Last week’s CES 2026 in Las Vegas saw the world’s largest consumer technology expo mushroom across the city, taking up half a dozen major convention venues. That made it impossible to take in the entire show, so that visitors’ sense of the dominant themes of the show depended entirely on the amount of steps they were able to get in over four days.
Las Vegas Convention Centre (LVCC) North Hall? Robots everywhere. LVCC West Hall? Autonomous vehicles rule. Venetian expo centre? Smart kitchens are taking over the home.
But one category seemed to pop up everywhere: smart glasses. In particular, augmented reality (AR) eyewear. These “wearables” – as body-bound devices are known – are no longer a curiosity confined to pioneering brands like Meta and Google. They appeared on faces, in demonstrations that showed different approaches with distinct purposes and, crucially, in forms that suggested practical use rather than showing off.
In other words, the industry finally admitted that people don’t want a phone on their nose. Rather, they want a tool that helps them see, speak, or navigate.
The standout winner of the show was the Rokid Style, which earned a Best of CES 2026 award by taking a minimalist path. Weighing only 38.5 grams, barely more than a standard pair of sunglasses, it uses a “display-free” design, abandoning the traditional lens-overlay in favour of a voice-and-audio architecture.
It allows users to switch between multiple AI engines, including ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Claude, rather than being locked into a single provider. It even debuted a GlassPay feature, allowing users to scan a QR code with its 12MP Sony sensor and confirm a payment via voice.
The Style was not alone in its pragmatic focus. Leion Hey2, designed for real-time translation, was one of the most talked-about tools at the LVCC Central Hall, with its focus is breaking language barriers. It projects subtitles directly onto the lenses, supporting more than 100 languages with minimal latency – the lag between someone speaking and the translated text appearing in the user’s view.
Four spatial microphones use noise separation to isolate a speaker’s voice in a crowded room, turning a foreign-language conversation into a readable script.
For those with more critical needs, the lumen Glasses for the Blind demonstrated a profound leap in assistive capability. This Romanian startup, a CES 2026 Innovation Awards Honoree, has essentially miniaturised autonomous driving technology and placed it on the forehead. Using six cameras and two infrared lasers, the headset creates a 3D map of the environment 100 times per second.
Instead of constant audio chatter, it uses a patented haptic – or force feedback – interface to “pull” the wearer’s head gently toward a safe path, replicating the sensation of a guide dog’s tug. It is a “pedestrian autonomy” system that functions without an internet connection, providing independence where GPS fails.
Other notable exhibits highlighted the category’s newfound diversity. XGIMI, the projector giant, launched a sub-brand called MemoMind. Its Memo Air Display weighs only 28.9 grams, making it the lightest monocular display at the show. It is designed to be unobtrusive, providing brief “glanceable” information like navigation prompts or reminders.
Meanwhile, Solos introduced the AirGo V2, featuring a modular SmartHinge that allows users to swap the front frames for different styles or to replace the battery-housing temples on the fly. Its 16-megapixel stabilised camera acts as the “eyes” for its multimodal AI, which can identify objects or translate text from a simple voice query.
Even behind-the-scenes hardware showed progress. Vuzix partnered with Avegant to reveal a new binocular AR reference design. Using Avegant’s AG-30L3 light engine – a tiny 0.7cc full-colour projector – and Vuzix’s Incognito waveguides, the design eliminates light glow from the front of the glasses. This solves a major social hurdle: people around the wearer no longer see a glowing green rectangle on the lenses, making the glasses look entirely ordinary.
These examples show that smart glasses at CES 2026 moved beyond a single “everything-at-once” prototype. They now embody two distinct philosophies. On one side are the immersive entertainment systems, like the Asus ROG Xreal R1, which features a 240Hz refresh rate for gamers. On the other are the lightweight, task-oriented assistants like the Rokid Style, Leion Hey2, and .lumen.
This means the industry is finally moving away from trying to replace the phone and is instead building tools that solve specific, tangible problems.
* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx, editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za, and author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI – The African Edge.