Even Realities G2 Review: Smarter Glasses

Larger, sharper display than the original G1. Super comfortable titanium and magnesium frame. Smart AI integration. Better battery. Wide prescription lens support. Optional R1 smart ring makes control simpler.

Software stability remains an issue. Smart ring is an extra $249. Navigation needs a little finessing. The display is tricky to read in bright light.

In the 19 months since Even Realities launched the G1, its first pair of smart glasses, the four-eyed tech landscape has evolved at a pace. Ray-Ban has sold more than 2 million Meta Glasses, Oakley has joined the fun, and CES 2026 was awash with options from companies including Lucyd, RayNeo, Xreal, and MemoMind.

The Even G1 originally stood out partly because the glasses featured a brilliant heads-up display, but mostly because they only looked “smart” in the sartorial sense. They weren’t perfect, with glitchy controls and more software updates than Windows 98, but the potential was huge.

Launched in November 2025, the new Even G2 smart glasses weigh just 1.26 ounces, boast a 75 percent larger display, and can also be controlled by the Even R1, the company's first-ever smart ring. I’ve been wearing one for a few months and have been astounded by the technology on show and impressed by the updates, but some of the first-gen woes remain.

What’s New?

The Even G2 glasses don't look especially different from the original G1, which is a good thing, because they are still arguably the sharpest-looking smart glasses available. There’s still a choice of G2 A—a classic oval shape—and G2 B, with a rectangular frame, in gray, brown, and a new muted green colorway.

They are around 0.28 ounces lighter than the original, thanks to the new combination of aerospace-grade magnesium alloy and titanium temples. It’s not a huge difference, but the profile is a touch slimmer too. As a result, they feel even more like a normal pair of glasses.

Like its predecessor, there are no cameras or audio playback, with the company preferring to keep its tech discreet. Notifications, navigation cues, translations, and AI-assisted prompts appear briefly in your field of view, then disappear. Paired with the new R1 smart control ring, the system is designed to keep interaction subtle.

The display system has been upgraded, with Even HAO 2.0 (Holistic Adaptive Optics), which pairs micro-LED projectors and gradient waveguide optics with precision-engineered lenses to produce a display that’s roughly 75 percent larger and significantly sharper than the original. Look carefully at the lenses and you’ll see a faint rectangle in each eye. This is where the projector displays crisp green digital text. Brightness can be adjusted to a searing 1,200 nits, making the display easier to read in variable light. There's also a second menu screen that floats in front of the main notifications page.

The G2 gains IP67 water and dust resistance, and prescription support has improved to cover −12.00 to +12.00 diopters. Given how thin the lenses are, this is an impressive feat of engineering. Battery life is also improved, up from 1.5 to two full days.

Controls are better now, too, and the touch panel on the temple tips is more responsive, with a quick touch or slide. But the headline upgrade is the $249 R1 smart ring. This zirconia ceramic and medical-grade stainless steel ring serves as both a thumb controller for the G2 interface and a wellness tracker, letting users scroll, tap, and interact without touching the glasses while also capturing metrics like heart rate, steps, and sleep. It has the potential to be a powerful tool, mixing a bright but discreet heads-up display with equally clandestine control from the ring.

Smart Eyes

Aimed squarely at the business professional, the Even G2 is designed to make work life easier. The Teleprompt feature is superb if you want to add polish to your public speaking, and it’s made all the better thanks to the bigger display. Add text via the app, and the microphone follows along as you talk, bolding the words in real time. You pause, and it pauses.

Even AI is the onboard virtual assistant—pulling information from a mix of Gemini, ChatGPT Perplexity, and Even LLM—that can help answer questions without reaching for your phone. Just say “Hey, Even!” and ask. As with the first generation, when this works well, it’s brilliant, and concise answers swiftly appear for me to read, and using the R1 ring, scrolling longer answers is intuitive too. Sadly, while the results are accurate, it can often take far too long to process and display them. It needs to be a fluid interaction, and it’s just not quite there yet.

The Navigate widget has been updated, and both the map view and speed of directions are much clearer than before. As a cyclist, I have used this feature more than any other and found it reliable, although the always-on map display is irritating, and pop-up alerts would make for a better experience.

Translation has also improved, with support for 33-plus languages, and translations appear faster and more fluent than before. It’s still hamstrung by being predominantly a one-way transaction, but you can now hand over your phone to the person you’re talking to, so both of you can see their speech translated and displayed. When Even Realities finally adds audio to future smart glasses—and it will—this will be a brilliant feature.

The biggest innovation comes in the form of Conversate, the company's AI-driven conversation assistant. Once activated, it listens to your conversation and processes speech in real time. It identifies key topics, terms, and questions as you talk, then displays contextual cues—such as explanations of concepts, definitions of technical words, basic biographies of people mentioned—on the heads-up display. It also generates a live transcript and a summary you can review later in the app. In practice, it works impressively well, and mentioning famous people, sports teams, and events in history did indeed bring up prompts and facts in real time. The transcription aspect is excellent too, with accurate summaries and suggestions.

