Snapchat's Creators Open Preorders for $2,195 AR Glasses — You Can Watch YouTube on a "115-Inch" Screen

Snap, the company behind Snapchat, opened preorders for Specs, its first mass-market AR glasses. They cost $2,195, and a refundable $200 deposit is enough to preorder. Shipments begin later this fall in the US, UK, and France.

Specs is a fully standalone device: it needs no separate compute puck and no wired connection. The glasses weigh 132 grams, come in two sizes — 47mm and 52mm — and offer a 51-degree field of view. They can be controlled with gestures and voice, and the battery lasts up to four hours of mixed use. For those who need more, Snap will sell a $200 charging case with its own cellular connection, holding up to four extra charges. In the US, a glasses bundle with that case will cost $2,395, and Verizon plans for it start at $10 a month.

The main draw is a built-in browser for watching YouTube, HBO Max, and other services on a virtual screen. According to Snap, it feels like a 115-inch movie screen roughly three meters away from the viewer. There's room for games too: owners of two pairs of glasses can play dominoes together with basketball player Jimmy Butler, or games of chess or table tennis. Also announced: Spotify, an AR Harry Potter project made in partnership with HBO Max, NBA-branded basketball training, speech translation across 60 languages, and navigation. The glasses can also work as a wireless monitor for PC and Mac.

Alongside the glasses, Snap unveiled Specs Intelligence — a "predictive" AI service that runs on the glasses as well as on iPhone and Mac. It gathers context about the user's goals, habits, and relationships from connected apps and surfaces relevant information on its own, without waiting for a request. A preview version of the service is already available in the US in the iOS app for users 18 and older, and people can sign up for early access on the Specs website.

Snap is also putting particular emphasis on privacy. According to the company, personal data from connected accounts isn't used to train AI or to show personalized ads. The glasses don't do facial recognition and don't continuously record audio or video, and an external indicator lights up whenever recording is actually happening. At the presentation, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel also took a swing at the current AI hype.

Early impressions from journalists have generally been positive: the interface is noticeably more polished, and the apps more useful than in past versions. Still, an Engadget writer doubts that, given the size and price, the glasses will interest anyone beyond AR enthusiasts. Specs can be tried for free starting October 1 at Snap's flagship store in Los Angeles.

Would you pay $2,195 for AR glasses that let you watch video on a giant virtual screen and play games with a friend? Or are devices like this still only for enthusiasts?