I have been along Snap’s journey as an AR company from the very beginning, when it announced the first Snap Spectacles. It was already apparent then that the company wanted to consciously approach a glasses form factor and make it accessible to all. It was also very thoughtful about how the glasses would integrate into the Snapchat experience and was very conscious about privacy. While there have been some bumps along the way, Snap’s 10-year journey has finally brought us to this point, where we have fully standalone SPECS AR glasses.
SPECS Are For Everyone, Everywhere
I will admit, I was a little worried as I sat in the audience in Beverly Hills watching the introduction video for SPECS when the first thing that appeared on screen was some very artistic, conceptual art. I was worried that Snap would be too disconnected from reality with SPECS, and I was happy to be proven wrong when the company announced it was already working with enterprise partners.
Snap’s vision for AR isn’t one that says you’ll be glued to AR all day long. It is one that allows you to wear them when there’s a need or a want to engage with AI, communicate with others, or play. It very much strikes the right tone in a world where social media and AI have earned a bad reputation. In the company’s demos, it showed people using the SPECS glasses and then setting them down when they were done using them.
I also thought that SPECS approach to its SPECS Intelligence AI platform was much more in tune with how people will actually use AI, cross-platform (Mac and iOS), and highly personalized. My experience with SPECS Intelligence was that it is omnipresent, responsive, helpful, and accurate without being intrusive. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said one line during the keynote that really stuck with me: “Spend less time managing information and more time living.” This is the message that many of the AI companies have failed to deliver with AI, and I believe Snap may be the messenger and SPECS the vehicle.
SPECS Enterprise and Distribution
While Snap’s initial messaging around SPECS may have been consumer-focused, the company has made it abundantly evident that it is very serious about enabling enterprise users as well. After showing off some of the SPECS core capabilities like Snapchat calls, YouTube videos and 3D shopping via Spotify, Evan Spiegel turned towards the enterprise. He announced partnerships with Amazon, Hololight, NVIDIA, and Salesforce, supported by an agentic development platform centered on an open-source operating system such as SPECS OS. When I first saw that Snap was building a highly secure open-source operating system rather than another AOSP fork, it became apparent that Snap meant business when it came to supporting enterprise.
One thing I didn’t see coming was that Snap would integrate a 5G modem into the optional SPECS case for $200. This solves multiple problems for SPECS simultaneously. It gives SPECS independence from the smartphone by creating its own internet connection, and allows SPECS to completely avoid the limitations of iOS and Android. It also does this without building the modem into the glasses, which would severely impact battery life and the device’s size. Adding cellular connectivity also brings carriers in, such as Verizon, the SPECS launch partner, with Orange and EE following in Europe. Adding the carriers automatically improves SPECS’s distribution and enables it to offer financing on a $2,200 pair of AR glasses. It also creates more retail spaces where SPECS can be seen without opening new stores, such as the flagship store Snap is opening at Westfield Century City Mall.
I believe that Snap understands the importance of the enterprise in its long-term journey as a platform for AR. Enterprise AR is already making serious money and will instantaneously drive volume for SPECS in ways that consumers will not for years. Encouraging and enabling enterprises to use SPECS will allow Snap to improve SPECS and iterate towards a more consumer-friendly form factor and price point while still turning a profit. There is a serious gap left by HoloLens, Magic Leap, and other failed AR headsets. SPECS will be the first time in years that we have a truly standalone AR headset capable of meeting the needs of the enterprise user. I also believe that enterprises will appreciate the ability to use SPECS in the field with the cellular modem in the charging case, along with the many manageability features that SPECS is enabling in its glasses.
SPECS Takes A Measured Consumer Approach
I believe Snap understands that a $2,200 pair of glasses simply isn’t accessible to most consumers. Even with financing, that’s going to be a stretch for most people. But I do believe that there will be a market for enthusiasts and Snap fanboys to take advantage of the experiences that developers will build for SPECS. I think developers and prosumers will be the primary customers for this first generation of SPECS (Snap’s 3rd generation of AR glasses). Snap is building the infrastructure for developers and enterprises to iterate alongside Snap as it improves SPECS in both cost and form factor. It also has a lot of advanced silicon in the glasses, with two Qualcomm Snapdragon chips per pair, plus a 5G modem in the case.
