Smart Glasses, Buggy Voice Assistant

Smart glasses are an exciting idea right now. In theory, they’re a new gadget that does lots of the stuff that our phones do, but in an always-there form factor. They can take pictures, make calls, translate menus, and—if the tech and the investment get there—they might slap a screen right onto eyeballs for notifications, navigation, and maybe even augmented reality à la Pokémon Go.

I say “in theory” because just because smart glasses can do all of those things on paper doesn’t mean they can do them well, and if they can’t do them well… they may as well not do them at all. We’re still in the early stages of the grand ascension of smart glasses as a device category, but a brave few are venturing to do it all right now, and one of those few (at least in the U.S.) is a company based in China called Rokid (pronounced rock-id).

See Rokid Glasses at Amazon

I got a chance to try Rokid’s plainly named Rokid Glasses, and while there was a lot that intrigued me, I can say for certain that the kinks are still being worked out. One thing that these smart glasses have that big-time entrants from the likes of Meta and its Ray-Bans don’t have is a screen. That screen is a very simple dual-micro LED display that only shows things in a very Matrix-style green. I got to use the Rokid Glasses for 15 minutes and was surprised at how sharp the screen was, even if the display functions were fairly basic. And look, you can see the screen from outside the glasses. And that’s good because sharpness is crucial for some of the things that make the Rokid Glasses unique.

One of those distinct capabilities is a teleprompter feature that displays a presentation in front of your eyes, so you can read along and not sound like a total moron during your big keynote. A thing that I found very cool is the fact that the Rokid Glasses actually use the onboard microphone to listen to your words and scroll the prompter in stride with the words. Even in a crowded room with lots of noise, the feature worked smoothly, which is no small feat.

Another screen-centric feature I got to try was translation, which—though my conversation was fairly brief—seemed to work better than you’d expect. My demo companion spoke to me in Mandarin Chinese, and the Rokid Glasses were able to translate his speech in small snippets and slap them onto the screen. Again, the microphone did all of this in a noisy room, which was legitimately impressive. The microphones on Rokid’s smart glasses work so well that I’m pretty sure you could use them for spying—it picked up bits of conversations across the room that I wasn’t even able to make out with my own ears. Cool! Also scary!

To use all of this stuff, it’s best to couple the Rokid Glasses with an app (Android-only right now) where everything you’re doing is displayed. As sharp as the screen is, it’s also quite small, and words are pushed off when new information arrives at a fairly quick pace. If you need to see something, it’s best to have the app ready, lest you ask someone to repeat themselves multiple times. And in case you’re wondering, you can control the display from the smart glasses by swiping the right arm and using a tap to select things like settings, translation, and other stuff, but it’s not exactly the smoothest experience. That’s why voice assistants—for Rokid and any company making smart glasses right now—are also critical. That brings me to a not-so-bright spot.

The Rokid Glasses voice assistant, which is supposed to activate with the wake phrase “Hi, Rokid,” was basically broken. No matter how many times I screamed “Hi, Rokid” into the smart glasses, it wouldn’t answer my calls. Others around me were also having the same issue, which is not great from a UI perspective. The interesting thing is that when a native Mandarin-speaking represenative said  the phrase, it seemed to work every time. American English-speaking people, not so much. I thought maybe it was the loud, crowded room at first, but after noticing that strange quirk, I think it may be a problem with how the voice assistant is trained. I can’t say for sure without testing the Rokid Glasses more thoroughly, but it’s definitely a concern for anyone buying a pair in the U.S.

Like Meta’s Ray-Bans, the Rokid Glasses can also use AI for computer vision-based tasks like asking your glasses to read a menu in a different language using the built-in camera. I wasn’t able to launch that task myself, given the aforementioned voice assistant issues, but when a Rokid representative asked the smart glasses to translate a menu in Finnish, it did so (at least I think) fairly well, displaying the translated Finnish words in the Rokid app. Again, I’d need to test this feature out more thoroughly in a better environment to verify the translation separately and determine how well (or terribly) it actually works on a consistent basis.

As long as we’re talking about computer vision, I was pleasantly surprised with the camera, which is a 12-megapixel sensor from Sony. Just one sensor, not two, though. I would say it’s on par with Meta’s Ray-Bans, but I didn’t get to test video recording out in my demo. I wouldn’t try and use the Rokid Glasses to win any photo contests, but then again, I wouldn’t do that with any pair of smart glasses.

I won’t know until I get to try Rokid Glasses for a longer period, but I get the sense that they’re smart glasses with some peaks and valleys. Translation could be impressive, as could computer vision, and they’re incredibly light (as light as Ray-Bans), but if there isn’t a functional, English-ready voice assistant to tie it all together, that’d be a big problem for anyone in the U.S. who wants to buy a pair. That’s potentially not the best news for smart glasses enthusiasts in America, but I assume Mark Zuckerberg would welcome that quirk with open arms.

See Rokid Glasses at Amazon