Snapchat Debuts Real Life Nerd Filter a.k.a. ‘Spectacles’
Because kids these days don’t have their faces glued to their phones enough, Snapchat just debuted a new pair of glasses that will record video and send it straight to your iPhone, all while propped up on your actual face. The glasses, called Spectacles, will be available this fall for $130.
They’re basically just like Google Glass, but way cheaper and with an actual purpose.
And because Spectacles are, at first glance, so similar to Google Glass, your first inclination might be to think they’re for nerds, just like Google Glass was.
But the design of Spectacles is much less “Star Trek” than that of Google Glass. They look almost like sunglasses you’d wear by choice, but with discreet little cameras attached. Google Glass never achieved that. Instead, they were like a $1,500 “ADULT VIRGIN HERE!” sign.
Plus, Google Glass didn’t have a clear purpose. Its navigation wasn’t amazing. Nobody wanted to read the tiny text projected in the corner of the lens — which even caused headaches.
And Glass was supposed to function like a camera strapped to your head, but you could only take grainy photos and record small snippets of video. At the time, this seemed like a bummer. Glass hit the market at the totally wrong time for this — it was a time when we were all striving for better photo and video quality, just before Snapchat got us all accustomed to grainy photos and small snippets of video. Today, sketchy quality is not only what we’re used to on Snapchat, but we embrace it. So footage shot with Spectacles won’t seem out of place at all on a network full of amateur-level photos and videos.
Plus, it’s $130. That’s cheap enough for a millennial with disposable income to take a chance on and, crucially, younger teens will be able to coax their parents into buying it for them at the holidays.
Yeah, Spectacles are about to take over the world and be the hoverboard of 2017. So while this face camera won’t necessarily make any of us look cooler or hotter like an IRL pretty filter would, admit it: you’re going to want to try this.
