- A lot of tech companies are working on AR glasses
right now, and in the early days, it kind of feels like
everyone's trying to justify why AR glasses
should be a thing.
For some companies, that may mean making sports goggles,
and for others, it may mean making AR glasses
for entertainment purposes.
For Toshiba, it means basically putting a PC
on your face.
These are Toshiba's new Dynaedge AR Smart Glasses.
They start shipping today, and they start at $1,900.
Toshiba is aiming these at enterprise customers.
Think people who work out on the field and might need
remote assistance, but their hands are tied up,
so it might not be easy to just use their phone.
So this is the display arm of the AR headset.
There's a display that I'm looking at right now
in my right eye.
There's also a camera built in, and there's a microphone
for voice control.
But really, the majority of everything that's happening
is happening on this.
This is the Toshiba Dynaedge Mini-Mobile PC.
It's running on an Intel Core M5 Processor.
It's running Windows 10.
It has 16 gigabytes of RAM, 512 gigabytes
of internal storage.
It's basically an entire computer packed
into this little thing, and this is running
all the applications that I'm seeing in my eyes.
So this is not the computer here.
Some AR headsets that we've seen have been
full-fledged face computers.
This is really a display set.
The glasses also have a swipe panel on the side,
and you can eventually use your voice to control them,
but that wasn't working yet when I tried them.
I should also mention that even though they're called
AR Smart Glasses, this isn't really AR like the kind
you've seen lately.
It's just a flat display resting in front of your eye.
Toshiba says that's because the kind of apps
they envision people using with these,
whether it's referencing a document or a PDF
or making a quick Skype call, doesn't really need
volumetric AR.
So in this case, I'm actually going to make a phone call
to somebody who is, in this case, across the room,
but imagine it's a remote worker.
I'm going to go into an application.
It's called Call the Operator.
This is custom Toshiba software built
on top of Skype, so basically it's using
Skype over wi-fi.
And I'm going to select that application
using the computer.
I'm going to go down.
Right now I'm scrolling through a list of names.
I'm going to find Philip, and I'm giving him a call.
- [Philip] Hi, Lauren.
- [Lauren] Hey, Philip, how's it going?
- [Philip] It's going okay.
- So listen, I'm having some trouble out in the field here,
and I wanted to get a second opinion on this thing
that I'm working on.
What are you seeing right now?
- [Philip] Yeah, I can see the camera,
and I can see the guys behind it.
- Okay, hi Felicia, hey Tyler.
They're not both guys, but that's okay.
(laughter)
What's a use case for this beyond just troubleshooting
a Verge video remotely?
- [Philip] A use case is you can show me
what you're seeing and I can help you
and try to fix it as quickly as possible.
- So when I first put these on, they weren't
super comfortable to me, and that may be
because the display was on my right eye
and I'm left-eye dominant, but even after
I switched to the left eye, it still didn't
feel great to me.
Other people at The Verge tried it on.
They were a little more comfortable for them.
One of the good things is that you can adjust
the arm that the display is on, so you can
sort of just twist it or position it in a way
that makes sense for you.
You can also easily slide the arm into non glass
form factors, like a safety helmet.
So you would just be wearing the helmet,
the arm would slide in front of you,
and then you'd have the display.
And also, that kind of stable fitting thing
made the display feel a little bit more comfortable.
But there is just a learning curve when you first
put them on.
You're not supposed to look directly at the display
the whole time you're wearing them.
You're supposed to focus on what you're doing
in the real world, and then when you need it,
glance up to the display so you can refer to it.
In this way, it's not too dissimilar from some
very early iterations of AR glasses that we have seen,
like Google Glass, and it's different from Hollow Lens,
because Hollow Lens really just kind of covers
your whole face, and even though it's AR
or mixed reality, makes you feel enveloped in the world
around you, this doesn't really have that effect.
So to call these AR glasses feels like a little bit
of a misnomer, and the pair I saw wasn't totally
production ready, but like I said, these are still new,
and Toshiba plans to run tests with its early customers
to improve the glasses.
And who knows?
Maybe in the meantime, more people will actually
grow to love computers on their faces.
I'm seeing ... I'm not seeing you.
How's that happening?
- [Philip] You're not supposed to see me.
I'm only supposed to see what you're seeing,
so you can concentrate on your job.
- Okay, so let's do that over again. (laughs)