San Francisco-based smart glasses company Halliday just dropped a ton of details about its Gen 2 smart glasses, a set of waveguide display glasses that project AI-powered overlays onto users’ field of view. The glasses are expected to ship in September. They retail for $599, and they are Now available for pre-order.
Unlike Meta’s Ray-Ban and Oakley glassesThe Halliday G2 glasses have no camera—the selling point is their monochrome display, which overlays a field of green text over your field of view—think of it more like a personal video game-style heads-up display than a video player.
If you’re worried about being called out for wearing smart glasses in public, this pair is stealthy, and quite fashionable too. But fashion isn’t the point either; The focus is on practicality and productivity. “We’re not building a tool for entertainment,” Halliday COO and co-founder Carter Hou told me. “It’s a tool to help our users improve their work life and their life-life efficiency.”
Halliday G2 glasses are designed for productivity
Credit: Halliday
While these glasses come with translation software and other expected utilities, the main selling point is “Meeting Flow,” an app that provides real-time AI assistance for work meetings. Switch on the app before your 2:30 staff meeting, Halliday promises, and the glasses will monitor the conversation, provide helpful tips and keep a transcription of what’s being said. You’ll also be able to automatically “rewind” 30 seconds, so if you miss something that was said, you can catch yourself right away—which is great if you tend to zone out.
Halliday has another specialty: quick research. With one tap, you’ll be able to ask AI to go over the last few minutes of a meeting, determine if there are any open questions, and provide answers on the fly without looking at your phone. Other features aim to use AI tools to help keep your meetings on topic and note when important discussion points are not covered in meetings.
“The meeting is just the beginning,” Howe thought. “In the future we can make interviews more efficient, networking sessions easier and more. We can take it out of the workspace, like your next doctor’s visit, so you can ask your doctor the right questions and know the exact definition of the words they use.”
What do you think so far?
Hou envisions a future where AI agents embedded in your glasses can listen to all your interactions, determine their intent, and help you figure out what to do next—so if you’re stopped by a cop on the drive home from your productive meeting, it can provide a roadmap for how best to navigate the encounter.
How Halliday G2 glasses fit into the smart glasses market
Halliday’s G2 glasses seem to fall into the same category as Even Realities’ G2 glasses—they even have the same name. Both pairs of glasses feature a monochrome display that uses waveguide technology and are both designed for productivity and everyday use. In my opinion, the Even Realities G2 Glasses’ signature “chat” app Sounds like “meeting flow,” but Halliday is trying to take the concept further. If it works as intended, the company could give Even Realities some serious competition in the display-style glasses segment. (Halliday’s G2s also have built-in speakers, while Even Realities’ glasses are silent.)
On the downside, the Even Realities G2 glasses have an app store with third-party apps for everything from bird watching to Bible reading. At launch, Halliday G2 glasses will only support apps that come pre-loaded.
Halliday Gen 2 specs
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Battery life: 12 hours of normal use
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weight: 49 g
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Audio: Onboard speakers
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display: Monochrome, binocular waveguide display
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brightness: Up to 1600 Nits
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resolution: 600×300 per eye
