I’ve tested several AI smart glasses in 2025, but these are the only ones I’d confidently wear

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Even Realities unveiled its new smart glasses with several surprises and key upgrades to advance the product. The biggest surprise was that not only did the company unveil the Even G2 Display Smart Glasses that doubles as a control device for the glasses.

I’ve been testing both the Even G2 and the Even R1 since the end of October, when Even Realities hosted a small press event in New York to demo both products for journalists.

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Still, since not all of the features have been fully polished or made functional yet, I would call this article my first impressions story rather than a full product review.

And I won’t bury the lead here.

I’ve tried all the smart glasses

I consider the Even G2 the most comfortable and most fashionable set of smart glasses I’ve tried. I’ve tried virtually all the leading products, including all the models from Meta. And because of the focus on privacy in the Even G2 — with no cameras or speakers — they are also the only smart glasses I’d be comfortable wearing at all times of the day.

Priced at the same level as the first-generation product at $599, the Even G2 glasses remain a product that’s priced more like a premium pair of eyeglasses than a tech gadget.

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The main feature of the Even Reality glasses is a bright, monochrome green screen display in both eyes that enables several key features, including live translation, phone notifications, step-by-step navigation, quick notes, AI-based conversation enhancement, and a basic AI chatbot.

But, by far, the best and most polished feature on these glasses is the teleprompter. It allows you to easily upload scripts from standard text files and uses AI to track your progress while speaking the script, automatically advancing the text. It works incredibly well.

Even G1 smart glasses recap

Against all odds, Even Realities had a viral hit with its Even G1 smart glasses released in 2024. These were especially championed by YouTubers, influencers, and content creators, who loved the glasses almost exclusively because of the teleprompter feature.

And beyond the YouTubers, the first-generation Even Realities glasses were made famous by prominent public figures who unabashedly used them while giving public talks. That included government ministers from France and UAE, on-air TV hosts, people giving TED Talks, and CEOs RJ Scaringe of Rivian and Palmer Luckey of Anduril.

I used the teleprompter feature on the Even G1 glasses to deliver my opening remarks before the AI keynote discussions that I hosted at Mobile World Congress 2025 in Las Vegas. And on the day before publishing this article, I used the teleprompter on the Even G2 glasses to deliver my remarks during the opening keynote of SpiceWorld 2025 in Austin, Texas. The feature worked flawlessly in both cases.

To be fair, not all of the features of the Even Realties glasses are as polished as the teleprompter. Many reviewers of the first-generation glasses criticized the software experience as buggy, unintuitive at times, and not always easy to navigate. I used the Even G1 glasses for several months in 2025, and I found the assessment to be pretty accurate.

It could be difficult to find things in menus; some of the features, such as Navigation, felt unfinished, and the 8-bit style of the interface didn’t always make this feel like a cutting-edge product.

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That said, my overall impression of the Even G1 glasses was very positive. I enjoyed wearing them more than any other smart glasses I’ve tried, largely due to the look and feel of the product. Since they are comfortable, stylish, and do not have cameras pointed out at the world, they don’t make you feel (justifiably) self-conscious about wearing them in any setting.

So, how about the Even G2 glasses?

Testing Even G2 smart glasses

The biggest and most significant upgrade is to the display itself — it’s 75% larger and approximately 30% brighter, which unlocks a number of capabilities and improvements. Most notably to me was the teleprompter, of course. A few weeks apart, I used the teleprompter feature onstage for keynote remarks using the Even G1 and the Even G2. The Even G2 display was even clearer to see and follow — which gave me a little more freedom to move around more naturally while using the glasses on stage.

The larger display also makes the Navigation feature better (and Even has upgraded the software experience as well). The bigger display comes in handy for the language translation feature as well, since the translation only appears as text on screen, since the glasses don’t have speakers.

Even Realities also launched a new feature called Conversate in the G2 glasses. This allows you to turn on the AI during a real-world conversation, so the glasses can follow what’s being said, and display information on important terms and topics being discussed, and potentially summarize the conversation afterward. This is similar to a new feature called Live AI on the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses.

For these new and upgraded features in the Even G2 glasses, I’d like to use them more and allow Even Realities to do a few software updates before I weigh in on the usefulness of the features other than the teleprompter.

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But the G2 glasses themselves are light (36g compared to 52g for Meta Ray-Ban Gen 2 and 69g for Meta Ray-Ban Display), the battery easily gets through 1-2 days on a single charge (compared to 2-8 hours for the various Meta products), and they can take a wide range of prescription lenses from -12 to +12 (compared to -4 to +4 for Meta Ray-Ban Display).

With the G2, Even Realities kept the two main styles — one round and one square — but added an additional green color to its gray and brown colors from the G1 lineup. The company also made a slight variation to the original round-style glasses by giving the top of the circle a flatter edge, which makes the G2 style even a little more unique.

How the R1 Smart Ring fits in

The other major question regarding this new product centers on the companion R1 Smart Ring. Even Realities has the right idea for what it’s trying to achieve here — providing an easier, more full-featured, and more discreet way to navigate a heads-up display — but the execution still needs some work.

The ring is meant to be worn on your index finger on either hand, and then you use your thumb to tap, double-tap, and swipe up and down to navigate the interface on the glasses.

the only smart glasses I see as practical for wearing all day long, for now.