HTC made smart glasses that are much more private

These smart glasses do almost everything that Meta glasses can do, but they are not tied to a social media platform.

You can't really talk about smart glasses without introducing meta. HTC, the company behind 2010s-era VR headsets and a failed smartphone business, seems quite eager to tackle the comparison head-on.

In September, HTC started selling its Vive Eagle smart glasses for $499 in the US. Eagles has many of the same features as glasses on the market: cameras for taking photos and videos, speakers in the frames for music and calls, a built-in AI agent that you can ask questions about and even make recipes by taking pictures of what's in the fridge.

But HTC also wants to steer clear of the ongoing debate over privacy in camera-equipped smartglasses. Meta has been controversial for its smart glasses, with people worried about the company's interest in enabling facial recognition features and calling people who use them creepy. HTC is aware of this discourse and thinks it's entirely possible to make smart glasses that aren't a privacy nightmare.

"It's not just about protecting the consumer, it's also about protecting those around the consumer," Dan McDowell, HTC Vive's head of enterprise sales, told WIRED. "I think people can bring in some really great experiences with a new layer of confidence and protection."

I've been wandering around with the glasses for a few weeks now, and so far they've lived up to my expectations for what smart glasses have become. They protect my eyes from the sun. They take good photos and videos. You can record and transcribe voice notes. Music playback has good sound quality. (If I'm actually trying to listen to music, I always prefer a pair of solid headphones, but the speakers work just fine.) They come in two styles—one with square Wayfarer lenses, and one with more rounded lenses.

Vive Eagle glasses can have 4.5 hours of battery life with continuous music playback. They can last 36 hours on standby. HTC also sells a clip-on battery pack called the Power Boost for $49. It sticks right onto the frame and is noticeable, but not as bad as you might think.

Don't forget the artificial intelligence assistant Vive AI, which can use OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Gemini. No login is required, so users are "logged out" in such a way that the Services do not retain personal information. (This also means that by default, you won't be able to enjoy many of the personalization features these chatbots offer by collecting information from your emails and messages.) The glasses come with AI Plus Vive, free for the first two years. After that, users must pay a monthly subscription fee of $2.50.

Right next to the cameras is an indicator light. If you cover the light, it won't record. If someone around you tells you to stop recording, the recording will stop. The videos you take are encrypted and stored on the glasses—not automatically sent to your phone or the cloud. If you want to import photos or videos, you have to do it manually in the app.

The indicator light has come under scrutiny in the past, as some users have blocked the LED with stickers or hacked into the hardware to turn it off. Meta has responded with software updates that disable the camera if someone tampers with the indicator light, along with other privacy-focused measures.

I ask McDowell how HTC, and really any smartglass maker, can get past "trust me bro"-style privacy promises.

"We're not a social media company," McDowell says. "Having your information is of no use to me. We do not train our AI model or any third party AI model with any of the information used on the glasses."

The real problem may be that with on-frame cameras, it's difficult to distinguish smart glasses between brands. The Vive Eagles are very similar to the Meta Glasses, and people concerned about these privacy issues may not know that the Eagles are different and not affiliated with Mark Zuckerberg's company. I had friends who saw me wearing them and asked if they were smart glasses. Yes, I replied, but not the ones they think of. This did not seem to dispel any of their suspicions.

At least that's how HTC is framing it, hoping that more players with better privacy practices will help change the cultural disdain for smart glasses. Many other companies such as Even Realities, Viture and Halliday operate without cameras. Others are building themselves with privacy shields or focusing on virtual screens instead of capturing the world around you. That said, no one has captured the market like Meta.

"We want to make sure our technology is aligned with community expectations, not the other way around," says McDowell. "I hope everyone who makes products like this is on the right track."