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A reporter canvassed Snap's launch crowd to see whether Specs bend wearers' ears
Gizmodo wore Snap's Specs at the launch event and looked at dozens of other wearers, finding chunky glasses that were noticeably heavy in a short session and mostly left ears alone.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- Snap announced Specs in June, and much of the reaction focused on how the arms appeared to bend the ears of chief executive Evan Spiegel.
- Gizmodo tried the glasses at Snap's launch event and described them as large and chunky next to ordinary glasses, while crediting them with Meta Quest-like mixed reality.
- The writer said the Specs did not really bend his ears down, but that he felt the weight during what he called limited hands-on time.
- He also canvassed the launch crowd, saw dozens of people wearing Specs, and reported not much bendage among them.
Compiled by The Product DeskSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint Because Specs run without a phone, the components have to ride on the face, so the size buyers are laughing at is set by what Snap decided to fit in the frame.
- decision Anyone budgeting an AR product bet has to decide how much a short demo session counts as comfort evidence, and this account offers one head plus a visual survey.
- exposure Fit varies by wearer, and the group that came off worst here was people with long hair pushed behind the arms.
- precedent Feuerstein's answer to the memes puts the burden on in-person trials, which makes demo distribution the thing Snap now has to get right for reception.
Fit is what decides whether anyone puts a wearable on a second time. Snap built Specs as a standalone face computer that does not rely on your phone, and Gizmodo calls miniaturization arguably the biggest challenge in that, shrinking the abilities of a VR headset into a glasses form factor [8][9]. Whatever a phone would otherwise carry has to sit in the frame. So they are chunky, which is the word Gizmodo files them under when the comparison is ordinary glasses [4].
On one head, in a short session, the arms did not fold the writer's ears down, and he still felt the weight [6]. He described the hands-on as limited [6].
The crowd canvass is the better evidence, because it samples ear geometry instead of one pair of ears. Gizmodo reports seeing dozens of people wearing Specs at the event and observing not much bendage [7]. The variation that turned up was hair: some people with long hair looked a little silly with the arms jutting out from behind it, and hair worn down can hide the arms and the ears entirely [10].
Snap knew the memes were coming. "Yeah, we saw the memes, too," Ben Feuerstein, Head of Specs Studio, told Gizmodo [11]. He also said: "We are trying to do something that is incredibly different. And specs look different because they are different" [12]. His case for judging them in person ends on the display: "That changes a lot" [13].
For a team pricing an AR bet, there are two tests here, and they measure different things. The try-on asks whether a first-time user will put the device on in front of other people, and Feuerstein is asking for that test [12][13]. The wear test asks how many minutes pass before that user takes the device off, and how many owners still reach for it in week six. A hands-on at a launch event answers the first. The second needs an afternoon from someone who paid.
The ear memes were an argument about the try-on, and on the evidence of one event they were mostly wrong: two dozen-plus faces, no folded ears [7]. The one observation in the piece that bears on the wear test is the weight a reporter noticed in a few minutes of holding a demo unit on his head [6].
What to watch
- A published weight for Specs, and any multi-hour review by someone who wore them through a working afternoon.
- Whether Snap puts demo units where ordinary buyers can try them, since Feuerstein's defence depends on people looking through the glasses.
- Reports from wearers who need prescription lenses or wear their own glasses, since this account covers only a launch-event try-on.