guide01

This AR Accessory Turns Your Dumb Glasses Into a Google Glass Ripoff

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Smart glasses are a big thing this year, and there are a few pairs out there (last I checked) for your consideration. But there are more pairs of smart glasses in the world than there are Regular Glasses that are apparently waiting to get smart. Or at least that’s the estimate from the company that makes a small, very Google Glass-like XR accessory.

The Guide01, a small glasses attachment from Japan, is basically a smart glasses e-bike conversion kit and allows you to attach a small heads-up display (HUD) to the arm of your old useless glasses with the help of a mount. And with that tiny display, which especially makes your glasses look an awful lot like Google Glass, you can see everything you’d expect from another pair of HUD-style glasses, including turn-by-turn navigation, notifications like text and email, and readouts for the weather and date. There’s a small touchpad on the device to control the UI, and it uses Bluetooth to connect to your phone, so you can also control it through a companion app. Naturally, there’s also a microphone for voice control, which is great for anyone who hates tapping on the tiny touchpad.

Why Would you use such a device as opposed to a pair of dedicated smart glasses, you ask? Well, it probably won’t, but if you did, it would probably be due to weight. A major benefit of a solution like the Guide01 is that it’s incredibly light – in this case, just 10 grams, which, for perspective, is much lighter than the Meta Ray-Ban Display’s 69 gram to 70 gram weight. Obviously, you have to add the weight of your glasses into that, but even if your frames weigh three times as much as the Guide01, it still falls within the Meta’s display smart glasses overall.

guide01 smart glasses
© HappyLifeCreators Inc.

Despite being quite small and light, the Guide01 actually has some pretty impressive features on paper. For one, the display is actually full-color OLED, not monochrome green LED like some other lightweight glasses, including the recently released Even Realme Even G2 or those made by Rokid. The resolution of the Guide01 is actually not bad when you compare it to the Meta Ray-Ban display. It’s 624 x 405, compared to the 600 x 600 resolution of the Meta Ray-Ban display. It also has 1,200 nits of brightness, which is significantly less than the Meta Ray-Ban Display’s 5,000 nits maximum brightness, but it should still be usable in direct sunlight.

Despite performing better than you expect, it exists One However, that’s a thing that feels like an infuriating problem, and if you’ve used a pair of smart glasses, you probably already know what it is. I am talking about the battery. The Guide01 apparently only gets 90 minutes on a single charge, which is extremely short. Don’t fear, though, the attachment comes with a wireless earbud-like charging case that lets you top up the accessory quickly… Obviously, this isn’t the solution if you’re looking for something with an all-day battery life, but if you want to use the HUD in small doses, it might do the trick. Perhaps? At least it reportedly charges in 10 minutes.

While the Guide01 is a crowd-funded device (meaning you should treat it with caution), there are a few prototypes floating around in the real world, like the one above at this XR conference in Japan, so it looks like the device is viable and functional, at least on paper. And in case you were wondering, yes, you can apparently relate it to your old Ray-Ban stories. The Guide01 is priced at 33,800 yen (about $218), but prices will increase as the crowdfunding progresses.





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