Snap has unveiled SPECS, its new standalone augmented reality glasses, at Augmented World Expo 2026 — a device the company has spent more than a decade and over 7,000 patents building toward. Unlike AI glasses that offer limited functionality or bulky headsets that isolate the wearer from their surroundings, SPECS are designed to deliver genuine computing power without a tether, a puck, or the sense of disconnection that has defined wearable AR until now.
“We believe the best technology doesn’t pull us away from life,” the company said. “It helps us live it.” That philosophy shapes every design decision behind the product — built specifically to fade into the background rather than demand attention the way smartphone screens increasingly do.
What’s Inside SPECS
The glasses are made from high-performance Swiss TR90 polymer and come in two sizes — a 47mm model weighing 132 grams and a 52mm model weighing 136 grams. Removable prescription inserts support a wide range of vision needs. The display runs on proprietary liquid crystal on silicon technology, delivering a 51-degree field of view and 16 million colours, producing an experience the company compares to a 24-inch desktop monitor for work or a 115-inch home cinema screen for watching films.
A newly redesigned waveguide system uses nanostructures small enough that more than 10,000 fit on the tip of a single hair, producing a clearer view of the surrounding world. The electrochromic lenses — using the same technology found in Boeing 787 Dreamliner windows — shift from clear to tinted in 10 seconds.
Two Snapdragon processors power the device, one dedicated to computer vision and one to running Lenses, the AR experiences built by developers. Together they deliver 7-millisecond motion-to-photon latency, verified through robotic measurement systems, enabling fast hand tracking and responsive interactions. Battery life reaches up to four hours of mixed use — audio, video, Lenses, AI assistance, and notifications — with the included charging case providing four additional charges for up to 20 hours total.
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What You Can Actually Do With Them
SPECS are designed around in-the-moment usefulness rather than constant screen time. Walking directions can appear exactly where needed. Measurements can be taken without a tape measure. AI assistance can respond to a project in progress without requiring a separate search. The glasses can also function as a portable workspace — casting a screen, streaming content, opening a whiteboard, or supporting collaboration while the wearer remains aware of their physical surroundings.
Hundreds of Lenses have already been built by developers, ranging from golf-reading tools to interactive drum lesson overlays to physics education tools that visualise invisible forces. Snap has shipped 10 Snap OS updates with more than 40 new features and APIs over the past year and a half, and is now introducing agentic development tools for building Lenses directly through Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor, alongside a new Spatial Benchmark, Migration Agent, and Native Development Kit.
Privacy and Design Built Together
SPECS include an LED indicator that lights up during recording and prioritise on-device processing, giving users control over what gets stored, synced, shared, or deleted. The company says transparency about data access was treated as a foundational design requirement rather than an added feature.
Snap is also launching a global campaign photographed by Steven Meisel featuring Jimmy Butler, Imogen Heap, Hoyeon, Jack Harlow, and Kaia Gerber, each of whom has worked with the company to develop new SPECS experiences debuting this fall.
SPECS are available for pre-order now at $2,195 with a refundable $200 deposit, and are expected to ship this fall in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France.
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