Solos AirGo A5 Review: These AI Smart Glasses Need a Brain Transplant

Smart glasses are a bit like the Wild West right now. Sure, there are no bullets flying, and there’s hopefully a lot less typhoid, but that same prospecting, bootstrapping spirit still applies. Even with the outsized presence of Meta and its ballooning lineup of smart glasses, and the looming entry of Samsung, Google, and Apple, smart spectacle startups are still trying their luck.

More options in the smart glasses field are a win for variety, and they’re theoretically a boon for the category at large—competition should make prices competitive, drive innovation, and keep purveyors of face-worn wearables honest. But as we all know, the Wild West wasn’t all sunshine and free enterprise; there were some casualties along the way. There were booms and then there were busts, and unfortunately, the Solos AirGo A5 that start at $250 wanes towards the latter.

---

---

An air ball

The Solos AirGo A5 are a light pair of smart glasses that, like the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, do not come with a screen. In fact, unlike the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 AI glasses, they don’t even come with a camera. That exclusion might seem like a strange choice, but it does have its advantages; for one, it brings the weight down significantly.

The other benefit to not having a camera is that you don’t have to convince anyone that you’re not recording them. Privacy is still a major issue with smart glasses, and while we haven’t seen tons of fallout yet, we could likely see more as the category grows. That means, for now, smart glasses like these ones made by Solos or the Even Realities Even G2 (which have a screen but no cameras) are the privacy-conscious choice for anyone looking to take the smart glasses plunge.

So, if there are no cameras and no screen, what do the Solos AirGo A5 do, you’re probably wondering? Well, there’s a big focus on audio. The AirGo A5 lean into audio capabilities, which means listening to music and calling. Also, regretfully, talking with and hearing from a ChatGPT-powered voice assistant. First, though, let’s talk about audio quality.

As I’ve written many times, I actually really enjoy the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, not for the AI part, but for the music playback and call quality. Even if you don’t care about having a camera on your glasses or using computer vision, I think most people will appreciate the quality of the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses audio, especially if open-ear audio is a priority when you’re biking or just need to hear some of your surroundings. Meta has set the bar pretty high in this regard, so I didn’t have a lot of expectations from the Solos AirGo A5, and I was right not to.

While the sound quality might be serviceable if you don’t have a point of comparison with Meta’s AI glasses, I do have a comparison, and this is a marked step down from the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 1 and Gen 2 as well as the Oakley Meta HSTN and Oakley Meta Vanguard AI glasses. Music is tinny; there’s essentially no low end; and the volume barely keeps up with louder environments like riding the subway. These are definitely not the smart glasses I would spring for if I were on the go, but they perform fine indoors, despite being underwhelming on the whole. The audio bleeds quite a lot, too, despite Solos claiming that it’s more directional in the AirGo A5 than the previous AirGo A3 smart glasses.

Calling is equally as underwhelming, especially given the existence of Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses. While Meta’s offering does an impressive job of cancelling ambient noise (I’ve had people report that it sounds like I’m at home despite taking a call in the middle of midtown Manhattan), the Solos AirGo A5 sound muffled and far away. One person I called reported that the call sounded like there was wind or static, despite the fact that I was calling from my own apartment with my phone connected to Wi-Fi and everything.

And for some reason, if I’m listening to music in the smart glasses and open the Solos AirGo app, it’ll inexplicably stop playing the music I was listening to. Frustrating to say the least.

Based on those tests, I’m willing to say that, despite audio being a focus of the Solos AirGo A5, it’s not quite hitting the mark for me.

Not airtight

Overall, I would describe the Solos AirGo A5 as a work in progress. There’s actually a lot of functionality on paper, but not all of those features really work as they’re supposed to. For instance, the smart glasses’ voice assistant, summoned by “Hey Solos,†can be very hit and miss. Some exchanges work (like adding things to my calendar), but others are just downright infuriating, like when I was asking if I had to have the app open to use the voice assistant (spoiler alert: you do), and the voice assistant continually cut me off before I could ask my question.

When the voice assistant hears you, it works okay for pausing and playing music, but nowhere near the hit rate of Meta AI, which is frankly not a good benchmark since Meta’s voice assistant can also be inconsistent.

On top of regular voice commands, Solos envisions you using its voice assistant as a back-and-forth kind of AI that you can bounce ideas off of, or engage more conversationally. I tried asking for recipe ideas and tactics to get the cheapest airfare around Thanksgiving, and it worked fine; no better than your most basic free model of ChatGPT would. I personally can’t see myself going back and forth out loud with a pair of smart glasses, but if that’s what you’re into, then by all means have at it.

I’ve also just alluded to another annoying fact of the AirGo A5 smart glasses, which is that the companion Solos AirGo app has to be open in iOS (or Android) and running in the background for you to do anything. If you’re like me and like to close all of your background apps on a regular basis, this is less than ideal, especially when you go to use the AirGo A5 hands-free, only to realize that the app is closed, and you have to whip your phone out anyway.

