Wearables startup Halliday launched a unique pair of smart glasses at CES 2025. Unlike other augmented reality glasses that display smartphone notifications, live language translations, and advice from AI assistants on the glasses’ lenses, this device projects a 3.5-inch round display directly to your eye.

The DigiWindow technology allows Halliday to avoid pricey AR lenses, making their smart glasses less expensive than other AR prototypes and compatible with regular prescription lenses.

The glasses offer real-time language translation for 40 languages and display phone notifications, notes, navigation directions, and more. The arms on the glasses are embedded with speakers, allowing users to play music or read messages aloud.

The company has also stated that the glasses will feature a “proactive AI assistant,” though this reportedly wasn’t ready to demo at CES 2025. Users will also be able to wear a control ring on their index fingers to navigate through the glasses’ different features.

Unlike other smart glasses options, the Halliday doesn’t offer a camera on the front, which allows them to look more like a standard pair of glasses.

A senior reporter from TechCrunch, Maxwell Zeff, was able to demo the glasses at CES 2025 and reported on his experience using the glasses to translate his conversation back and forth between English and Chinese with the company’s CEO, Carter Hou.

“I tried on a pair of Halliday smart glasses in a quiet corner of the Ceaser’s Palace Casino in Las Vegas, while the company’s founder, Carter Hou, spoke to me in Chinese. As Hou spoke, English subtitles appeared over his right shoulder with only a second of delay. We went back and forth for a few minutes, him speaking in Chinese and me speaking in English, as the smart glasses facilitated our bilingual conversation.” Zeff stated.

Halliday plans to begin shipping pairs of these glasses in March 2025. The full price is $489, but you can preorder them for $369 by pledging $9.90 to their Kickstarter.