Live ai atlas Tech Wearables Mobile AWE 2026 Live: Smart Glasses Are Bringing AI to Our Faces Augmented World Expo this week will give us the best look yet at the state of the art in high-tech eyewear. Scott Stein See full bio Scott Stein June 16, 2026 11:59 a.m. PT I may have too many devices. Scott Stein/CNET AI is wildly disrupting the world at large, and tech more specifically, and one manifestation of that is the advent of new devices like smart glasses . I’ve been covering the emergence of wearables, virtual reality and augmented reality for over 15 years, but the current moment is more in flux than any I’ve witnessed. This week, I’m in Long Beach, California, for AWE 2026 , the biggest AR/VR-focused conference of the year. I’ll be seeing and reporting on what’s new and how AI is taking up residence in what a lot of companies hope will be everyday eyewear for all of us. Meta already has tons of smart glasses, Google is releasing a wave of its own later this year, and Snap , a maker of smart glasses for years before Meta, has a pair of augmented reality Spectacles planned for 2026 as well. Apple’s new infusion of Siri AI into all its devices, announced last week at WWDC — where I got an in-depth look at how Siri works — hints at smart glasses that could arrive next year. It’s a lot to keep track of. VR’s still got things going on, too. Apple is evolving its Vision Pro software , Bytedance-owned Pico has a high-end mixed-reality headset on its way, and Valve’s standalone Steam Frame should arrive this summer. Google and Xreal are pushing into new territory with the VR-like, glasses-sized Project Aura , also expected this year. All this in the middle of inflation and soaring electronics prices . Smart glasses also raise a host of privacy concerns , both for the people wearing them and for everyone else in the glasses’ camera view . At AWE, I’ll be asking questions and exploring what’s happening while Google, Meta and Apple keep advancing in the space, and peeking around the corner at chips, displays and sensors (and experiences) that could show us where wearables are heading next. Editors’ note: Scott Stein’s travel costs for the AWE conference were covered by Snap. The judgments and opinions of CNET are our own . Live 1 hour ago Qualcomm’s got a new XR chip By Scott Stein These are the Xreal Aura glasses and the associated puck that has the Snapdragon Reality Elite chip inside. Scott Stein/CNET It turns out that the wild pair of mixed reality glasses I’ve tried several times, called Project Aura , has been using a brand-new processor all along that’s more powerful than the one in the larger Samsung Galaxy XR headset I tested last year. Those glasses also have a new name. The Xreal Aura is coming this fall, still at an unknown price, but we now know what’s in the processor puck they tether to to conjure VR-like apps and experiences. It’s Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Reality Elite chipset, the first new Qualcomm high-performance VR/AR silicon in years. Qualcomm promises it’ll deliver better graphics and AI performance, and even better battery life, than existing larger VR headsets. The Aura is likely just the first of many new devices to come using it. I’ll be trying out the Aura again here at AWE, and I’ll give more thoughts later on what I learn. In the meantime, you can get more details here on the Xreal Aura and Snapdragon Reality Elite. Live 2 hours ago Snap’s new AR Specs arrive this fall for $2,195 By Scott Stein That’s Evan Spiegel, sporting the new Snap Specs. Scott Stein/CNET This year is turning into a wild one for smart glasses, and Snap’s entering the fray with a chunky, expensive pair that, unlike Meta’s and Google’s offerings, will serve up complete, world-tracked 3D augmented reality on its own, without needing a phone to tag along. At AWE, I spoke with Snap CEO Evan Spiegel about the new Specs. “For the first time in a wearable pair of glasses, computing’s leaving these little rectangles” — that is, smartpho
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