Brilliant Labs launches its second-generation smart glasses

Brilliant Labs is the startup behind Frame, the open-source smart glasses designed for hackers and other creative types. Today, the company is launching Halo, a new pair of glasses that, predictably for the age we live in, are being sold on the back of their AI features. Halo is a wayfarer-style pair (compared to the Panto-styled Frame) and, if you’re a spectacles wearer, you’ll be able to get prescription lenses in more than 100 countries thank to a partnership with SmartBuyGlasses.

Brilliant is happy to brag that Halo includes a camera, microphone and bone-conduction speakers in its slender chassis. A natural pitfall of many smart glasses has been the compromises necessary to keep weight down while still offering enough functionality to be useful. Being able to keep the weight to a trim 40 grams is one hell of an achievement, especially given the glasses have a color OLED display and a battery that promises to run for 14 hours on a single charge.

Unfortunately, instead of a display that overlays onto the lens, Halo "works" by projecting into your peripheral vision. I’ll be honest, these displays are becoming more of an irritation the more I use them, especially compared to models that have prisms inside the lenses.