasn’t gotten there. Even Realities hasn’t. Maybe Google will, with its glasses coming later this year. 

I hope other smart glasses have the battery life, prescription lens support and size advantages Even does. It’s sorely needed. It’s just extremely disappointing that these glasses can’t live up to the promise of all the rest yet. I’ll check back later if more apps come, and see if they can be the Pebble for my face I was hoping for.