Halliday has unveiled its second-generation smart glasses, the Gen 2, which feature a significantly improved display system compared to the original model. The company reached out to The Verge a few weeks ago to say its second attempt was much better, and after trying them, the reviewer agrees.
A Better Display System
The original Halliday glasses, first shown at CES 2025, had a tiny movable display window embedded into the frame that was difficult to see and caused eye strain after just 30 minutes. The Gen 2 replaces that design with more traditional but discreet waveguides. While not as invisible as the screens on Meta Display glasses, the waveguides are still noticeable if angled just right, but they are considerably easier to see.
Instead of a single-lens display, the Gen 2 has one display for each eye, providing a much larger viewing area. The displays are monochrome green with a maximum brightness of 1,600 nits and a resolution of 600 by 300 pixels per eye.
Design and Battery Life
The Gen 2 glasses have a nondescript design and are very lightweight compared to other display glasses the reviewer has tried. The display was easily visible inside a dark bar, though the reviewer did not get a chance to test it in direct sunlight. The four-microphone array was able to pick up commands despite ambient noise.
Halliday says the glasses get about 12 hours of typical use. This is partly because the Gen 2 does not include a camera. The exclusion of the camera was a deliberate choice, both for privacy and to extend battery life. The glasses are meant to be a tool for work meetings.
Meeting Flow and AI Features
With the Gen 2, Halliday is launching a feature called Meeting Flow. It uses AI to help users follow along in a conversation by surfacing context or facts without needing to look at a laptop or phone. The reviewer notes that similar features in other smart glasses have had varying degrees of success, mostly non-success.
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More interesting are the Thread Tracker, Decision Confirmation, and Commitment Check features. Thread Tracker provides real-time updates about the conversation flow of a meeting, showing topics discussed and transitions. Decision Confirmation shows what decisions have been made. Commitment Check verifies if action items have been assigned to specific people with clear deadlines. The glasses also provide post-meeting transcripts and summaries.
The reviewer saw a brief glimpse of what this could look like during a demo, though a product interview is less conducive to these features than a typical planning meeting.
General AI Features
The glasses also support more general-use AI features. These include captioning, real-time translations for over 45 languages, the ability to take phone calls, and teleprompter or notecard functionality for public speakers. Users can also use the Halliday AI assistant for voice control.
Pricing and Availability
The Halliday Gen 2 comes with a price tag of $599, which the reviewer notes is steep for the average person. That price does not include any extra costs for prescription lenses. Halliday claims it will be able to handle the reviewer's prescription, which is -10 in one eye and -8.75 in the other with significant astigmatism.
Final Thoughts
The reviewer says the Gen 2 is a much more tightly focused vision for a pair of smart glasses than the original. However, the reviewer notes that it remains to be seen if the AI features are all that useful. The reviewer has had little success with AI wearables successfully intuiting what information needs to be surfaced in a conversation or deriving the correct conclusions for to-do items.
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