The latest Halliday glasses have highly decorative displays

I sneaked in first Halliday’s original smart glasses at CES 2025. I wasn’t a fan. The glasses had a small, movable window set into the frame that was very clear, and my 30-minute exposure left me with bleary eyes. It was an interesting concept with a terrible execution, especially compared to several other smart glasses on display. So I was skeptical when a few weeks ago, Halliday went so far as to say that his second attempt at smart glasses was. more good.

After testing the Halliday Gen 2, I am happy to say that these are better glasses. Gone is that mysterious pop-up window, replaced by a more traditional but subtle one. They are not like the screens next to the Meta Display. You can see the show as good, but it’s easy to see. And inside the single lens display, Gen 2 has each eye, giving you a bigger screen to see. Wisely, the Gen 2 displays are green, very bright 1,600 nits and 600 by 300 pixel resolution per eye.

On my face, the Gen 2 has a non-marking design but is very light compared to other lenses I’ve tried. The display was also easily visible inside a dark bar, although I didn’t get a chance to see how it does in sunlight. The four-mic array was able to pick up commands even in ambient noise, and Halliday told me it lasted about 12 hours of use. This is because these are not camera lenses. Excluding the camera was a deliberate choice, both for privacy and to increase battery life. That’s because these are mostly designed to be functional tools.

With Gen 2, Halliday is introducing a feature called Meeting Flow. It’s designed to help you stay on top of the conversation, using AI to tell stories or facts without looking at your laptop or phone. I have seen this in other smart glasses to a great extent. (More don’t-success.) Most interesting are the so-called Thread Tracker, Decision Confirmation, and Commitment Search features. The idea is to provide real-time updates on what decisions have been made in the meeting, what things need to be followed up, and show how the entire meeting is progressing. For example, Thread Tracker can show that a team meeting started discussing budget allocations, before moving on to new hires and part-time appointments. A Confirmation of Decision may indicate that the meeting stated that all new work must be completed by a specific date. Finally, Quick Commitment determines whether items have been delivered (and to whom) and by the due date. The gallery will also provide post-meeting materials and summaries.

I saw a glimpse of what this would look like in my presentation, although a product interview would be less relevant to this than a planning meeting. That said, the glasses also support many of the most commonly used AI features such as subtitles, real-time translation in over 45 languages, the ability to make phone calls, and teleprompters/cards for public speakers. Users can also use the Halliday AI assistant for voice control.

Overall, these are more stable vision smart glasses than the original Halliday glasses. That said, we need to see if the AI ​​feature is useful. So far, I’ve had little success with AI wearables fine-tuning what I need in conversations, or finding the right sentences for work. And at $599, the Gen 2 comes with an attractive price tag for the average person. This does not include additional costs for prescription glasses. (Halliday says it will mine medicine, which is -10 in one eye and -8.75 in the other is a monster astigmatism. We see!)

The Halliday Gen 2 is available for pre-order starting today with a $10 deposit and $100 off the final price. The glasses are expected to ship in September.