HTC Unveils Vive Eagle Smart Glasses With Voice-Activated AI To Rival Meta Ray-Bans
The competition in the smart eyewear market just got a little more interesting. HTC has decided to join the fray with the Vive Eagle AI glasses, a wearable with Meta’s popular Ray-Ban smart glasses square in its (eagle-eyed) sights.
Even though there's no prescriptive lens option just yet, the Vive Eagle is marketed as sunglasses that are available in Berry, Coffee, Grey, and Black colorways. HTC senior vice president Charles Huang emphasized that the glasses are "more than just a pair of glasses—it's a way to live life with greater freedom."
Within the 49-gram body, the Vive Eagle houses a decent array of tech, including the older Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 chipset (with 4GB of RAM and 32GB ROM), a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera, and open-ear speakers.
The brains behind the show lies in HTC's proprietary Vive AI assistant. This voice-activated feature is powered by platforms such as OpenAI’s GPT and Google Gemini, allowing users to perform tasks with voice commands. For example, users can say "Hey Vive, take a photo," when they need to capture a first-person perspective photo, or translate a foreign menu in real-time (and of course, hands free). The device supports live translation in 13 languages, a boon for international travelers.
It's hard not to see that the launch places HTC in direct competition with the Ray-Ban Meta, which itself can be considered a critical and commercial success. While both products share a similar form factor and camera-centric features, the Vive Eagle differentiates itself with its AI capabilities and boasting a privacy-first architecture. HTC has made a point of stating that all user data is stored locally and protected with military-grade AES-256 encryption.. A built-in LED indicator also lights up automatically when the camera is recording, and the function is disabled if the glasses are removed, offering a nice privacy safeguard for both the wearer and those around them.
Like the Ray-Ban Metas, the Vive Eagle doesn't have a display or HUD, but it's believed that the 2025 version of the former will come with a HUD.
For now, the Vive Eagle AI Glasses is part of a limited release in Taiwan. Priced at approximately $520 (NT$15,600), the glasses are available for preorder through August 31, with retail sales set to begin on September 1. Each purchase includes Zeiss sun lenses and a two-year subscription to the Vive AI Plus service.
