Google and Samsung Smart Glasses (2026): Price, Release Date, Features and Which Phones Work

Google is back in the glasses business, and this time it brought an optician. On November 12, 2026, Google and Samsung opened pre-orders for their first Android XR smart glasses, sold not under a Google or Samsung name but as Warby Parker Intelligent Eyewear and Gentle Monster Intelligent Eyewear. They look like ordinary frames, weigh about 41 grams, carry a camera, speakers and microphones, and put Google’s Gemini assistant in your ear. There is no screen in the lens. Think of them as a voice-and-camera companion for your phone rather than a heads-up display.

The short answer: the glasses go on sale December 10, 2026, in the United States (both brands) and South Korea (Gentle Monster only). Warby Parker’s three styles start at $395, and Gentle Monster’s six styles run $449 to $489, according to Samsung. Prescription lenses are available for most frames. They work with recent Pixel and Galaxy phones and with the iPhone 13 Pro or newer, and you will need a Google account from the U.S. or South Korea and to be at least 18. Below is what they do, how they stack up against Ray-Ban Meta, and what Google changed after the Google Glass backlash a decade ago.

Price, release date and where to buy

Pre-orders: open now, online and in stores at Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. General sale: December 10, 2026, in stores and online. Markets: the U.S. for both collections, plus South Korea for Gentle Monster, per Samsung’s announcement.

Warby Parker, from $395: three frames called Alden, Reid and Wren, in Pine, Saddle and Jet Black, as optical glasses or sunglasses, with a range of widths, lenses and prescriptions. Samsung counts 14 variations in all. Warby Parker says you can book a guided demo at more than 360 of its stores.

Gentle Monster, $449 to $489: six bolder frames, two of them with a deliberately Y2K look, in colors such as dark red, pink, gray and yellow with tinted, clear, blue or brown lenses, for 16 variations. Prescriptions are offered on most frames.

One practical twist: because you buy from an eyewear brand, Warby Parker or Gentle Monster is your first stop for fit, prescriptions and problems, the same way Ray-Ban sells Meta’s glasses. Kering Eyewear, the group behind brands such as Lindberg and Maui Jim, has also signed on to make Android XR glasses later, according to WIRED.

What the glasses actually do

Nearly everything runs through Gemini. You say "Hey Gemini," a new wake phrase that debuts on these glasses (the old "Hey Google" still works), or tap the right temple, and you are in a back-and-forth Gemini Live conversation rather than a string of one-off commands. A swipe on the arm ends it. Google says it tuned the model for glasses to cut latency and keep answers short.

Ask about what you are looking at

The headline trick is asking about what is in front of you. Google’s examples include the story behind a street mural, a recommendation from a bookstore shelf, or an event poster that Gemini can check against your calendar and add for you. Reviewers who tried pre-release units described looking at a concert flyer, having it added to Google Calendar and then asking for flights in the same conversation. You have to be specific when you want Gemini to look; otherwise it does not use the camera.

Live translation

Ask Gemini and Google Translate delivers real-time speech translation with automatic language detection across more than 70 languages, according to Google. You do not pick a language pair in advance. In demos, The Verge’s Victoria Song had several languages blaring at once translated without trouble, a scenario she said had tripped up Meta’s display glasses. WIRED noted you need to face the speaker and that quality depends on background noise.

Directions, calls, music and messages

Google Maps reads out turn-by-turn walking directions. Two open-ear speakers handle calls, YouTube Music, Spotify, Apple Music and audiobooks, and Gemini can summarize and read out notifications and dictate replies. On Galaxy phones Samsung adds Bixby and can save notes straight to Samsung Notes.

Photos and video

A button on top of the frame takes 12-megapixel photos and video clips of up to 90 seconds at up to 3K resolution, with HDR and stabilization handled on the phone. Photos move to your phone right away over Wi-Fi; videos wait until the glasses are charging, according to 9to5Google.

Help for blind and low-vision users

A feature called Guided Vision gives conversational audio descriptions, for reading small print or finding everyday items, and a partnership with Aira lets you stream the camera to a trained human interpreter. Both are Android-only at launch, and Google stresses that Guided Vision is not a mobility aid.

Specs at a glance

Weight: about 41 grams, ranging from 39.6 to 43.9 grams across Gentle Monster frames and 40.4 to 42.6 grams for Warby Parker, per Samsung. Google calls it the lightest pair of smart glasses on the market.

Chip and memory: a Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 with 2 GB of memory and 64 GB of storage. Much of the heavy lifting, including image processing, is split off to your phone.

Battery: up to nine hours per charge, with a charging case good for about seven more charges, or up to 72 hours in total.

Camera, audio and controls: a 12MP ultra-wide camera, two open-ear speakers, four microphones, a touchpad on the right arm, a capture button, and an off switch that turns them into plain glasses. Pixel Watch and Galaxy Watch owners can also use pinch gestures to play music or summon Gemini.

Other details: IPX4 splash resistance for the glasses, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.4. There is no display.

Which phones work with them?

This is the fine print most likely to catch people out. At launch the glasses support Google Pixel 7 and newer running the September 2026 Android 17 update, Samsung’s Galaxy S, S FE, Z Fold, Z Flip and Fold Ultra phones running One UI 9.0 or later, and the iPhone 13 Pro or newer. Other Android phones are not on the list yet; a Google spokesperson told WIRED the company will share plans to expand support in 2027. The glasses also require a Google account from the U.S. or South Korea, and age verification for users 18 and older.

iPhone owners get the core features, including Gemini, calls, music and translation, but some extras such as Guided Vision, Aira and Audible need an Android phone at first.

