Smart glasses might be a relatively new category (at least commercially speaking), but they’re already starting to look a little repetitive. By “repetitive,” I mean many of them feel eerily familiar to the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, and Samsung’s unreleased “Galaxy Glasses” may be included in that trend.
While Samsung hasn’t given us much in the way of official info on its upcoming smart glasses, leaks suggest a few similarities with the Ray-Ban AI glasses, including a similar battery size. According to a report from SamMobile, one variant of Samsung’s smart glasses will have a 245mAh battery, almost the exact same size as the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 AI glasses, which come with a 248mAh battery. That should (theoretically) give the upcoming smart glasses about the same battery life as Meta’s, the latest model of which can get around eight hours of general use on a single charge.
The similarities don’t stop there. Samsung recently revealed to CNBC at MWC 2026 that its smart glasses will also have a camera at “eye level” and will connect to your phone. Neither of those things is surprising in any way, to be clear, but they’re important in that they align almost one-to-one with Meta’s offerings. If those redundancies aren’t enough, the report also claims Samsung’s smart glasses will likely include computer vision in some way. Or as CNBC put it, the device can “process information received by the camera” through a camera that is reportedly 12 megapixels, the same as the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses.
Meta seems to be the smart glasses reference point… for now. © Raymond Wong / GizmodoAnd what about controlling the smart glasses? Well, that sounds like more of the same, too—leaks suggest you’ll use a touch-sensitive bar on the glasses’ arm to swipe around and tap. I think you get the point. No word on any Neural Band-like wearable, though. The fact of the matter is that Meta set the template for smart glasses, and companies seem to be following that almost to a T, though that doesn’t mean Samsung won’t improve on the category, even if it’s strikingly similar.
Stronger privacy?
If there’s one reason to buy a pair of smart glasses not made by Meta, it’s privacy. A recent investigation revealed that Meta has been sending videos taken with its AI glasses to human subcontractors based in Kenya for the purpose of training its AI. Those videos, as it turns out, included all sorts of stuff that most people would rather keep private, including videos of them using the bathroom, having sex, or bank/credit card information. Some of those videos were most likely recorded accidentally.
Not a great look, and if you’re not so much into having your private moments reviewed by strangers, it would be easy enough to choose hardware from a company that just doesn’t use your data for training purposes. In this case, that could mean Samsung, though we’ll have to wait and see if its so-called Galaxy Glasses make a greater effort to safeguard privacy.
On top of privacy, there’s also the fact that Samsung is a massive purveyor of phones, meaning its smart glasses will be tightly knit with Galaxy devices. That could make its specs appealing to anyone in the Samsung mobile ecosystem and is a clear advantage over Meta’s hardware, which still requires everything to be routed through the Meta AI app—an app that it recently stuffed a bunch of AI slop into.
Samsung’s Galaxy devices also come with Knox security. While no security platform is hacker-proof, Samsung’s commitment to security and privacy as opposed to Meta’s looseness with it (see: Meta is removing end-to-end encryption from Instagram DMs on May 8) at least gives it a slight edge for consumers concerned about their POV footage being mishandled.
Ultimately, the smart glasses being the same might not matter, because Meta has been hard at work undercutting what is otherwise decent hardware—decent if you’re okay with the inherent privacy concerns that come along with it. What I mean to say is that, if Meta keeps its pace, any pair of AI glasses not made by the company (redundant or not) may find an audience.
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