Smart glass company Solos has long focused solely on audio smart glasses. On Tuesday, it announced two new pairs of glasses, one with a camera—but you can buy a separate one to hide the camera for privacy.
Solos‘ new smart glasses are the audio-only AirGo A6 and the second iteration of its camera-enabled glasses, the Solos AirGo V2. The latter was first announced last year as a direct effort”exceed Meta.” These $299 glasses do almost everything you’d expect from a new $299 Meta Meta Smartglassesincluding capturing photos and videos, playing music and interacting with an AI-powered assistant who can see what you see. They can be fitted with prescription lenses and have a battery life of 10 to 12 hours.
The AirGo V2 Glasses can also be paired with the new Privacy Kit, a set of clip-on accessories that allow users to control what their camera glasses can access. The clip’s privacy shield prevents cameras from viewing and recording the world, allowing you to continue wearing the glasses in audio-only mode. There’s also a detachable lens clip, and a full set of mounting options costs $79.
Selling privacy devices as clip-on accessories is probably not the best way to avoid concerns about people walking around with small, discreet cameras on their faces. Having to buy a separate product, then copy it and turn it off every time you want to use or turn off the camera, is a lot of extra steps that can prevent people from bothering with privacy at all. Also, there’s nothing to prevent bad actors from removing clip blocks later in the interaction—say, after inserting an event that prohibits camera recording.
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Courtesy of Solos Smartglasses
Solos’ first camera-enabled glasses, the Solos AirGo Vision, launched in 2024. WIRED featured them in our “Don’t Disturb” section. Best Smart Glasses gallery, citing excellent design choices, though they’re limited by mediocre media capture quality, disappointing touch controls, and power-hungry software that requires too many permissions. All in all, the glasses have not reached the level that Meta has set and famous smart glasses.
Meta has become a dominant force in the smart glasses market, but other big companies are trying to fill the cracks. Google and Samsung are partnering to build Google’s Android XR platform, with new glasses arriving later this year from the eyewear brands. Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Apple has reportedly been developing its own smart glasses as well.
Some smaller companies are adapting their target markets to deal with Meta, like Even Reality and his glasses without a camera. Solos emphasis on privacy comes after a period of heavy criticism of the Meta glasses. The devices have been called scary”distort the glass” and were criticized after the company quietly added facial recognition principle to his glass, then quickly remove it after a public outcry following the WIRED report. Meta has done itself no favors since then, announcing last week that it would start charging for features on its smart glasses that were previously unpaid.
Meta has acknowledged that the market for voice-only smart glasses exists, as CTO Andrew Bosworth. He said in a private Q&A session with the media that he thinks there is “a market demand for that product for sure.” But the Meta still hasn’t left its camera-front glasses. It may make only audio glasses in the future. Until then, companies like Solos are eager to get out of the market.