I had a lot of fun trying many of the consumer apps that Snap has put together for Demos on SPECS, and I think that with time, the $2,200 price will be easier to justify to consumers. The SPECS real-time translation demo was the best I have ever seen on any glasses with automatic language and speaker detection, and a bubble of text that appears on the speaker’s chest as they speak, supporting multiple speakers simultaneously. The Harry Potter experience was very immersive and engaging, and I could absolutely see Snap partnering with Pokémon Go to immediately start selling glasses with that game alone. There were also soccer and golf training apps that both felt very useful and fun. And there were plenty of tabletop games to play that felt very immersive and engaging, especially when you can play multiplayer locally, and the only thing you need to do is look at your friend to match for a game.
While the SPECS themselves are well-balanced and, albeit still a bit clunky, they will deliver 3-4 hours of battery life per charge, which I think is within consumers’ expectations. This is especially true when you consider Snap’s approach to SPECS is not all-day use and should easily fit within a 3-4 hour window. This can also fit easily within the education framework, as Snap demonstrated with the Apollo mission experience, which blew me away. I believe that SPECS is delivering much of what was promised to the industry years ago with AR, and perhaps some people are too jaded to care, but I’m really happy to see we’re there. There are still a few kinks to work out, like rainbow artifacts from the waveguides under certain lighting conditions, but those can be addressed technically over time. I also believe the resolution could be improved, but it is acceptable for most applications today.
SPECS Visionaries Are All About Audience
Back in June at AWE, Snap announced the SPECS Visionaries, artists, and celebrities helping them build and support SPECS. The company pointed to these visionaries when building different experiences for SPECS that might appeal to the average person. However, I can’t particularly say that any of these lenses (Snap’s term for apps) were particularly resonant with me. I believe that Snap has mostly partnered with these visionaries to reach their respective communities and influence a broader audience. Each represents a different consumer audience that I believe is important for Snap to connect with to keep them informed and engaged.
That all said, Snap wrapped the event with Imogen Heap. She is the visionary that I believe may have the most impact with creatives, including developers. She is the best representation of the bleeding-edge intersection of music and technology. I have been a fan for a long time and have enjoyed the many different technological iterations that help her create and improvise with her mind and body. This was the first time I had ever seen her create with only a pair of AR glasses, and it felt like the most natural and impressive demonstration of SPECS’s ability to enable creativity and freedom of expression. This is important because without creativity and freedom of expression, you can’t get the killer app that someone creates purely from an idea in their head.
SPECS Journey Is Far From Over
You can already pre-order SPECS on the SPECS website and try them on virtually using the site or the Snapchat app. It is for sale for $2,195 and available with financing from Klarna for $105/mo. While Snap did say that SPECS would launch in 2026, we are already in September, and Snap has already held its second big event without an actual availability date. If you go to the company’s website and order the glasses, the earliest available date is “Fall 2026,” which basically means the next couple of months. Funny enough, I do think enterprise users may end up being the biggest customers for SPECS in the first few years, which could further impact availability for anyone wanting to buy them to play with.
Many people will criticize Snap SPECS for their price, size, or appearance. But the reality is that what Snap built with SPECS is unlike anything on the market today or anything that has existed before it. There will be comparisons to Google and XREAL’s Aura or to Meta’s Oryon, but those are not in the same category. Oryon is not a commercially viable product and, like Aura, splits the computing problem away from the glasses, which doesn’t solve the challenges of building a standalone headset, which is really what people want.
For AR to reach the point where we have thin, light glasses, someone in the industry needs to build the device’s predecessor. The entire industry is highly iterative and requires many years of hard work to make incremental improvements. While SPECS aren’t perfect, they absolutely represent the state of the art in AR glasses and should be understood as a major inflection point for the industry, with competitors like Meta and Apple racing to catch up to Snap. I believe that Snap will continue to build on SPECS, especially with enterprise support, because that gives the company long-term viability and investor confidence in it profitability and staying power. After all, we’re still building the next computing platform, and all of them had to succeed and iterate in business before they became consumer accessible.
