These AI glasses hit $1M in pre-orders in 72 hours and have features missing from Meta Ray-Bans

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ZDNET’s key takeaways

• Rokid Glasses are a competitor to Meta Ray-Bans but offer several more advanced features.
• The company launched a pre-order marketing campaign via Kickstarted and raised over $1 million in pre-orders in the first 3 days.
• The AI glasses are likely to appeal to tech early adopters who value features over multiple style selections.

The popular Meta Ray-Bans smart glasses are about to get a lot more competition, including from big tech companies like Samsung and Google. However, Rokid Glasses to try to nail down $20,000 in pre-orders for its smart glasses by October 10. Less than 72 hours later, Rokid Glasses had already cleared over $1 million in pre-orders.

I’m not sure anyone in the tech industry is all that surprised. 

The Rokid Glasses combine the three best features of Meta Ray-Bans — convenient photography, ear buds-like audio, and a quick-access AI assistant — with a head-up display like the ones you’ll find in AR glasses such as the Even Realities G1 and Brilliant Labs Halo. 

Beyond just the heads-up display, the Rokid Glasses also offer several other upgrades over the Meta Ray-Bans:

• Support for 89 languages (compared to 4)
• Shoot photos in horizontal or vertical mode (rather than just vertical)
• 210 mAh battery (compared to 154 mAh)
• Native ChatGPT support (compared to the Meta’s Llama AI model)
• Audio Memo for notes and reminders (no equivalent feature)
• Magnetized pop-in lenses (compared to traditional lenses)

With all of that tech inside, the Rokid Glasses weigh 49g — the same as Meta Ray-Bans — and have a very similar physical footprint to the flagship Wayfarer style of Meta Ray-Bans in black.

Also: 5 Meta Ray-Ban upgrades I want to see on September 17

The Rokid Glasses will retail for $599, compared to $299 to $379 for Meta Ray-Bans, $299 for Brilliant Labs Halo, $599 for Even Realities G1, and $399-$499 for the more recent Meta Oakley smart glasses. But for the Kickstarter, Rokid is offering the first 2,000 backers a 20% discount at $479. Rokid says it will ship the final product in November 2025. 

To be clear, this is more of a pre-order marketing campaign than a Kickstarter campaign. Rokid is a Chinese company with a presence in Silicon Valley and has been building smart speakers and smart glasses since 2014. More recently, the company has been focused on more bulky and full-featured AR glasses such as the Rokid Max 2 event at its Silicon Valley headquarters on September 17. The company is expected to launch its “Hypernova” glasses that will reportedly Meta is preparing to sell 150,000 – 200,000 units of these Hypernova glasses over the next two years. 

Also: Report: Samsung’s tri-fold phone, XR headset, and AI smart glasses to be revealed on Sep 29

However, Meta is also reportedly that the company was preparing to scale up to sell 10 million units annually by the end of 2006. 

So the Rokid Glasses would sit right in between the two Meta products — more capable than the audio-only glasses but not quite as advanced as Hypernova. They also don’t have the brand power of Ray-Bans, Meta’s partnerships for wide retail distribution in the US, or the variety of different styles that the Meta Ray-Bans do. Nevertheless, among tech early adopters who want the most advanced features, Rokid Glasses are likely to be very competitive.