- Engo revealed the engo3 smart glasses, with an AR heads-up display
- Designed to display vital stats in your lens as if they were floating 10 feet in front, smart glasses don’t capture content or play music.
- The glasses are compatible with Apple and Garmin watches, among others.
Engo has unveiled the engo3 smart glasses, a device designed to show you an augmented reality view of your vital stats during a run.
Using Engo’s “lightweight AR technology,” the engo3 spec uses a custom interface to take data from smartphones and wearables – which exact models, we’re not sure, but we know the list includes Apple and the best Garmin watches – and display the data as if it’s hovering about 10 feet in front of you. The information displayed includes “heart rate, pace, cadence and more,” as well as cues for customizable structured workouts such as interval training.
Although they share a similar exterior design to Meta’s Oakley Meta Vanguard specs, their functionality is very, very different. The Vanguard glasses can pull information from Garmin watches, but will play it back to you through the built-in speakers or overlay it on images taken by the onboard camera. You never see it as a heads-up display.
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On the other hand, the engo3 glasses don’t have a built-in AI assistant and can’t play music, send you notifications, or capture content like the Vanguards do. This is training advice only.
The engo3 press release addresses this choice as a deliberate choice, stating: “ENGO’s approach focuses on the following: optimizing weight, user experience and battery life. This means no camera, no sound and no extraneous features that could add weight or distract the user.
“This choice runs counter to many smart glasses that offer a multitude of additional options, which are often distracting.”
The engo3 offers up to 20 hours of battery life. Available now, they cost $399 USD / £299 (around AU$575).
When I first unboxed the Oakley Meta Vanguards, I was telling another running friend about the Garmin integration. Initially excited to see her stats in the glasses, I had to let her down and tell her that it was just superimposed on the images taken by the Vanguards.
engo3’s specs, which eschew the other smart glasses frippery in favor of the Iron Man-style heads-up display, look a lot more like what people have in mind when they think of futuristic smart glasses. I can’t wait to try them.
We reviewed the Engo 2 smart glasses in 2023 and found them smart, but undercooked. Now let’s hope that in the age of smart glasses, technology has evolved and the sequel has succeeded where its predecessor could not.
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