Even Realities Even G2 Review: Anti-Meta Smart Glasses With Real Potential

What exactly do smart glasses need to be smart? If you’re Meta, the answer to that question revolves around two things: cameras and audio. Sure, the Meta Ray-Ban Display have a screen in them, but there are only a couple of major things that all of Meta’s smart glasses have in common, and that’s the ability to take pictures/videos and play audio.

Those features can be useful, but they also come with their own drawbacks. Not only are smart glasses with cameras and speakers less private by virtue of the fact that you’re walking around with a gadget that records discreetly from your face, but they also weigh a lot more and look less like regular glasses. Adding hardware adds heft. It’s simple math.

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But just because that’s what Meta thinks a pair of smart glasses needs doesn’t mean that’s where everyone’s head is at. There are some smart glasses purveyors asking what happens when you subtract from that equation, and the results, as I’ve found with Even Realities Even G2, can be interesting, encouraging, and sometimes a little frustrating.

Smart glasses with a ring to them

Even Realities is perhaps the main companying making what I call “anti-Meta smart glasses†right now, and it recently released the Even G2, its second pair of smart glasses without cameras or speakers. Like the Even G1 predecessor, these smart glasses center around a screen, which in this case is a dual-lens display that outputs only in monochrome green. Unlike the Even G1, the Even G2’s display gets an assist from new hardware—the Even R1, an optional smart ring sold separately for navigating the UI that also doubles as a health tracker.

The combination of screen and smart glasses can be a promising one. While I was worried about inputs on the Even R1 feeling laggy, I actually found sliding my thumb around the ceramic smart ring to work most of the time. To activate the Even G2 displays, all you need to do is double-tap with your thumb. To scroll between menu options, you slide your thumb up or down. To select, you give the Even R1 a single tap. You can also hold your thumb down on the smart ring to bring up a quick dashboard to check notifications or activate features like the teleprompter or translate.

While inputs work fairly well, they’re far from perfect. Sometimes I find myself having to double-tap multiple times to get the results I want, and other times I scroll past my intended destination in a menu. It’s not enough to make me want to toss the Even R1 out completely and give up like other smart rings I hesitate to even mention, but there’s some refinement to be done here if Even Realities wants the smart ring to be the best way of navigating a pair of smart glasses.

The Even R1 controls may not be as nuanced as the gestures in the Meta Ray-Ban Display, a  “Neural Band†wristband that reads the electrical signals in your arm, but it’s a heck of a lot less invasive, and it certainly doesn’t leave a giant red mark on your wrist afterwards. It’s also, unfortunately, $250 in addition to the $600 price tag of the Even G2 smart glasses, so there’s that. Thankfully, the smart ring is, again, optional and not required to use the Even G2. As an input system, it’s safe to call the Even R1 solid, but there’s room for future improvement.

Real talk

A smart ring is only part of the equation; it’s also about what you can actually do with said ring that matters. In the Even G2’s case, there are quite a few features that can be nice to have when they actually work. While you obviously won’t be taking pictures or videos, listening to music, or taking calls, the Even G2 is set up for things like notifications.

The Even G2, through the companion app, can show you text messages from your phone, emails, messages from apps like Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Telegram, and native calendar notifications. Most of these worked for me after enabling them in the app and then force-resetting the Even G2 (not exactly a smooth process), but I wasn’t able to get text messages to show up in iOS 26 on my iPhone 17. I should also mention that Instagram messages, which I got to work on the Even G2, decided to randomly stop working, and would only return after resetting the smart glasses completely. These are the types of quirks I found in lots of corners of the Even G2.

That being said, if you do manage to get notifications working, depending on what your style is, you can choose to have the smart glasses show them automatically or have them delivered discreetly so you can go in manually and check the notifications section in the Even G2 UI. You cannot, however, respond to messages; these smart glasses are for notifications only, which is a major disadvantage compared to the Meta Ray-Ban Display that do let you reply with dictation.

Another cool thing the Even G2 (when coupled with the Even R1) can do is give you information about your health. I wouldn’t call the metrics real-time by any means, though they are updated… intermittently. Maybe a little too intermittently for my taste, especially if you’re trying to do something important like tracking your heart rate or your calories burned while running. The lack of up-to-date or even real-time health stats makes this feature a little less useful or interesting than it could be. It’s hard to say what the cadence of updating is, or what triggers an update to the health app in the Even G2, but it could take a while.

