The corporate behind Snapchat says it is going to launch absolutely standalone client AR glasses, referred to as Specs, in 2026.
At Augmented World Expo 2025 simply now, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel described the approaching Specs as “an ultra-powerful wearable laptop built-in into a light-weight pair of glasses with see-through lenses”, and revealed that the corporate has spent $3 billion to this point growing them.
Snap has a protracted historical past within the good glasses area. The corporate publicly bought three generations of non-AR digital camera glasses between 2016 and 2019, years earlier than the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, and lately has launched two AR glasses improvement kits. These units to this point have been referred to as Spectacles, and the transfer to Specs displays Snap’s intention to lastly ship an AR product.
The primary AR Spectacles improvement package, made out there to pick builders from 2021, had a tiny 26-degree subject of view, 30 minute battery life, and weighed 134 grams. The second technology AR Spectacles dev package launched in September for any builders to hire for $100/month, boosting the sphere of view to 46 levels and the battery life to 45 minutes, but in addition growing the burden to 226 grams and introducing a bulkier design that pushes the boundaries of what will be described as a real glasses kind issue.
Each AR Spectacles improvement kits characteristic hand monitoring and run Snap OS, a light-weight customized OS constructed particularly for AR that runs apps referred to as ‘Lenses’, developed utilizing Snap’s Lens Studio software program for Home windows and macOS.
Snap Spectacles Are $100/Month AR Glasses For Builders
The corporate behind Snapchat simply unveiled upgraded AR Spectacles, out there to builders for $99/month.
In comparison with the present improvement package, Spiegel claims the Specs releasing as a product in 2026 can have “a a lot smaller kind issue, at a fraction of the burden, with a ton extra functionality”, whereas operating all the identical Lenses developed to this point.
Snap is not revealing any additional particulars of Specs but, neither is it exhibiting a render of what it is going to appear like.
“No cumbersome headset, no puck, no tether, no cellphone required”, Spiegel boasted, referring to the present improvement package, and Snap confirmed to UploadVR that this would be the case for Specs too.
If Snap meets its timeline, it may very well be the primary main tech firm to launch true AR glasses. A number of stories counsel Meta plans to ship its first AR glasses in 2027, and Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has reported that Apple will not launch AR glasses till 2028 on the earliest.
Snap’s technique of constructing a completely standalone gadget can also be notable. Meta’s Orion prototype used a wi-fi compute puck, and the corporate has indicated that its 2027 product will too. Equally, Apple is extensively anticipated to leverage your iPhone’s compute for its eventual AR glasses, although that is removed from confirmed.
Attempting to pack the entire computing {hardware} for true AR right into a “light-weight pair of glasses” so quickly shall be a major engineering problem for Snap, and we’ll be very curious to see how this seems, in addition to how lengthy the battery lasts.