Privacy: what Google learned from Glass

Smart glasses have an image problem. Google Glass wearers were nicknamed "Glassholes" more than a decade ago, and Las Vegas casinos were among the places that banned the device. Meta’s camera glasses have drawn a newer round of complaints. Google’s product lead says the company went in remembering that.

We learned through Glass that you can make people uncomfortable if you’re not clearly communicating. (Juston Payne, Google senior director of product management for XR, to WIRED, November 2026)

A light you cannot cover. An outward LED shows when a photo or video is being saved, and the glasses are designed to stop recording if that light is covered or not working. 9to5Google reports that software checks for stickers or ink on the LED, with a hardware check when the glasses sit in their case.

Faces and voices scrubbed first. When you ask Gemini about what you see, the glasses are designed to blur bystanders’ faces before the image is processed, and to filter out other people’s voices. Google says those visuals are not saved to your Gemini History and are not used to train AI models or target ads. In The Verge’s demo, Gemini declined to identify a person in view, citing privacy.

Rules beyond the hardware. According to The Verge, Google Play will bar third-party glasses apps that enable real-time facial identification, social livestreaming or changes to how the LED works, and Google Shopping and Google Ads will not allow sales or ads for covers that hide the privacy light. None of this makes the camera harmless, but it is a more sweeping set of rules than smart glasses have shipped with before.

How they compare with Ray-Ban Meta

Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses are the market leader and the obvious comparison. On paper the hardware is close; the bigger differences are the assistant, the ecosystem and the privacy approach.

Price: the newest Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 3) starts at $449 in the U.S., according to Notebookcheck, the same as Gentle Monster’s entry price and $54 more than Warby Parker’s. The previous Gen 2 Wayfarer still sells, with a $379 list price.

Weight and battery: Engadget puts the Gen 3 Wayfarer at 51.5 grams, about 10 grams heavier than the Google-Samsung glasses, with the same nine-hour rating but a case that adds up to 50 hours.

Camera: both use 12MP ultra-wide cameras with up to 3K video. Meta offers more capture modes, such as slow motion and hyperlapse.

Assistant: early hands-on reports from The Verge, Engadget and Tom’s Guide all rated Gemini as more capable than Meta AI so far, especially at linking what the camera sees to your calendar, maps and notes, and at translation without downloading language packs. Those were short, controlled demos, so real-world reviews will matter.

Style range: Meta, through EssilorLuxottica, offers far more frame and lens combinations. Google’s 30 designs are a solid start, not a match.

If you live in Google’s apps and use a supported phone, the Gemini glasses look like the more useful assistant. If you want the widest choice of frames or a cheaper used pair, Meta still has the edge. If you want a camera-free option, Meta also sells audio-only Ray-Ban Meta frames; Google has not announced one, though Warby Parker’s co-CEO told WIRED there is "a pretty robust pipeline" of products to come.

From Google Glass to Gemini glasses: a short timeline

June 27, 2012: Google starts taking $1,500 orders for the Google Glass Explorer Edition, a head-mounted display with a tiny prism screen. Deliveries begin in April 2013, and privacy worries follow almost immediately.

January 15, 2015: Google ends the Explorer program and stops selling Glass to consumers. Enterprise versions carry on for factories and hospitals until sales end on March 15, 2023.

December 12, 2024: Google and Samsung announce Android XR, a version of Android for headsets and glasses built around Gemini. Samsung’s Galaxy XR headset follows in October 2025.

May 20, 2025: at Google I/O, Google names Warby Parker and Gentle Monster as its first glasses partners and commits up to $150 million to Warby Parker, $75 million for product development and up to $75 million more in equity tied to milestones, as CNBC reported.

November 12, 2026: pre-orders open for the Warby Parker and Gentle Monster Intelligent Eyewear. December 10, 2026: the glasses go on sale.

The difference between the two eras is telling. Glass was a futuristic gadget with a screen that you could spot across a room. The new glasses drop the screen, borrow the look of frames people already wear, and lean on an AI assistant that can see and hear. If AI-powered hardware interests you, see our guides to Tesla’s Optimus robot and to how a Neuralink patient drives his wheelchair with his mind.

Where to try a pair

Google strongly suggests trying them on first, and the retail network is the point of the partnership. Warby Parker offers guided demos at more than 360 stores, and demos are also available at select Gentle Monster and Google Store locations, with Samsung adding hands-on stations at select stores from December 10. In New York, Warby Parker’s "Literatureland" pop-up is set to run through 2027, and Gentle Monster is running its own pop-up for about a month. Check with your nearest store before you go, since not every location is running demos.

When you do try them, test the things that matter day to day: how they sit on your nose after 20 minutes, how quickly Gemini answers on your own phone, and how the speakers sound on a noisy street.

The bottom line

The Warby Parker and Gentle Monster Intelligent Eyewear are the most serious challenge yet to Ray-Ban Meta: lighter, priced from $395, with an assistant that early testers found smarter, and privacy rules that go further than any smart glasses before them. The catches are a short list of supported phones, availability only in the U.S. and South Korea, and no display for now; Google says glasses with in-lens screens are still being tested, with no release window. If you have a recent Pixel, Galaxy or iPhone Pro and already wear glasses, they are worth a demo before December 10. Everyone else may want to wait for full reviews, and for Google’s 2027 phone support update.

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