There are notification features for your calendar and messaging; however, I wasn’t able to get the smart glasses to read incoming messages from my phone despite following all of the steps. The Solos app was open and running in the background, the AirGo A5 were powered on and connected to my phone, and all of the requisite iOS permissions were allowed. Maybe your experience will vary, but I had no luck.

Solos says, in a reviewer’s guide sent to me, that the smart glasses can initiate calls and text messages, but when I asked the smart glasses to do so, I was told by the voice assistant that “I can’t make calls on your glasses.†Welp!

There are some health features, which is a nice touch, if not altogether super useful, considering your phone probably tracks most of this stuff better. Metrics include steps and calories burned, but you’ll have to be wearing your glasses all the time to really get a good read from those. For instance, my phone tells me that, I’ve walked about 1,800 steps, while the AirGo A5 tells me I’ve walked 600, which is just a product of me having my phone on me all the time and the smart glasses only sometimes.

There’s also an exercise feature, which I don’t hate. If you go into the Solos app, you can launch different kinds of workouts—core training, cycling, stretching, and more—and then have your smart glasses time the workout in your ear, telling you what to do and for how long. My personal favorite quirky feature is a posture correction which calibrates you posture and then tells you how much of a snail you’re being. The posture tool seems to work if you pull open the app, but I tried to ask how my posture was doing by saying, “Hey Solos: how’s my posture?†and I was told that the AirGo A5 can’t assess my posture. Hmm.

Like any pair of smart glasses, the AirGo A5 also have a translation feature. This feature works okay; I had my partner speak Spanish to me while the smart glasses translated (activated via the Solos app), and then they did their best to keep up. She was speaking fairly slowly, and while it got the broad strokes, the translation has the same issue most translation apps do, which is that it gets the words right but doesn’t really interpret the words in a way an English speaker would. This makes understanding the translation a little slow and stilted, but in a pinch (if you’re traveling and need to order something to eat or ask directions), I guess it might work fine.

Those are the broad strokes of what you’ll get from the Solos AirGo app. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, and the capabilities that would at least be competitive with the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses are hindered by poor UX.

Light as air but maybe a little vapid

In keeping with the “Air†theme, the AirGo A5 I used are definitely light, though it depends on which style you buy. There are four different models to choose from, ranging from 36g to 45g, the latter end of which is just under the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, which weigh about 49g.

The lightness is great—no complaints there—since it makes wearing the glasses all day feel comfortable. Unfortunately, though, the smart glasses also feel a little cheap at times, which shouldn’t be the case for smart glasses that start at $250 and can go up to $350. The model I tried had shiny, budget-feeling plastic on the outside, and folding them open feels quite stilted—far from the smoothest hinges I’ve ever felt.

I do actually appreciate the look, though. My smart glasses review unit, which came in a special edition olive color, fit my head well. The temple tips (the back end of the glasses) are flexible, so it makes them comfortable around my temples. To the untrained eye, they look just like normal glasses, and they do come with prescription lenses if you want to use them that way, in addition to shaded options.

Where things start to become very un-glasses-like is when you inspect the AirGo A5 closer. Look here at the photo above and you can see a wire running across the inside of the frames. It doesn’t scream “normal glasses,†nor does it scream “premium.†If you’re dropping $250 on a pair of smart glasses, I’m assuming this isn’t the type of fit and finish you were yearning for.

On top of feeling cheap, the touch controls on the arm also aren’t the most refined I’ve used. The “hit box†if you will, where the smart glasses actually register taps and swipes, isn’t very big, nor is it very sensitive, so you may have to press multiple times to get an input right. As a point of comparison, the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses have a touch-sensitive arm that feels very responsive. Rarely do I have to tap more than once.

The included case with the Solos AirGo A5 fine, but it’s not a battery case. To charge the AirGo A5 you’ll need to use an included magnetic charger that latches to the smart glasses’ arm, which, much to my chagrin, uses USB-A. Speaking of battery, Solos says you’ll get 10 hours of music playback and 7 hours of calling with the smart glasses, and that estimate seems mostly accurate. After a period of two days with intermittent use, including a brief call, music playback, and voice queries, the AirGo A5 were at just under 50%.

An airing of grievances

I might have complaints about the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, but there’s a reason why I’ve used them at length for so long. For all their faults (mostly Meta AI), they do a lot of things well, they look nice, and they’re genuinely superb for things like calling and listening to music on the go. They’re not perfect, but they’re refined in a way that makes them feel helpful and even fun sometimes.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Solos’ AirGo A5 nail that level of functionality, which in some ways is a major bummer. I want there to be more competition to Meta, because more competition means (hopefully) a better, more fruitful field of smart glasses, but competition the AirGo A5 are not. For now, you’re better off placing your money with the big guns, which means Meta’s Ray-Ban AI glasses are still the only pair you need.