Your phone, laptop, monitor, and TV may well have been the places to see things in the past, but times are changing, and your next screen could be just in front of your eyes.
It sounds like the thing of science fiction, but with Meta’s smart glasses now out in the world and Apple’s Vision Pro offering a way to bridge computers to a headset, other companies are dabbling with the concept of glasses to find out what they can do.
A brand new to Australia (though more common outside the country), Rokid is set to show off what it can do with its own take on eyewear, with three styles on the way.
At the high-end will be the Rokid Glasses, a 49 gram pair of specs with two micro-LED displays, one for each eye, essentially providing notifications and information as you walk and talk, all through the lenses of the glasses.
Along the frame is a 12 megapixel camera that can capture first-person video, as well as speakers in the arms and four microphones across the design, allowing you to talk to the glasses to ask AI, with support for two of the main AI services: Google Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
That means as you wear the Rokid Glasses, you’ll be able to converse with an AI to ask it what you see, what’s happening, and for AI-powered object and text recognition to kick in.
The idea seems a little like what Meta is trying to do with its own smart glasses announced last year, but possibly without the controversy the tech has brought.
Priced at $1099 in Australia, the Rokid Glasses aren’t inexpensive, but won’t be alone. If you don’t need the tiny LED screens, Rokid will have the Glasses Neo, a pair that keeps the camera, speakers, and microphones, but lacks the screens in the lenses, making the glass more swappable while keeping the price down to $699.
While both of these spectacles look like glasses you could wear, Rokid will also offer another variety that’s less about the walk and talk, and more for the entertainment. They also appear very different aesthetically.
The Rokid AR Spatial are essentially a pair of glasses made to let you watch films in a personal cinema, play games that way, or even a way to work using a screen into something only you can see. To do this, the AR Spatial glasses deliver a Full HD screen for each eye, support for 3D, and work with a separate compact computer Rokid calls the “Station 2”, which essentially offers up a version of Linux to let you do things inside the augmented reality headset.
If these glasses seem a little complicated, it’s because they definitely are, delivering a head-mounted display of sorts that seems like it’s versatile, but might require more playing than simply “plug and play”. Priced at $1299 in Australia, they could be a sign of things to come in the personal entertainment space, though they do some more complex than you might expect.
However, all three will be in Australia very soon, with the Rokid range set to launch shortly.