I had hoped it would turn me into a sports stats guru down the pub, secretly being able to recall long-since-retired soccer players and obscure nuggets of information. It’s not quite there yet, and at times it would lag behind the chat and become a hindrance rather than a help, but it did suggest a cure for a friend’s particularly painful hangover.

Having information flash up on screen is handy, but I found reading and digesting this information, while maintaining a conversation, to be pretty difficult. I’d occasionally be caught staring off into the middle distance mid-chat. The display is easy to read in most instances, but changeable light, especially sunshine, and chaotic backgrounds don’t help. Walking also bounces the display—like an erratic autocue—so think twice before trying to impress on a walk-and-talk with the boss.

And then there are the ethical implications of Conversate. Unlike Meta’s smart glasses, there’s no visible indicator that a conversation is being recorded. Even Realities told me the audio isn’t saved, only the transcribed text, but it still feels like something you should ask permission for before switching it on. I can see the appeal of having AI quietly prompting you during a meeting or even a job interview if you’re brave, but that usefulness arguably depends on it being covert, which puts you on thin ice. At the same time, openly flagging that you’re using AI would rather defeat the point.

App Affair

The payoff for having such “normal-looking" glasses is that the Even G2 is wholly reliant on its app and a stable Bluetooth connection. Available for iOS and Android, the app, much like the heads-up display, is a stripped-back monochrome affair, with easily accessible modes.

Navigation and setup are intuitive, and it’s easy to adjust settings, choose how the HUD appears in front of your eyes, enable notifications, and decide what you want on the main dashboard. You can choose from news outlets (including WIRED), plus calendar and stock information. It’s sparse, but if you need instant access to the Nikkei Index, you’re sorted.

I like how minimal and easy to navigate the app is, but not the number of times I’ve had to reboot, upgrade, connect, and disconnect the glasses during testing. The pair I received was still in beta, so bugs are to be expected, but even after the official launch and rollout of the consumer-ready app, it remains a lottery as to whether the G2 glasses and R1 ring will work as smoothly as they should.

Software stability was the biggest issue I had with the original G1 glasses, and I’m annoyed it hasn’t been resolved here. I’m fine with firmware updates, especially with emerging tech like this, but not being able to rely on the glasses when I need them is hugely frustrating.

Bling Ring

Sporting a touch-sensitive surface along one side, the Even R1 ring (a $249 optional addition) lets you tap, swipe, and hold with your thumb to navigate the glasses' interface. It’s a genuinely useful accessory that makes day-to-day use of the G2 far easier than tapping the temple tips. Aesthetically, it looks good, though the Even logo wouldn’t have been my first choice. It does at least serve a purpose, indicating the correct orientation so the touchpad is within reach.

The ring makes a big difference to usability and interactivity. You can scroll subtly without touching the frames, making it easier to forget you’re wearing smart glasses at all. There is a learning curve, and if you absent-mindedly fidget with your fingers, as I do, you’ll open menus by accident. It does get easier and smoother with practice.

The R1 also tracks your sleep, steps, and heart rate, which is a neat touch. It’s not as accurate as my Garmin smartwatch or Whoop band, and the information is presented in a more rudimentary way, but there’s potential if you haven’t already invested in a wearable.

Battery life is a respectable four days for the ring, and the charging stand is nice. It is an expensive add-on, pushing the total (before prescription lenses) to $848, but having used the glasses both with and without the R1 Ring, I think it is money well spent.

Last Look

As a glasses-wearing tech journalist, I really love the idea of the Even Realities G2. Having AI help with tricky conversations, translate languages, answer questions, keep me up to date with my messages and emails, diary dates, and news headlines, without relying on my phone, is a brilliant idea.

The design and engineering that have gone into these smart glasses is seriously clever. Getting the lenses that thin, while increasing display size, improving the fit, and reducing the weight points to a time when this technology will be seamlessly integrated into our regular rims. The G2 feels like the future, and they can be genuinely useful day-to-day. The fact that they also feel like standard glasses just adds to the appeal. The company also plans to open the software to app developers for third-party apps, a smart move indeed.

At $599, they’re a premium choice. It’s more than I would personally spend on a pair of glasses, no matter how “smart” they are, but if you’ve already bought the Rimowa luggage, the Mont Blanc fountain pen, and the Tom Ford suit, this won’t be an issue.

So the screen has improved, the glasses are better in most ways from the first generation, and the use of AI has evolved nicely with Conversate. But the day-to-day enjoyment and experience of the Even R2 glasses and Even R1 ring is hampered by slow connections, signal dropouts, software glitches, and all too frequent updates. When it works, it works brilliantly, but a product like this, one aimed at the busiest of professionals, needs to be absolutely friction-free. The hardware is ready, the software just needs to catch up, and quickly, especially with the Meta Ray-Ban Display hot on their heels.