Someone walking up wearing a pair Halliday's smart glassesAnd you might not even notice that they're looking at smartphone notifications, live language translations or AI assistant suggestions.
The only giveaway is the tiny green dot of light on their eyeballs.
Wearable startup Halliday has launched a pair of smart glasses CES 2025 That projects a 3.5-inch circular display into your line of sight. The device that makes up the display is called DigiWindow, and it's a small round module — smaller than your pinky nail — that sits inside Halliday's frame just above your right eye.
While most augmented reality glasses — at least, the ones you see demos of — project text and images onto the lenses of your glasses, Halliday's approach is a little more direct. By pointing the DigiWindow directly at your eyes, Halliday avoids the need for those expensive AR lenses, making these smart glasses less expensive than other AR prototypes, (but certainly not cheaper) and better looking. You can use prescription lenses in these glasses without any problem.
Halliday plans to ship pairs of these glasses from March 2025 Full price is $489, but you can pre-order a pair of Halliday's glasses this week for $369, as long as you pledge $9.90 to their Kickstarter on Wednesday. At pre-order prices, Halliday's smart glasses are slightly more expensive than a pair of Ray Ban Metas.
I tried on a pair of Holiday Smart Glasses in a quiet corner of Las Vegas' Caesars Palace casino while the company's founder, Carter Howe, spoke to me in Chinese.
As How spoke, the English subtitles appeared on his right shoulder only a second late. We went back and forth for a few minutes, him speaking in Chinese and me in English, as the smart glasses facilitated our bilingual conversation.
Halliday's glasses offer real-time language translation for 40 languages. Beyond that, the glasses will display phone notifications, a cheat sheet with notes (which could be useful for a big meeting or interview – or final exam…), and navigation directions. The arms of the glasses have speakers that can play music or read messages, but the display is the main selling point.
The company also says there's a “proactive AI assistant” that can provide helpful information about your conversations in real time. However, Howe told me that the AI feature was not yet ready for testing when I tried it.
Smart glasses are quickly becoming the most prominent form factor for using AI. You'll definitely see how DigiWindow will be a helpful display for accessing text-based LLMs like ChatGPT or Gemini throughout your day.
Halliday still hadn't figured out how to position his DigiWindow, which had to sit perfectly above your eyes to display properly. The module can slide back and forth a few centimeters and tilt up and down a few degrees. However, because of my high nose bridge, I couldn't get the DigiWindo to fall completely into my line of sight, so I had to sit halfway down my nose and wear glasses.
When I asked if Halliday's green light was safe to show your eyes, Howe told me the glasses were perfectly safe, and my eyes felt fine for the 10 minutes I wore the glasses. That said, I can understand people being a little uncomfortable with light shining into their eyes from such close range.
The company also promotes a control ring that you can wear on your index finger. You slide your thumb up or down to navigate through the different features of the glasses. I was not able to try that.
Halliday's smart glasses are thinner and lighter A pair of Ray Ban MetsAnd they don't even have cameras in front of them. The advantage here is that they look pretty good, not too different from normal glasses, sporting a classic design.
Smart glasses with cameras can sometimes raise eyebrows, with strangers wondering, “Who is this creep recording me?” However, to others (including this reporter), smart glasses cameras are a feature, not a bug, allowing you to take photos and videos without pulling out your phone and ruining the moment.
Halliday's smart glasses offer an attractive version of smart glasses with a display that you can pre-order now, unlike the prototypes from big tech companies that have no commercial launch date.
Check out more CES 2025 coverage, including…