I Tried the Best Captioning Smart Glasses, and Only One Leads the Pack

Unlike other glasses I’ve tested, Even doesn’t sell a subscription plan; Everything is included right out of the box.

The only downside I could find to the G2 is that it’s largely devoid of offline functionality, so the glasses need to be connected to the internet to do much. Given the capabilities of the G2, this is a compromise I’m more than happy to make.

There are many caption-capable glasses on the market, but they are surprisingly similar in appearance and functionality. While many were quite capable, none had the combination of power and affordability that I got with Even’s G2. Here’s a look at everything I tested.

Leion’s Hey 2 is the price leader in this market, and even its prescription lenses ($90 to $299) are quite affordable. The equipment is however heavy: 50 grams without lenses, 60 grams with them. A full charge gets you six to eight hours of operation; case adds juice for up to 12 refills.

I like Leion’s interface, which offers subtitles, translations, “free talk” (two-way translation), and a teleprompter feature on its own app. You have access to nine languages; using Pro Minutes brings that number to 143. Leion sells its premium plan by the minute, not the month, so you have to remember to turn this off when you don’t need it. The price is $10 for 120 minutes, $50 for 1,200 minutes, and $200 for 6,000 minutes. No offline use is supported, and I often had trouble getting AI summaries to appear in English instead of Chinese (regardless of the saved language).

You’re not seeing double: XRAI and Leion use the same manufacturer for their hardware, and the glasses weigh the same. Battery specs are also similar, with up to eight hours on the frames and an additional 96 hours when charging with the case. XRAI claims its screen is significantly brighter than its competitors’, but I didn’t see much difference in daily use.

The features and user experience are pretty much the same, although Leion’s teleprompter feature isn’t implemented in the XRAI app and it doesn’t offer AI summaries of conversations. I also didn’t find XRAI’s app as user-friendly as Leion’s version, especially when trying to switch between the admittedly exhaustive 300 language options. Just 20 of them are included without paying for a Pro subscription, which is sold by the month and by the minute: $20/month gets you a maximum of 600 minutes of enhanced transcription and 300 minutes of translation; $40/month gets you 1,800 and 1,200 minutes, respectively. On the plus side, XRAI has a rudimentary offline mode that works better than most. For prescription lenses, add $140 to $170.

AirCaps does not manufacture its own prescription lenses. Instead, you have to buy a pair of $39 “lens holders” and take them to an optician if you want prescription inserts. I wasn’t able to test them with prescription lenses and ultimately had to try them over my regular glasses, which worked well enough for short-term testing. The frames weigh 53 grams without additional lenses; The company couldn’t tell me how much prescription lenses would add weight to this, but it’s safe to say that these are the bulkiest and heaviest captioning glasses on the market. Despite their weight, they only last two to four hours, with around ten charges packed into a comically large case. Another option is to attach one of AirCaps’ 13-gram refillable Power Pods ($79 for two) to one of the arms, which can provide an additional 12 to 18 hours of juice.

AirCaps’ feature list and interface make it perhaps the simplest of all these devices, with just one button to start and stop recording. Transcriptions and translations are available free of charge in nine languages. For $20/month, you can add the Pro plan, which offers better accuracy, access to 60+ languages, and the ability to generate AI summaries on demand (but only if the recordings are long enough). Bonus: five hours of Pro features are free every month. Offline mode also works great. The only bad news is that these bulky frames simply aren’t comfortable enough to wear long term.

The most expensive option on the market (up to $1,399 with prescription lenses!) weighs a relatively slim 40 grams (52 grams with lenses) and offers about four hours of battery life. There’s no charging case; the glasses must be charged directly using the included USB connected dongle.

The glasses are extremely simple, offering transcription and translation features, with support for around 80 languages, which is impressive. Unfortunately, I found the prescription lenses sent by Captify to be the blurriest of the lot, making the captions relatively difficult to read. And although the device supports offline transcription, performance suffers when disconnected from the Internet. I couldn’t get offline translations to work at all. For $15/month, you get better speaker accuracy and differentiation, plus access to AI summaries of conversations. Prescription lenses cost between $99 and $600.