Hi there! My name is Janko Roettgers, and this is Lowpass. In this newsletter: A first look at Snap’s new Specs, the company’s first consumer AR device.

There’s been a flurry of AR, VR and mixed reality device announcements recently, with companies like Meta, Google and Snap all gearing up to ship the next generation of spatial computing devices to consumers.

Just yesterday, Google and Xreal announced that the Xreal Aura glasses, which are the first to bring Android XR to a glasses-like device, will start shipping by mid-November for $1099 and up. Meta’s VR glasses, which were first announced at Meta Connect in September, are slated to ship early next year for $1300. And Snap has plans to ship its Specs AR glasses before the end of the year for $2195.

These three devices use vastly different display technologies, but they’re arguably all built with similar ideas in mind: Instead of zeroing in on one relatively narrow use case (say enterprise AR, or VR gaming),  they’re trying to solve many different problems at the same time, with a big one being the future of entertainment.

Meta clearly prioritized movie viewing over gaming with its VR glasses. Google’s Android XR GM Shahram Izadi described XR Aura as “a multi-monitor workspace, a personal theater and a gaming setup that travels wherever you go” when he showcased the device during Wednesday’s Android Dev Summit. And when Snap CEO Evan Spiegel introduced his company’s Specs glasses earlier this year, he specifically called out watching movies as one example for what he called “the power of spatial computing.”

Snap representatives happened to be in San Francisco this week to show Specs to the press, so I decided to take the device for a spin and figure out how good of an entertainment solution it really is. What I saw not only helped me understand the capabilities and shortcomings of Specs, but also made me wonder how soon we’ll actually see a spatial computing device capable of replacing phones and TVs.

Snap’s Specs in a nutshell. Specs are Snap’s first consumer AR device, capable of projecting 3D objects into your field of view thanks to proprietary LCoS displays combined with custom optical waveguides (that’s technical speak for, oversimplified, bright and high-resolution displays with lenses that look very similar to those in a regular pair of glasses).

Specs are a standalone device, which means there’s no external compute puck like those used by Apple’s Vision Pro, Meta’s VR Glasses or Xreal’s Aura glasses. In theory, that design choice makes them look more like regular glasses as well. 

However, Specs still need a battery, and they’re also powered by two Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. All that hardware needs to go somewhere, leading to a device that’s relatively bulky, and weighing around 135 grams. That’s about twice as heavy as Meta’s RayBans AI glasses, and 3-4 times as much as a standard pair of glasses.

I spent roughly 45 minutes with a pair of Specs. During that time and immediately afterwards, the weight was notable, but I wouldn’t call it a deal breaker. Hand input was generally reliable, even though there was a bit of a learning curve. And the AR apps themselves, which Snap calls Lenses, were generally enjoyable.

During my demo, I played a game of Dominoes, used a drawing app that overlaid a stencil over a real piece of paper, and even had Snap’s AI assistant help me compile a flow chart on a virtual white board – all things Specs were perfectly capable of.

However, two major issues related to the device’s all-in-one design stood out to me:

Range anxiety is real. The built-in battery puts some significant limits on session lengths. Company representatives told me that Specs last up to four hours of mixed use, which includes everything from using immersive AR apps to simply listening to Bluetooth audio with the display turned off. The included charging case supports up to four additional charges, which in theory should get your through the day, and then some.

In reality, I expect Specs users to suffer from quite a bit of range anxiety. During my 45 minutes with a pair of Specs, I watched videos, played AR games, had a video call and tried a bunch of other apps. Call it heavy use, if you will.

When I put the glasses on, the battery indicator showed a 92 percent charge. By the moment I was done with them, that number had fallen below 10 percent. (It’s worth noting that the glasses were set to around 50 percent brightness when I started trying them on, which was adequate inside. Once I stepped onto a balcony to try them outside, I had a hard time making out any of the AR menus, and cranked up brightness to a near-max setting, further draining the battery.)