CEO Evan Spiegel takes the main stage at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach on June 16 at 9:30am Pacific for a keynote titled "Making Computing More Human," and the company is widely expected to give the first real look at Spectacles, its consumer AR glasses, with the session livestreamed for anyone who wants to watch.

What Spectacles actually are

Spectacles (now just called "Specs") are a full computer in a pair of glasses, not the camera-and-audio smart glasses you have seen before. They have a see-through display built into the lenses, run their own operating system called Snap OS, and do all their processing on the glasses themselves, while Meta's Ray-Bans have no real display and lean on your phone to think.

At last year's expo Spiegel summed up the pitch in one line: "no bulky headset, no puck, no tether, no phone required." That word, standalone, is what separates Spectacles from nearly everything else on the market, where most rivals still depend on a cable, a separate compute puck, or a phone in your pocket.

First to market

If Snap ships Spectacles this fall, it would be the first major tech company to launch true standalone AR glasses for consumers, since Meta is not expected to ship its first real AR glasses until 2027 and Apple's are not expected until 2028 at the earliest.

The closest competitor is XREAL's Project Aura, also due before the end of 2026, but Aura is tethered, running Google's Android XR through a separate compute puck. Google's own Android XR eyewear, made with Samsung and Warby Parker, starts this fall with audio-only frames, and a version with a display is not planned until 2027. None of them is a fully self-contained pair of AR glasses you can put on and walk out the door.

The catch

Reporting from journalist Alex Heath puts Spectacles at around $2,500, more than three times the $799 Meta charges for its Ray-Ban Display glasses and squarely in early-adopter territory, though Snap has not confirmed a price and the figure comes from a report rather than the company.

Spiegel has been open that he is not chasing a low price, saying the goal is a device that is "10 times better than the next best experience," which for him means the smartphone, not cheaper glasses.

A make-or-break bet

Snap has spent $3 billion developing this hardware. Spiegel has called the year ahead a make-or-break "crucible moment" for the company, and after a decade of promises, Spectacles are the bet that has to pay off.

For the first time, regular people may soon walk around with a digital world layered over the real one, and we will get our first real look in two weeks.

Watch the Snap keynote at Augmented World Expo on Tuesday, June 16 at 9:30am Pacific, livestreamed at experience.snap.com/awe-2026.