Chinese tech giant Xiaomi today unveiled a pair of smart glasses that the company is positioning as an addition to an active lifestyle, targeting consumers at 2,499 yuan (~$370).

Called Mijia Glasses Camera, the Google Glass-style device features a single display and two cameras: a 50 MP primary and 8 MP periscope camera, something the company says is capable of up to 15× zoom and 100 minutes of continuous recording.

According to Sparrow News, the smart glasses house a single Micro OLED from Sony which boasts up to 3,000 nit peak brightness and 3,281 ppi. The camera/display upper can also be clipped to a pair of glasses frames or worn by itself.

Image courtesy Sparrow News, Xiaomi

The glasses are driven by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8-core chipset, and includes 3GB RAM, 32GB storage, dual Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 5.0. An internal 1,020mAh battery is paired with magnetic 10W charging, which the company says can go from 0-80% charge in 30 minutes.

The company is positioning the device mostly as a pair of camera glasses for capturing daily activities, although it’s hard to deny that the awkward and large form factor will make it difficult for all-day wear.

The spot doesn’t really seem to focus on what the heads-up display (HUD) brings to the table, although the company says in marketing info that the device is capable of real-time translation, displaying “AR effects”, screencasting, and “other features will also be online in the subsequent OTA update,” Sparrow News reports.

Xiaomi is first targeting consumers in China with discounted pre-orders, priced 2,499 yuan (~$370). After the pre-order period, which is slated to begin on August 3rd, the device will sell for 2,699 yuan (~$400).

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It’s uncertain whether the Xiaomi is going to market Mijia Glasses Camera outside of China, although the Chinese tech powerhouse is certainly ambitious enough to do so eventually. While not a household brand in North America, Xiaomi is a top 5 global smartphone manufacturer, offering its competitively spec’d array of handsets in Europe and most of Asia.

Still, there’s no denying the glasses are significantly more chunky in comparison to the future smart glasses concept the company teased earlier this year (see below), which was closer to the size of actual glasses. It’s certainly less discrete than Meta’s Ray-Ban Stories, which admittedly don’t include a display of any sort and only allow for 30-second recording sessions with a comparatively paltry 5 MP sensor.

Update (August 2nd, 2022): We’ve added in the exact model name, translated from Chinese to give more accuracy to the article, whereas before only the sub-brand ‘Mijia’ was mentioned.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • scientia

    It’s much faster and more convenient (less friction, less hazzle, hands-free) to record from glasses than from a phone. Just like the Rayban Stories, it can be used for spontaneous clips and photos.

  • Max-Dmg

    These can be used in emergancies, such as swimming from a shark or being chased by cannibals, jumping from waterfalls/volcanos etc, where you could drop your phone. However it doesnt mention if they can be used in space. It would be good if you could attach to the side a poison dart shooter but these kind of addons might come in the future.

  • Christian Schildwaechter

    I’ve actually wanted a wearable display integrated into glasses for decades. Single-eye would be fine. But I want the display part, so when Google Glass presentation were all about the stupid camera, this was a very bad sign.

    So this one has a 50MP camera. It even has a second one, and zoom, and can record 100min. Great. Because “Glassholes” taking pictures and videos as kind of walking surveillance cameras has always been well appreciated, and the most important feature of any display is the webcam. Oh, there is actually information on the display. A OLED microdisplay. 3000nit peak brightness, so you may even see something outside. And 3281ppi, a very fine grid. The only information missing is the one that is actually important, resolution and FoV. A high PPI means nothing if all it displays is a 64*64 image on 1° FoV.

    If I take the marketing mockups as real, I’d say at least VGA 640*480 and about 20°-25° FoV. Which would actually be sufficient for the use as a data display, connected wirelessly to a phone or PC, and at the given price be quite a steal compared to existing mono-ocular wearable displays for industrial use.

    But just like with Google Glass the focus on the cameras for recording and the lack of relevant specs is a big warning sign that they didn’t manage to make the device actually useful. Cameras could be tremendously useful in AR for object detection, but that still doesn’t work in such tiny devices. And instead of showcasing the use of an extra display always in your field of view, they assume that in this world everybody wants to be a 24h Twitch live streamer, and that this will work any better for them than it did for Google.

    • ViRGiN

      i miss samsung galaxy wear 1. you know, the og ‘true’ smartwatch with built-in camera. everything released after that did not have the camera. it’s really awesome feature taking pics straight from your wrist. nothing creepy about it. only creeps would have creepy association with that, just like with these glasses. you know extremely well there are much easier, better and subtle ways to take pics/video than wearing bulky glasses?

    • Shuozhe Nan

      Oppo glass perhaps? But it cost almost twice the price for less features..

  • psuedonymous

    They don’t call the glasses themselves ‘Mijia’. ‘Mijia’ is one of Xaiomi’s sub-brands: they use ‘Mi’ as their general consumer goods brand, and ‘Mijia’ as the high-end/lifestyle brand.

  • ZeePee

    Well, this certainly won’t do well here in the west, that’s for sure lol.

    Not sure what people I’m China will think.

  • Cooolone

    Show how far away from AR glasses we are

  • God, these products are so of the moment. Who’s actually buying this stop-gap crap?

    I mean, I want AR to eventually be good, so it’s actually a good things if companies sell enough units to encourage more development and the like, but I can’t fathom who’s buying into the 2022 delusion version of it.

    • ViRGiN

      you just described PCVR actually.

      • No, PC VR is already great, and it will just get better. These AR glasses, however, are largely just throwaway gimmicky crap imo, and something people will use for a few weeks and then never touch again. AR just isn’t ready.

        • ViRGiN

          sure, these smart glasses are not ready.
          pcvr is absolute trash and is always going downhill. no need to argue about that. it’s completly stale for years for a reason. but sure go ahead and argue that there are new games coming out, the games that 99% do not even bother to play lol. player counts are public for many titles.

          • I’m not debating about whether new PC VR games are coming out; I’m saying PC VR is already great. PC VR has more than passed the minimum threshold to be an amazing experience. I mean, Half-Life: Alyx, for example, is AAA quality gaming, no if or buts. AR is still total gimmicky, throwaway trash for the most part.

          • ViRGiN

            Alyx is completly a gimmick and doesn’t hold a foot down to even late 2000s games. A corridor shooter, using none of the mechanics established in vr space for years at that time.

            That’s like saying Atari Jaguar was already great, cause it had games no other console did.

            AR is futuristic, and yes, primarily gimmicky today – so does virtual work with current headset weight. But it does not make VR any greater. It’s not Mario 64 grade title that will be playable for years to come. PSVR2 will negate any benefits of PCVR within a year; not sure about wireless.

          • Yeah, I’m not wasting anymore time with you. You’re clearly clueless.

          • ViRGiN

            yeah move on, alyx worshipper.

    • Marauder Shields

      This is not really “AR” thing, this is more a feature that found a possible market fit as lifestyle blogger will definitely happy to use this to log their vlogs

  • Nepenthe

    Wake me when “nano-retinal technology” I guess.

    vimeo com/209070629 (insert a dot between vimeo and com)

    • kontis

      With full normal glasses FOV and without degrading your natural vision?
      20 years minimum. Optimistically.

  • Burt Reynolds

    Good thing they don’t look f’ing weird.

  • OMG, the concept was so cool, while the product is Google Glass 2.0

    • Yossi Preminger

      You’re not wrong… but as long as the camera is great, I’ll be happy.

      What I want to know is the FOV of the primary camera, for snapping pics without aiming. That was my biggest pain with Google Glass.

  • dk

    it will be interesting to see how hot it gets while filming and how long it will shoot before overheating or running out of battery