Sometimes the health metrics also like to disappear from the health widget entirely, which is not great. When that happens, I have to unpair and repair the glasses to get them back. Sometimes I have to reset the smart glasses entirely. Sometimes none of those things work, and I’m just screwed, and I have to wait around for things to start working again. Needless to say, none of that is ideal.

Like the Oura ring, the Even R1 tracks steps, calories burned, sleep, skin temperature, heart rate, heart beat intervals, and blood oxygen. While I probably won’t find most of that useful (that’s just me, maybe you will), I did like the sleep tracking, which logs time awake, REM, core sleep, and deep sleep as separate categories. It also provides a sleep score, which one night, for me, was a 77 out of 100. The score, according to Even Realities, is calculated based on things like duration, efficiency, and the balance of the sleep stages throughout the night. Needless to say, it wasn’t the greatest night’s sleep I’ve had. If you’re just looking for a health wearable, you shouldn’t buy the Even R1 (Oura or a Samsung Galaxy Ring still does more, especially with scores and guidance), but it’s nice to have those features (when they work) on top of having a controller for your smart glasses.

Other features include navigation, which can be used by selecting the “navigate†option in the Even G2’s UI or by using the onboard voice assistant. I tried navigating to the Brooklyn Museum from my apartment, and it seemed to work just fine. By saying, “Hey Even, navigate to the Brooklyn Museum,†a small map surfaces in the bottom right with turn-by-turn navigation in the bottom left. At the top-right, you’ll get the distance and the time it takes to get to your destination. If you want a larger view, you can tap once on the Even R1 or on either of the two touchpads located on each of the temple tips, and then tap to go back.

I like the Even G2’s navigation both because it could be useful for biking or if you just don’t feel like pulling your phone out, but also because it looks like a lo-fi analog map from The Matrix or from the movie Alien. I know this probably wasn’t the intention here, but I appreciate the aesthetic either way.

Like many other smart glasses, there’s also a translation feature, which has both upsides and downsides. I had my partner speak Spanish to me, which was translated into English, and I liked that the translated text seemed to do a better job of conveying the Spanish phrases in a way an English speaker would understand than other smart glasses I’ve used. It also translated fairly quickly, which is important if you’re using this feature in the real world. One thing I didn’t like, however, is that they struggled to pick certain phrases up. I can’t tell if the microphones are maybe not as powerful as on other smart glasses or if the software is just a little slow, but the Even G2 are a little harder of hearing than on Meta’s Ray-Ban Display in my experience.

There’s also a feature called “Conversate,†which listens in on conversations and transcribes them in front of your eyes. Unlike other smart glasses transcription features, the Even G2 attempts to add context. When taking a work meeting, I had the Even G2’s Conversate feature activated, and the results were a little silly at times. While it did an okay job of hearing most of what was said, it also misheard things and added irrelevant context. For instance, it misheard my name and called me James Pierre, and also misunderstood when someone said the name of a website, instead providing a definition for the literal word, instead of background on the site itself. It was nice, however, to be able to go back into the Even app to review what we spoke about; here you’ll get an AI summary and a transcript.

In an ideal world where AI is a lot smarter than it is right now, Conversate could potentially be useful, but as it stands, features like Conversate are hit-or-miss, no matter how well-intentioned they are.

Lastly, there are separate widgets in the Even G2 for news and for stocks, if that’s your jam. Scrolling through them isn’t ideal from a UI perspective since you have to actually tap through one article to get to the next, but it is sharp enough to be legible. To scroll, you can use the Even R1 or the glasses’ touch controls on the tips of the Even G2. Stocks seemed to work okay, though I don’t have any money, so I don’t think that’ll be a feature that I use much. If you do have money, you can add your preferred stocks via the Even app, and they’ll show up in a separate widget inside the Even G2 UI.

Altogether, the features inside the Even G2 are actually thoughtful, though due to some bugginess with the app and the hardware, they’re not quite as useful as they could be at this point. I want to hope that they can get better with time, but for now, this is the level of polish I’m able to comment on.

And speaking of polish, I should also note here that I had quite a few issues trying to get the Even G2 set up, where neither it nor the R1 would stay connected to my iPhone via Bluetooth. As I understand from some digging on Reddit, finicky Bluetooth connections are a common complaint among owners of the Even G1, and there’s a chance that those issues may have carried over into the second generation. While I was eventually able to get the smart glasses stable enough for testing by resetting them and updating the firmware in both devices, you should be aware of those pitfalls before you buy, and brace yourself for them not improving over time.

