In the smart glasses conversation, Alibaba has created its own solution to that problem: swappable batteries. Its new Quark AI Glasses S1, now available on all major e-commerce platforms in China, does something I haven’t seen in a pair of smart glasses yet by including an easily replaceable rechargeable battery. With an additional battery pack, Alibaba promises up to 24 hours of usage with the Quark AI Glasses S1, which equates to about 12 hours per pack, a figure that is already quite impressive. However, they are not promising that both of you will remember to bring your spare battery or that you will remember to charge it. For reference, the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 AI glasses deliver a maximum of 8 hours on a single charge.
Alibaba’s design is a simple solution to getting all-day battery life on a pair of smart glasses. This may not be ideal, but for now it may be the only way to really get there without burdening your face. While Meta has done a good job of improving battery life in its AI smart glasses over the generations, batteries are a limited thing, and without some kind of technological breakthrough in battery chemistry, you can only cram so much juice into a single cell. The fact is that (apart from swappable batteries), lengthening battery life means making the smart glasses heavier, and that’s not a move most vendors of smart glasses will want to make.
In addition to the swappable battery, the Quark AI Glasses S1 also feature a Micro OLED display in each lens and camera to capture photos and videos in 3K. Another interesting feature in the S1 is what seems to be an AI upgrade to 4K in the smart glasses. Alibaba says the Quark AI Glasses S1 have “AI-enhanced 4K output,” although they natively record in 3K.
The S1 has most of the features you’d expect in a pair of smart glasses, including a voice assistant, computer vision, translation, turn-by-turn navigation, transcription, reminders, a teleprompter, and “context-aware” search that can tell you where the nearest café is. They will also be integrated with all of Alibaba’s other services, which should make for a very seamless experience for music streaming, navigation, and even shopping.
If you’re not a fan of smart glasses with a built-in display, Alibaba is also offering a non-display version called the G1, which has all the same hardware but at a lower price. Well, in terms of price the S1 is much lower than its competitors like the Meta Ray-Ban Display. They’ll start at ¥3,799 (about $537), while the G1 will cost ¥1,899 (about $268), which is the same as Meta’s Ray-Ban AI glasses.
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