Lenovo’s Smart Glasses Are Among the Lightest You Can Buy, but There’s a Catch

Meta may have a big head start in the smart glasses field right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s got the form factor figured out. While its Ray-Bans have leaned into AI and computer vision through an onboard camera, other entrants in the field don’t seem convinced that smart glasses need a camera at all. Case in point? Lenovo.

The maker of the ThinkPad just released its first pair of smart glasses, the V1, which come with a micro LED screen and are almost impossibly light. Lenovo says its smart glasses weigh just 38g, which makes them 10 to 14g lighter than the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 1 and Gen 2 AI glasses and about 30g lighter than the Meta Ray-Ban Display. Though 10g (in the case of Meta’s non-display glasses) may not seem like a big difference, it’s worth remembering that these are worn on your face, so every gram counts. Plus, the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses don’t have a screen.

As I alluded to before, there is a small caveat to that impressive weight, though. Lenovo’s V1 glasses, notably, do not come equipped with a camera, which could be a dealbreaker for some. Anyone looking to use smart glasses to capture video hands-free while biking or playing sports wouldn’t get much use out of the V1. Likewise, anyone interested in the computer vision part of smart glasses (i.e., capabilities powered by Meta AI, which can translate text and answer questions about objects you’re looking at) would be disappointed here.

That being said, a lack of a camera may not be a dealbreaker for everyone. Other companies in the smart glasses space, like Even Realities, have also sacrificed cameras for improvements in weight and to better cater to those concerned about the privacy implications of discreetly recording your surroundings. In the end, smart glasses might be more about the screen than all the other stuff, and on that front, Lenovo is off to a fairly decent start. The V1 claims 2,000 nits of brightness, which wouldn’t make it the brightest display in the world, but it isn’t slouching either (the Meta Ray-Ban Display has a max brightness of 5,000 nits). The display is a monochrome micro LED, like those in many other smart glasses on the market, and can be used in monocular or binocular modes (one or both eyes).

And no cameras doesn’t mean no AI, either. Lenovo is integrating its own voice assistant, which enables real-time translation, voice commands, and voice queries. Like Rokid glasses, these also include a teleprompter mode that lets you use the glasses’ display for presentations.

If anything, Lenovo’s V1 is just further proof that makers of smart glasses are still testing the waters regarding what features and hardware consumers find critical, and whether they value weight and form over certain functions. If you’re dying to find out for yourself, Lenovo’s V1 glasses are available for preorder now for about $560 with an official release date of Nov. 9, though the launch is clearly geared toward the Chinese market for now.