A model wearing Gentle Monster Intelligent Eyewear, made with Google and Samsung, in a Samsung press image. Image: Samsung
Google’s answer to Meta’s Ray-Bans is finally on sale. Pre-orders opened on Thursday for Gemini-powered glasses built with Samsung, Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, Google announced. Prices start at $395, they ship on December 10, and Google is leading on privacy: the glasses are designed to blank out bystanders’ faces before Gemini sees them.
What you get for $395
There are 30 versions across two collections. Warby Parker has three styles, Alden, Reid and Wren, in optical or sun versions and in Pine, Saddle and Jet Black, from $395. Gentle Monster has six bolder designs in colours including dark red, pink, grey and yellow, from $449 to $489 depending on the model, Samsung said. Prescription lenses are available for most frames.
Samsung built the hardware, which it first showed at Galaxy Unpacked in July. Each pair weighs about 41 grams and has a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera, two open-ear speakers, four microphones, a Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 chip, 2GB of memory and 64GB of storage. Battery life is up to nine hours, and the charging case tops the glasses up about seven times, for up to 72 hours in all. Some of the processing is handed off to your phone.
Neither company lists a display in the lenses. Gemini’s answers, Google Maps directions and translations all come through the speakers.
What Gemini does on your face
Say “Hey Gemini” or tap the frame and it can tell you the story behind a mural you are walking past, check an event poster against your Calendar or add what you are looking at to a shopping list. Google Translate handles live speech translation in more than 70 languages, and a feature called Guided Vision gives spoken descriptions for people who are blind or have low vision. Through a tie-up with Aira, wearers can also stream the camera to a trained human interpreter.
The glasses play music from YouTube Music, Spotify or Apple Music, read out messages and take calls. According to Samsung’s spec sheet, they work with Pixel 7 and later on Android 17, recent Galaxy S, Fold and Flip phones on One UI 9, and iPhone 13 and later with at least 6GB of memory on iOS 26.6 or later. Samsung’s Bixby assistant is on board too.
They join a growing field of AI glasses, from Meta’s Ray-Ban range to Alibaba’s Qwen glasses that let you pay with an iris scan.
How Google says it protects bystanders
Google made privacy the centrepiece of the launch, with a separate blog post on it. Shahram Izadi, who runs Google’s XR work, put it like this:
When technology can see the world around you, it has a responsibility to the people around you, too.
Shahram Izadi, VP and GM of XR, Google
Google says camera images sent to Gemini are not saved in your Gemini History and are not used to train AI models or target ads. An outward-facing LED lights up when you take a photo or video, and sensors are designed to stop recording if the light is covered or tampered with. Directional microphones keep Gemini focused on the wearer’s voice, data is encrypted on the glasses and in transit, and every pair has a physical off switch.
The rules go beyond the hardware. Owners must agree not to record people without permission or in sensitive places, and Google says breaking that can get their glasses disabled. Google Play bans apps that use the camera for real-time facial identification or social live-streaming, and the glasses can only be set up with Google accounts for people aged 18 and over. These are Google’s own claims; they have not been tested independently.
Where you can buy them
Only two countries get them at launch. Both collections go on sale in the US from December 10, online and in shops, and the Gentle Monster range also launches in South Korea. Pre-orders are open now through Warby Parker, Gentle Monster and the Google Store. Neither company has given dates or prices for the UK, Canada, Europe, Australia or anywhere else. Warby Parker is offering guided demos at more than 360 of its shops, and select Samsung stores will have demos from December 10.
Why it matters
This is Google’s first serious challenge to Meta, whose camera-equipped Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 glasses cost $449, and it comes in cheaper, with brands people already wear. The privacy pitch lands as governments look harder at camera glasses: Norway wants to ban AI glasses from parks, schools and gyms. Whether face blanking and tamper-proof lights win over the people being filmed is the real test.
Sources: Google, Google (privacy), Samsung Newsroom, Samsung US
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