Chinese tech maker Xiaomi is the latest to throw its hat into the smart glasses ring. On Monday, the company unveiled its rival to Facebook’s Ray-Ban Stories called the Xiaomi Smart Glasses. While Xiaomi says the glasses could replace your smartphone, we wouldn’t bet on that happening anytime soon.
At 51g it’s slightly heavier than the Ray-Ban Stories. It must be the LED indicator light to show everyone when the 5MP camera is in use, so if you’re recording something you shouldn’t be everyone will know.
The glasses are powered by a really small ARM processor and will run on Android. The interesting part here is Xiaomi decided to go with a single monochrome lens, “to allow sufficient light to pass through complicated optical structures.”
Are these smart glasses be the start or end of something?
According to Xiaomi, the display is “smaller than a grain of rice” and that makes our eyes hurt just thinking about it. But you won’t have to squint while trying to read notifications or directions on a map, the design of the glasses will create a larger display for your eyes by bouncing light around until it hits your retinas.
While we don’t think these particular glasses are going to shake the technology world to its core, it could be the proof of concept we need to get this trend going.
Xiaomi didn’t say when these will be available or how much they’ll cost, but if we know Xiaomi it’ll be less than you think and certainly less than the Ray-Ban Stories.
