Snap Inc. unveiled the company’s new “Specs” augmented-reality glasses on Tuesday with an eye-watering $2,195 price tag – and CEO Evan Spiegel is touting the devices as a potential replacement for smartphones.
The thick-framed black glasses were unveiled in a splashy celebrity marketing campaign that featured model Kaia Gerber, NBA star Jimmy Butler and rapper Jack Harlow.
Featuring about four hours of battery life, Specs will be capable running apps through an overlay that will blend seamlessly as the user goes about their daily life, according to Snap.
Specs are “the beginning of a new era in computing,” Spiegel boasted.
“The smartphone put our lives in our pockets,” he said. “Specs put computing into the world, where life actually happens.”
Specs were made available for pre-order and are expected to ship to customers in the US, United Kingdom and France this fall. The $2,195 price include a $200 refundable deposit.
“Imagine walking through a city and seeing directions exactly where you need them, measuring a space without pulling out a tape measure, or getting help from AI while you’re working on a project instead of stopping to search for an answer. That’s what makes augmented reality different,” Snap says on the product’s website.
Snap shares were down more than 4% in Tuesday trading – a potential sign that Wall Street was skeptical about the announcement.
Snap is pushing into an increasingly crowded marketplace for AI wearables – and consumers have been slow to embrace the technology. Apple’s Vision Pro augmented-reality headset, which costs over $3,000, has yet to become a major sales driver for the tech giant.
Meta, Snap’s main rival in the social media sector, sells its own smart glasses in collaboration with Ray-Ban but hasn’t yet launched augmented-reality rims. OpenAI is also developing some kind of AI-powered wearable device, though it’s unclear what form it will take.
Snap’s previous foray into smart glasses, the $130 Spectacles, were released in 2016 and never became a big hit with customers.
However, the company argues that Specs, which wre developed with a proprietary operating system and more than 7,000 patents, offer much more functionality to the public than other devices developed by rivals. Specs will be available in two sizes.
“Today’s devices force a tradeoff between capability and wearability,” the company said in a press release.
“AI glasses are wearable, but limited in what they can do. Headsets are powerful, but can be uncomfortable to wear and shut people out of the world. Specs represent a new category: more capable than AI glasses, more wearable than headsets, and fully standalone, with no puck or tether.”
The glasses were unveiled at a precarious time for Snap, the stock of which has plummeted more than 30% since the start of the year and is now trading at under $6 per share.
In April, the company slashed about 1,000 jobs, or 16% of its overall workforce, and closed another 300 open roles. Spiegel said the belt-tightening effort was part of Snap’s effort to rely more heavily on AI tools to boost efficiency — the latest tech company to make that claim.
“While these changes are necessary to realize Snap’s long-term potential, we believe that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers,” Spiegel said in a memo at the time.
