Smart watch on your face
Even Realities G1 Review
Ordering Process
Last week I received my G1 glasses. It was time to update my prescription so I figured why not get a pair of smart glasses that actually respects your privacy! I ordered the glasses and entered my prescription. It took about two weeks to make the frames and lenses then ship them to me. The shipping was nice and fast with the longest wait time being customs clearance. Overall the process of ordering the glasses was quick, easy, and they arrived in what I would consider a reasonable time considering the custom prescription lenses had to be made for them.
Do the glasses do glasses things?
TLDR: yes.
The frames themselves are remarkably light considering the tech inside. They sit comfortably on my face after adjusting the nose pads a bit, and with my prescription everything is nice, clear, and crisp. My one complaint with them from a glasses use perspective is that the lenses are not anti-glare. You do get some reflections in the lenses and bright lights do glare out a bit, but that's not a huge deal for me, after a couple of hours I barely notice at all. When the screens activate they are also crisp and clear. There's a tiny bit of glow around the left most text, but nothing that is egregious or distracting. When the displays are off they are completely transparent. If you catch the light just right you might be able to see them a tiny bit, but again nothing distracting or egregious.
Overall even if they didn't have displays in them the glasses themselves I would be happy with them as just normal glasses. The magnesium alloy frames around the lenses feel sturdy and have a nice touch feel. The silicon coated titanium arms are super light and a bit flexible making them grip your face nicely while having a fantastic soft touch feel. The battery and touch pad nubs are small enough that you don't really notice them, and again help grip your face nicely. They feel much more secure then my previous normal frames.
I also opted to get the clip on sunglass covers. They work pretty well. The tint is a gradient, starting darker at the top and lighter towards the bottom, you may like or dislike that depending on personal preference. I like them well enough. I do miss the convenience of the transitions lenses I had in my previous glasses, but they work well enough and with the pouch you can keep them in your pocket pretty easily.
Overall they are good glasses.
Are the AR tho?
TLDR: kinda but not really.
I would not describe this as an AR device. Its more of a heads up display. The display is monochrome in hacker green, and activates by slightly tilting your head up. With the default app on your phone the dashboard is honestly perfect. This is the dashboard I would want on this kind of device. It displays the current date, time, temperature, notification count, upcoming calendar events, and a quick note you made with the glasses. Basically smartwatch stuff.
New messages will display a small glyph. Tilting your head up will display the content of the message. If you miss the initial notification you can tilt your head up to open the dashboard then tap once on the left touch pad to cycle through any not viewed notifications.
You can hold the right touch pad to dictate a quick note, and hold the left touch-pad to ask a question to AI. The microphone dictation quality is remarkably good, it rarely messes up what you're asking. Any responses from AI are displayed as text in the lenses.
There is another option for apps though, MentraOS. MentraOS is an app that connects to not only the G1s but a list of other smart glasses as well. MentraOS offers a cloud native operating system and app development platform. The apps require a websockets connection to Mentra's servers that then talk to the app on your phone, which sends the information to and from the glasses. I plan to make a few MentraOS apps, so stay tuned for that! MentraOS offeres some cool apps, but the default dashboard is not nearly as useful as the EvenReaslities app dashboard. But since the MentraSDK is opensource and you can write your own dashboard!
Closing thoughts
These are really cool glasses, but the out of the box functionality is pretty limited. If all you want is a smartwatch on your face, then they're perfect for you. If you want to tinker on them and write some apps with MentraOS they are also fantastic. However if you're expecting them to be the AR device of the future you'll be sorely disappointed. For me they are exactly what I expected because I've watched a few reviews of them already and knew what I was getting into. As more third party apps become available and MentraOS gains more apps I think they have the potential to be a SOLID heads up display device for everyday life. As they are now, if you don't want to tinker with making your own MentraOS apps, I wouldn't recommend them unless your use case is fairly basic. By default they are basically just a smart watch on your face.
TLDR: The hardware is great, but the software support is very basic. If all you want is a smart watch on your face they are a 100% recommend, but if you're hoping for a device with advanced capabilities then you'd better brush up on your coding skills and write some MentraOS apps, or wait until more apps are available.