As Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses continue to turn your face into a computer, with a camera and speaker, Even Realities is doubling down on a design that eschews those components. Instead, it’s focusing on extending your smartphone through the display of its smart glasses while figuring out new mechanisms for controlling the experience.
Today, the company announced the Even G2 smart glasses, alongside the Even R1, its first-ever smart ring that controls the display of the G2.
Courtesy of Even Realities
The Even G2 glasses don’t look wholly different from the original G1 that debuted last summer, which is a good thing, because these are still among the sharpest-looking smart glasses on the market. At a closed-doors briefing a few weeks ago, Even Realities CEO Will Wang said the company didn’t advertise its first product much, as it wanted to test it in the market and receive valuable feedback, while also working on expanding its retail presence. Today, you can find the G1 in 350 luxury eyewear shops around the world.
The new Even G2 glasses cost $599, and the Even R1 is $249. Both are on sale today. There’s an introductory promotion where anyone who buys the G2 can get the R1 and other G2 accessories for 50 percent off.
Even Footing
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
With no camera or speaker, these glasses are all about the display, which is 75 percent larger on the G2. The company calls it Even HAO 2.0, which stands for Holistic Adaptive Optics. It combines mini micro-LED projectors, gradient wavelengths, and hi-def lenses for a dual-display picture that is sharper, brighter, and more stable during movement. The G2 also accommodates a wider range of lens prescriptions (from -12 to +12 diopters) to make them more accessible.
They’re made with a similar mix of titanium and magnesium alloy, but the G2 glasses are lighter than their predecessor (36 versus 44 grams). There are two silhouettes to choose from—panto and rectangular—and they come in gray, brown, or green. Like the previous model, you can add clip-on sunglasses for some shade. This time around, the G2 have an official IP67 dust- and water-resistance rating, so you can wear them without worry in the rain.
Even Realities provided me with a sample, and the display is noticeably sharper and clearer than the G1. The glasses also fit much more comfortably thanks to that reduced weight, and the arms aren’t as thick. I had to stop wearing the original G1 after a week, as I got a rash above my ear (the fit was tight), but the new G2 glasses don’t feel as though they’re hugging my face as tightly. Unfortunately, I have not been able to test the glasses extensively because the company didn’t have my prescription ready yet. Stay tuned for my full review.
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
As before, you can control the glasses with a series of taps on the thick module at the end of the arms, but if that’s too cumbersome, you can upgrade with the Even R1 smart ring. The stainless steel R1 has a zirconia ceramic coating that feels quite luxe; pop it on your index finger and tap or scroll to move through the interface on the glasses (somewhat like the Sandbar Stream ring). Sadly, the R1 is not compatible with the older G1 glasses.
The ring isn’t just a way to control the screen; it can track your steps, monitor your heart rate, heart-rate variability, sleep, and even your blood oxygen levels. Unlike most smart rings, you can view all this information on the glasses themselves without a phone. Take all of this with a grain of salt, though. Even Realities doesn’t have much experience in the health-tracking space, so the results from the R1 may not be up to par with those from smart rings dedicated to fitness and health. In my brief time with the R1, my health results didn’t populate in the app, and the app constantly showed the ring’s battery at zero even though it was charged and working. (In general, there seem to be quite a few bugs the company needs to work out.)
Even Realities claims you can get two days of juice out of a single charge on the glasses, slightly more than before, with the charging case offering seven additional full charges before its battery depletes. The IP68-rated R1 ring supposedly lasts around four days.
Break Even
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
So what do you actually do with the G2? You can view notifications, use the translation function to see translated words of the person you’re speaking with on the display of the glasses, see navigation instructions as you walk, and pin a to-do list.
The microphones can hear when you say “Hey Even,” and trigger the company’s Even AI assistant, which can act like your standard-fare large language model chatbot today and answer your queries. Also in tow is a teleprompter—Palmer Luckey wore the original G1 during a TED talk for this specific function and later said he used it to glance at his notes.
Wang says all of these capabilities are improved on the G2—for example, Even AI generates its answers three times faster than before—but the hot new feature is Conversate. Turn it on during a conversation, and the company’s “contextual AI” will suggest follow-up questions, generate subtitles, summarize meetings, or even offer on-the-spot answers. You know, in case you forget how to human. The audio isn’t saved, just the transcription. Later this year, the company says it’ll launch Even Hub, a space for developers to design new capabilities for the G1 and G2 glasses.
Even Realities is a small player in an increasingly crowded smart glasses marketplace. With Meta and Ray-Ban leading the pack, and Google and Samsung’s Android XR initiative set to take off (with the likes of Gentle Monsters and Warby Parker) in 2026, and even Apple potentially wading into these waters, the humble G2 feels like an underdog. But Wang has a vision to become “the Tesla and OpenAI in the smart glasses space” and challenge these tech behemoths despite their seemingly endless resources. So far, it’s off to a strong start.