The hardware is for real

One thing I really like about the Even G2 and the Even R1 is the hardware. Even Realities’ whole shtick is that its smart glasses are glasses first, and on that front, the Even G2 succeed. Because of the lack of cameras and speakers, they’re lightweight at just 36.5g as opposed to the Meta Ray-Ban Display, which are 69g. The use of titanium for the frames also helps keep the Even G2 light.

They feel great on my face, and they fit my head well, too, which is a major plus. I wore the Even G2 and the Even R1 for almost the entirety of a workday, which in my case is like 10 hours, and I wasn’t ready to rip them off my face, nor did they leave huge marks on my head and nose. If I were to wear one pair of smart glasses all the time, this might be it. The look might not be for everyone, but I like the slightly rounded frames and the metal arms.

On the tips of each arm, there are also touch controls for navigating the smart glasses and waking them up. One tap is select, two taps wake them up or goes back in the UI, and swiping to the front or to the back wheels the Even G2’s menus up or down, respectively.

I also appreciate the screen, which Even Realities is calling the 3D floating display, a dual-lens system that uses micro LED. Even Realities says that the Even G2 is 50% sharper than the first generation of glasses, thanks to its redesigned optical system, and I believe that figure. Overall, I find the Even G2 to have a much sharper display than the Meta Ray-Ban Display, which makes reading notifications or even full-on articles easy on the eyes.

The display isn’t the brightest in the world—it’s 1,200 nits as opposed to the Meta Ray-Ban Display, which can go up to 5,000 nits—but it’s not slouching either. It’s also adjustable in the Even app so you can choose whether you want the display to appear mid, near, or far, and even position where the screen shows up in a vertical alignment (top or bottom). Having used AR glasses that don’t have adjustable screens in the past, this could be the difference between being able to see the display or not for some people.

Sure, you’re not getting any color through the Even G2 waveguides, but for what the smart glasses are going for, I think the display is done well.

While the screen is generally non-invasive, it’ll depend on what exactly you’re doing with the Even G2. For instance, things like notifications will appear in smaller boxes that disappear in 10 seconds by default, while the main menu can take up about 25% of the lenses depending on what your settings are in the display section of the app (again, there are settings for near, mid, and far as well as height options). To get a sense, when a new article is fully open, you’ll get a headline, a subhead, and most or all of the first paragraph.

All of the menus inside the Even G2 are quite simple, usually consisting of text inside a box (the news widget, for example) or maybe graphs and numbers (the stock widget and health widget). They’re meant for at-a-glance information and nothing more. As long as you’re okay with glanceable chunks of data, like the time, temperature, date, or number-based health metrics and email subjects/snippets, the Even G2 will most likely satisfy you with its display legibility and simplified UI.

Battery life on the Even G2 glasses and the Even R1 ring is fairly solid. Even Realities advertises about two days of use, and after using the glasses and ring intermittently throughout the day for a period of about 10 hours, both were around 80%. To charge the Even G2, there’s an included charging case, while the Even R1 ring uses an included magnetic charger, which is a small pedestal connected to a USB-C cable. You can check the Even G2 and Even R1 battery life in the app to see if you need more juice.

If you wear prescription lenses, you’re in luck here; the Even G2 supports people who need to actually wear glasses.

The display is easily my favorite part of the Even G2, and while it doesn’t support full color, I can’t say I’m super bummed about that, given what the glasses are designed to do at this juncture in time. For notifications and navigation, all you need is a sharp, bright, Matrix-esque screen.

Back to reality

Despite how frustrating the Even G2 and the Even R1 were to set up and how annoying they are when they stop working correctly, I weirdly see the potential of a pair of smart glasses that could be something functional. Could be, that is. Right now, the Even G2 and the Even R1 feel like a work in progress, like a lot of other smart glasses, and while the ideas are interesting, they’re just not as practical as they ought to be for the price they’re being sold.

Maybe Even Realities can get the Even G2 and the Even R1 up to snuff with software updates and fixes to the Bluetooth bugs I experienced, but who knows what the future holds. Some Even G1 users were legitimately upset about the launch of the Even G2 since they had faith that Even Realities would refine its first-gen smart glasses before plowing ahead to a new pair. Obviously, that didn’t happen, and because of that, there’s no reason to think Even Realities won’t do the same thing with the Even G2.

With that context and my firsthand experience, it’s hard to consider the Even G2 and the Even R1 as anything more than fairly nice hardware with some potential. If you’re willing to spend (checks notes) $600 on the smart glasses or $850 to also get the smart ring, then who am I to stop you? But if that potential doesn’t ultimately amount to much, you can’t say you haven’t been warned.