Lenovo is the latest company promoting a USB-C monitor made for your face. The company’s new Glasses T1 put a Full HD OLED screen in front of each of your eyes and were revealed today during IFA and on Lenovo’s virtual showcase.
This wearable private display, as Lenovo puts it, is very much like other consumer smart glasses, including TCL’s NxtWear Air, which puts two 1080p micro-OLED screens in front of your eyes, just like Lenovo’s T1. Another similar product is the Nreal Air, though that one has a 90Hz screen refresh rate compared to the T1’s 60Hz.
You aren’t getting any VR or AR experiences with these types of glasses, and you can’t safely walk around wearing them as your vision would be entirely obscured, and the cable keeps them tethered to whatever your source is. Instead, it’s designed for you to stay put as if you were watching an actual TV or monitor, but the effect makes it feel like a huge theater screen. You can watch movies, play games, and do your confidential digital paperwork, all while looking like Marvel’s Daredevil — without his hyper-awareness.
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Lenovo is betting that mobile gamers will want these glasses, too, citing a Global Industry Analysts report that predicts a $160 billion global market for that industry by 2026. Similarly, it’s expecting the eclipsing video streaming market to mean more people might want to watch shows inside their own T1 bubbles.
The Glasses T1 use a physical wire to connect to devices like PCs, tablets, smartphones, Macs, and other devices that can output video through USB-C. If you’d like to use the glasses with iOS devices like your iPhone, you’ll have to buy Lenovo’s HDMI adapter, as well as Apple’s Digital AV adapter — all because Apple still hasn’t moved on from its 10-year-old Lightning port. The T1 glasses also work with Motorola’s secondary “Ready For” interface that lets you use apps in a desktop style.
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Additionally, the glasses come with multiple nose pads that’ll be helpful for extended use and a prescription frame if you need it. The T1 glasses are battery-powered but can pull power from capable devices. They also have built-in speakers in case you want only the video to be ultra-private.
Like many other display glasses, the Lenovo Glasses T1 will be released for the Chinese market first. They’re called the Lenovo Yoga glasses in China and will come by the end of the year. The company also plans to release them in “select markets” later in 2023. No pricing has been released.
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