- [Narrator] What if your smartphone was something
you could wear on your face?
No, not like that.
More like this.
These are called Focals by North.
They're the first pair of smartglasses I've ever reviewed
and they're an awkward first step into an amazing future.
(upbeat music)
For reasons I'll explain in a second,
each pair of focals is custom built for the customer.
That means if you wanna buy a pair,
you have to physically visit a store in New York,
Toronto or one of the company's pop-up locations.
So, back in April, I went with Android Central's
Russell Holly to order our review units
at the Brooklyn store, which turns from a sort of
industrial minimalist Warby Parker
on the first floor into something more like
the Starship Enterprise sick bay on the upper deck.
I'm led into a booth where 11 cameras create a 3D model
of my face, giving North the data it needs
to build my very own custom-fitted set of focals.
Over in the next room, I'm sized up for the ring
I'll use to control the glasses
and I'm given a chance to customize the color
of both the glasses and their accompanying clip-on shades.
(swiping)
It's late June by the time our orders are ready
and we head back to the Brooklyn store for the final
calibration and setup.
This turns out to take a lot longer than it was supposed to
because of various bluetooth and battery issues.
But eventually, my phone finally starts talking
to my glasses and the result of that very 2019 sentence,
I get a heads up display that appears to float
right in front of my eyes.
It is, indeed, like a smart watch in your eyeball.
And just like a smart watch, the display doesn't turn on
unless you need it.
Os most of the time, you don't see anything at all.
You might as well just be wearing a pair of
good-old fashioned dumb glasses.
But, when a notification hits your phone,
the focals spring to life with a gentle tone
from the speaker over the right ear
followed by the message appearing to just
materialize maybe two feet in front of you.
If you don't need to act on the message,
it fades after a few seconds.
If you want to respond, you can use the control ring
to select a quick reply or since the focals
also have a microphone, you can dictate a reply instead.
Oh and if you're already down in the comments saying,
"Well, how will we ever know if someone
"wearing smart glasses is actually paying attention
"to us in a conversation?"
Don't worry about that.
It is painfully obvious when someone is reading
one of these messages.
Just that ability to get messages
right in my eye line had me hooked on these
after like a day.
Whether I was walking with my hands full of bags
and tripods or doing yard work,
focals are even more convenient than a smart watch
'cause you don't need to do anything.
Your message just appears in front of you.
And look, it's not just messages.
The first day I wore these in public,
there was music playing on an overhead speaker
and I was surprised to find the name of the song
and the artist just appearing out of nowhere
right in front of me.
There's a good morning feature that takes you through
a run down of the weather, news,
and calendar appointments when you first
put these things on in the morning.
There's a clever location widget too
if you wanna bookmark a coffee shop or a restaurant
for later on.
And if you wanna navigate to a new place,
just click the ring button.
You can ask Amazon Alexa to take you there
with turn by turn directions.
There's a ton of features I didn't get to try
like making a shopping list
and having that list automatically appear
when the glasses detect that you're walking
into your local store and all of it is rendered
in this friendly, accessible, playfully animated fashion
that just feels so comfortable.
Seriously, the interface is a joy to use.
If this were a commercial, that's where I'd stop.
But as amazing as the focals are,
you never really forget that they're a
first generation product.
First off, the ads and the in-store demos
give you the impression that the interface
just dominates the whole right-side lens, but in reality,
the display is about the apparent size of a postage stamp.
And at 300 by 300 pixels, it's even fuzzier than
most of the smart watches I've reviewed this year.
My biggest frustration is how easily the display disappears
when the glasses aren't perfectly aligned on your face.
This is because of the LBS technology North is using
to create the heads up display.
The projector on the inside right arm shines
a set of lasers onto the right lens
to which has this tiny little holographic window
that reflects the laser light into your eye
so you can see the projection.
The good news is this is apparently perfectly safe,
safer than it sounds.
But the bad news is that the eye box,
the area where your gaze has to be focused
to see the projection, is very small.
This is why each pair of focals needs to be custom made
for each customer and even though these were built
just for me, I often have to readjust them
to see the display because they're heavy enough
that they gradually creek down my nose
pretty much all day long.
Overall, the hardware design is great.
It's surprising how few people even noticed
I was wearing any kind of special glasses.
But even here, there are trade-offs.
The wide, thick arms eliminate your peripheral vision.
Also, they can only fold up in a technical sense.
You can't hang them from your collar
and they only last about a day per charge.
The carrying case helps with that
since it's got a built in batter but it's just huge.
And then there's the ring.
As a concept, I love that you don't need to
reach up to touch the focals to control them,
like you did with Google Glass.
But it needs a capacitive touch sensor,
not a physical button because not only is it ugly,
it triggers every time you pick something up
or shake someone's hand.
Oh and its metal cursor is just lethal
to the finish on glass smartphones
and just look at these things.
The software shortcomings worry me less
because North is just pumping out updates
like nobody's business.
In the time since I got my review device,
it's gotten support for Spotify, EverNote,
Google Keep, Trivia Game, Language Flash Cards,
but some of those like Spotify suffer from long lag time
and probably my favorite feature,
the turn by turn walking directions is just not good.
North is using Mapbox for those directions
and even when I asked it to direct me to a restaurant
I knew to be right down the street,
it wanted to take me on a one-block detour
for no apparent reason.
Alexa's voice interface tends to hang a lot.
The dictation tends to cut you off
before you're actually done talking.
Ya know, there are still plenty of bugs.
So given all that, are they worth it?
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Depending on style and prescription,
Focals by North will run you between six and 900 dollars.
And while in one sense, I actually think that's
a pretty fair price, in their current form,
I just can't recommend them to most folks.
They need to be lighter with a larger display,
bigger eye box before I'd call them suitable
for the mainstream.
But at the same time, I think these are better
than they have any right to be.
They're at the leading edge of a brand new
category of technology and in terms of software
and making a product you won't be embarrassed to wear,
one that won't make people around you uncomfortable,
North really nailed it.
That gives me hope that the second and third generations
of focals might be the ones to propel smart glasses
mainstream success.
The only question is whether North can do it
before a larger company does.
Folks, if you're into wearable tech,
I've got reviews from Google's Project Jacquard
digital jean jacket all the way to most modern
smart watches.
Please subscribe to The Mr Mobile on YouTube
and sound off in the comments with your favorite piece
of wearable tech.
This video was made possible by a review sample
provided by North, but I don't take money for reviews
and the company did not receive copy approval rights either.
They're seeing this at the same time you are.
Until next time, thanks for watching
and stay mobile, my friends.