Are Snapchat Spectacles worth it? Find out in this review!
These right here are Snap’s Spectacles. These are the Snapchat glasses that everyone’s been looking for and they have been impossible to find unless you lived in New York City or primarily on the West Coast where the Snapbots exist. I picked this pair up at CES 2017. I’ve used them for a while now. I’m not a huge Snapchat user but I have used Snapchat a whole lot more thanks to these guys. So here is my two cents and my full review of Snap’s new Spectacles.
When you first take a look at these Snapchat Spectacles, they definitely just look like a pair of goofy sunglasses. If you take a look at the left and right side, you’ll see something a little odd. On the left side, you kind of don’t see anything, you only see maybe a little bit of strip of LEDs and a button on top of the top frame on the left side. And then on the right side, you do see a camera so you obviously think that you could probably take photos or videos. But Spectacles have one purpose in life (actually really two purposes in life) and it is to take video and be sunglasses. So basically pushing the left button on the left hand side will let you take a 10-second snap and every time you press it, you will extend your snap by 10 seconds up to a 30-second snap obviously in 10-second increments when you import it to your phone. When you push the button on the left, you’ll see a ring in LED and on the inside of these sunglasses, there’s also a little notification LED that will illuminate and tell you when you’re taking a video. It’ll blink when you have 2 seconds remaining.
With the camera being right here next to my eye, this gives you one of the best features of the Spectacles and it is first person view. Basically, if you’re an avid Snapchat user, you probably take a lot of videos and post them on Snapchat every day. With the idea of Spectacles, the best camera you have is the one you always have on you. And if you’re outside doing errands, then you’re most likely gonna have sunglasses on if it’s sunny outside anyway. And if you see something interesting, instead of pulling out your smartphone and taking a video, you just hit this little button right here and boom you have a 10-second snap with video and audio.
It doesn’t record on any specific resolution. We do know it’s HD and the video kind of follows a circular format. So if you’re watching the Spectacle video on an iPhone and Android device, you’ll see something very strange when you’re watching the snap. In any orientation, the video will kind of shift a little bit but you’ll never lose the orientation. If you flip it to landscape, you actually see a little bit more of a wider image than you are in portrait mode but it doesn’t flip around. It just sort of swivels, that’s a really cool feature and definitely a status quo thing you have when people see your snaps.
Let’s talk about the spectacles themselves. Price-wise, they are $139. That’s quite a lot of money for a pair of sunglasses and especially ones that feel this cheap and poorly made. They’re very cheap plastic. They feel like you can probably buy them for $2 off a street vendor in Shanghai or something. The lenses get scratched very easily and obviously they look really goofy and they definitely look goofy on me because of this bridge right here and the shape of my knows. But that kind of misses the entire point of Spectacles. Spectacles are meant to be fashion statement, Snapchat users’ best friends; and they are definitely that. If you’re a very committed Snapchat user, $139 is not going to be a whole lot of money for you, especially if you use Snapchat on an hourly or maybe a 10-minute base for making snaps every single day.
The battery life on the Spectacles kind of vary how much you use it. Sometimes I have to charge it all in one day, other times I have to charge it multiple times a day. The battery itself is abou 137 mAh. The case is actually a built-in charger as well. It has a much larger battery that has the capability of recharging your specs around 4 times. You can also recharge the Spectacles themselves on the left hand side right behind the hinge. There’s actually the same magnet port that’s found on the case.
Overall, the Spectacles are a very niche product. Again, they’re $139; that’s a lot of money for a pair of sunglasses and they are incredibly hard to find, unless you live in New York again or you live on the West Coast. You have to watch Snapbot to be in some place, it really likes to prefer the West Coast because that’s where Snapchat is located anyway. Again, I don’t recommend you paying more money like going on eBay and bidding for something that only costs $130 and feels like they’re worth like $10.
To wrap up all my thoughts, here’s what I think about the Spectacles, they’re a very cool product, way too over-priced at $130. I don’t think they’re worth any more or really anything close to $130. They are incredibly hard to find so they are not definitely not worth looking and bidding on eBay for double or 3 times the price. They look really goofy, the case is really too big. If you’re an avid Snapchat user, buy it. If not, don’t buy it. If you hate the way it looks, don’t buy it. There are much better options. Obviously, you’re gonna miss on the video capability but then again, very cool. You get the status quo of having Spectacles and people will ask you a ton of questions if they see you in public and they know and use Snapchat on a regular basis.