The smart glasses era is here — I got a first look

The more stylish and comfortable smart glasses are, the fewer features they tend to have.

Nuance Audio smart glasses discreetly function as over-the-counter hearing aids.

Xreal and Vuzix smart glasses fall into one of three different buckets in how they balanced wearability and functionality.

The Xreal Air 2 Ultra are a chunky glasses with miniature screens hovering beneath the lenses.

A lot of the more forward-looking smart glasses have interesting features, but they’re not optimized for, you know, actual usability.

In this vision of the smart glasses revolution, these devices are more like all-day companions that help you use your phone less.

But even among companies pursuing simpler smart glasses, function isn’t always the reason why they choose more discreet or stylish designs.

Xreal founder and CEO Chi Xu says that everything will converge at some point — though we’ll be waiting a good while before it does.

Right now, it’s a matter of every option being developed at once as companies try to figure out the best way to draw people in.