What Are Smart Glasses? The Plain-English Explainer

The definition, in one paragraph

Smart glasses are eyeglasses or sunglasses with a small computer in the frame. On the mainstream pairs sold today, that means a 12-megapixel camera in one corner for first-person photos and video, five microphones and two open-ear speakers in the temples for music, calls and a voice assistant, a battery that lasts a working day, and a Bluetooth and Wi-Fi link to the phone in your pocket. Some add a display inside the lens. They look like glasses — Meta's are literally Ray-Bans and Oakleys — and that is the point and the controversy.

The three kinds

What you actually do with them

Capture without a phone. Tap the temple and the glasses take a photo of what you are looking at; hold, and they record video — 3K at 30 frames per second on Meta's current pairs — while a white light blinks so people know. Android Central calls it “the best way to capture candid shots of your day.” Listen without earbuds. Speakers above your ears play music and podcasts and take calls while you still hear the room. Ask. “Hey Meta, what am I looking at?” sends a picture to the assistant and reads back an answer; live translation turns a conversation in another language into your own in your ear. Glance — on display pairs only — at a message, a walking direction, or captions of the person speaking to you.

What they need

A phone. Every pair on this site pairs with an iPhone or Android through the maker's app (Meta AI, Alexa or Even); photos and video transfer to the phone, and everything except capture — music, calls, the AI — runs through it (Android Central). None has its own cellular connection. They also need a charging case or stand, and, for most people, a lens choice: clear, sun, polarized or Transitions, with or without a prescription.

What they cannot do

• Record all day. Clips stop after a few minutes and heavy recording drains the battery in about five hours on a Ray-Ban Gen 2 (Android Central) — see recording time limits.
• See in the dark. Every reviewer we cite calls low-light video weak.
• Record secretly. Meta's capture LED has no off switch and covering it disables the camera (Meta newsroom).
• Show you a movie. The displays that exist show text and small interfaces; virtual-screen glasses are a different, tethered product — see AI vs AR glasses.
• Be adjusted by your optician — except the Blayzer and Scriber Optics frames.

Who makes them

Mostly one company. Meta and EssilorLuxottica (the maker of Ray-Ban and Oakley) hold more than 80% of the category per Counterpoint (TechCrunch); IDC put 2026 shipments at about 13.6 million units with Meta at roughly 69% share in early 2026 (IDC via search). Amazon makes Echo Frames; Even Realities makes the G2; Bose left the category at the end of 2023; Google's Android XR partners, Apple and Samsung are expected but had not shipped a pair with a spec sheet we could verify at the time of writing.