At the Google I/O developer conference this week, we got a chance to get a little hands-on with Google’s upcoming AI-powered glasses — no audio only glasses which the company said will begin shipping this fall, but rather the glasses that offer a combined audio and video experience.
First announced at last year’s event, these Android XR glasses offer an in-lens display that brings useful information in front of you, on top of the real world. This includes widgets that could display things like the weather, walking directions, Uber pickup details, live translation, and more — even widgets you designed yourself using AI.
The glasses will also pair with iOS and Android phones, the company noted, in both audio-only form and a future display version.
The display glasses are intended to be the next step beyond the first generation of audio glasses that will be released later this year. The glasses were developed in collaboration with Warby Parker, Gentle Monster and Samsung, combining Google technology with their brands’ design aesthetics.
The glasses we tested, meanwhile, were still very much a prototype, albeit one polished enough to now be tested externally. The representatives presenting the XR Glasses explained that the prototype allowed Google to not worry about some of the cosmetic details associated with different styles and shapes, so it could focus on experimenting more freely with the screen technology and its effects on battery life. This means that these glasses are very different from any future version of mission glasses in terms of fit, shape, dimensions and attention to detail. Rather, it’s more like being able to experiment with the “insides” of the glasses while being in a basic, comfortable frame.
The shipping version of the glasses will be able to detect when the glasses are placed on your head and removed, but the ones we tested didn’t have this feature.
To activate Gemini, you press for two seconds on the right side of the glasses frame. A startup sound is heard, letting you know that Gemini is on and listening. In the demo version, launching Gemini also launches the camera at the same time, but the shipping version will allow the user to configure whether they want to activate the camera when launching Gemini.
In an initial test, we played music through the glasses by asking Gemini to play a favorite artist. The venue was too noisy to assess the sound quality, unfortunately, as the music was cranked up to maximum volume and was relatively difficult to hear clearly and in detail. But the initial impression from this limited experience was that the glasses wouldn’t be a great substitute for high-end headphones, although they would do if you just wanted some music while you were out, walking, hiking, or doing chores around the house. The benefit of not having headphones is that you can more easily hear someone talking, compared to the transparency mode experiences on devices like Apple’s AirPods.
To turn off the music, tap once on the side of the frame, around the middle, as if tapping your temple.
In the second test, we pressed the photo capture button to take a photo of a person. The screen was off so the image was transferred to our phone and watch. (You’ll later be able to capture video with a long press, but that option wasn’t available for testing with the prototype. In the case of video, you’ll see a video thumbnail preview instead of a photo.)
You can also simply ask Gemini to take a photo without having to press the photo button and perform some sort of AI manipulation on the result. For example, you can say something like, “Take a photo and turn the person into an anime character.” The photo is sent to the phone, then to the Gemini and Nano Banana servers, and then back to its edited version.
At Google I/O, where Wi-Fi was under heavy load, the round trip took about 45 seconds.
With the display turned on, you will see a simple home screen appear in your field of view. The trial version came preloaded with some weather widgets and a countdown for the Google I/O event. You could also create quick launchers in specific apps, like Google Maps or Translate, if those were among your primary use cases for the Glasses.
The prototype had only one screen in the right eye, but the platform can support both single and dual screens, as well as audio-only glasses. The image itself was a bit blurry, but we chalked it up to our contacts, which include using a lens optimized for distance on one side and one optimized for near vision on the other. When we closed one eye, the image focused better, but the experience almost immediately left us with some eye strain over the right eye, and it’s unclear if the prescription was entirely to blame.
One of the best demos was the language translation experience on the glasses, powered by the Google Translate app on the phone. One of the demonstrators was speaking fast Spanish and the glasses automatically detected the language and displayed the English text on the screen while Twin spoke English into our ear. We could see world travelers buying the glasses just for that experience.
We should note that Translate will also work on audio-only glasses, with no text displayed on the glasses. Instead, you could view the transcript on the phone if needed, in addition to real-time audio feedback.
Another demo involved using the glasses for navigation. While we obviously couldn’t take a walk and leave the venue to test its accuracy, we could get an idea of how it works. You can start the Google Maps experience by asking Gemini to navigate to a destination — which can be as vague as “the nearest coffee shop.”
Gemini will activate Google Maps on the phone, and after a short delay while the experience loads, the glasses will display turn-by-turn directions. When you look forward, your next row information will appear. But if you need to orient yourself in space, look down at the ground to see your blue dot on a map. You can also turn left and right to rotate in space, just like you would trying to get the blue dot to point in the right direction on your phone.
Then, when you look up again, you can continue walking without the map in your way.
Because the experience is connected to Google Maps on your phone, saved destinations like “home” and “work” will already be available.
We were also able to briefly use the glasses to identify a variety of objects in our view and ask questions about them. The glasses initially tried to recognize the copy of a Monet painting on a shelf in front of us, but that’s because the original didn’t automatically activate the camera — it had to be reactivated by the app. Still, it took a few questions before Gemini said it looked like Monet even after we zoomed in to focus on the Monet signature in the lower left.
Other tests were smoother, as the glasses immediately recognized the plant on the shelf and answered questions about different recipes in a book. However, these were things you could do today with Google Lens (or other AI models built into chatbot apps), although we suppose it’s interesting to be able to do them without having to pull out your phone.
Google says it will have more to share about the Android XR Display Glasses later this year when it expands its Trusted Controllers program.
Meanwhile, the company believes audio will suffice for some users’ needs, which is perhaps a clever way to spin the fact that it doesn’t have display glasses ready, despite competition from Meta and Snap on that front.
Like the display version, the audio glasses also provide access to Google’s Gemini AI, which you hear privately through the glasses’ frame speakers. You can do things like listen to music with the glasses, press a button to take a photo, make a call, or tap your phone apps from these glasses, just like you can in future screen versions.
Tapping into other third-party apps wasn’t among the features we showed off, but the glasses will let users tell Gemini to do things like “take the ingredients from this recipe and add them to my shopping list.”
In another example Google showed during the event’s keynote, the glasses could see a meal the user was cooking on the stove and offer feedback about the meal, such as whether the meat was done yet.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This does not affect our editorial independence.
