It’s focused on doing a good job over whizz-bang features.
I appreciate devices that don’t try to do too much. There are too many products throwing too many features at the consumer in the hope one or two sticks. I’m reminded of the recently revived Pebble, which offers a pared down way to check your phone’s notifications from your wrist, and little else. That’s the best way to describe Even Realities’ G1 smart glasses, which puts a second screen for your smartphone on your face.
G1 is almost aggressively low-tech, putting in your line of sight a dot matrix display that’ll leap into life when required. You’ll be able to see the time, phone notifications, calendar, stock and news updates from a handful of chosen publishers. Tap the temple tips (also known as earpieces) and you’ll be able to speak to an AI to answer questions or dictate a note without touching your phone at all. Open the app to activate heads-up turn-by-turn directions, access real-time translation and use the glasses as a portable teleprompter.
On devices like this, the limited feature set goes hand-in-hand with lowered expectations: If it promises the basics and delivers them, all good, right? Problems arise when it fails to do them well, or if it’s obvious to anyone there are features that would work here but have been omitted. The G1 doesn’t stumble on the essentials, but I do find myself flip-flopping about how much praise they should get. They’re useful right now, but I’d love to see how much better they’ll get in a year or two.
Even Realities G1
Even Realities’ G1 are smart glasses with a heads-up display for everday use. Notifications, Navigation, Translation and AI from the comfort of your head.
