Brilliant Labs’ Halo Ushers in a New Breed of Smartglasses

Smartglasses have been trying to win us over for years, promising to blend technology into our daily lives. Most, like the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, have gone all in on style and social features, but Brilliant Labs is taking a different approach with its Halo smartglasses. For $299, Halo is your everyday companion, packed with features that prioritize privacy, creativity and all-day wearability.

Halo’s design is sleek and subtle, weighing just 40 grams with a wayfarer vibe that feels like regular glasses. Brilliant Labs squeezed in a full-color microOLED display, camera, sensors, bone-conduction speakers and microphones without sacrificing comfort. On a full charge, you can expect around a 14-hour battery life.

The microOLED display projects a retro arcade-style interface into your peripheral vision, powered by the Alif Semiconductor B1 chip. It’s not a full-lens AR takeover, which keeps things light but might feel less immersive for some. Still, it adjusts to most eye distances to deliver crisp visuals.

Noa, Halo’s AI assistant is always listening and watching to answer questions with a human-like touch. Ask it to name a landmark or translate a menu and it responds instantly, using on-device processing for speed. Its open-source Lua-based system, running on Zephyr OS, invites developers to create custom apps, from navigation tools to quirky productivity hacks.

Narrative, Halo’s memory system, is a game-changer, storing your daily moments in a private knowledge base for later recall. Forgot a name from a meetup? Noa’s got you. Privacy is a priority, with on-device data processing and irreversible encryption, as well as voice commands to disable sensors.

Vibe Mode lets you can create apps by talking to Noa. How so? Describe a custom city guide and it’s built in seconds. This user-driven approach is what sets Halo apart from Ray-Ban Meta’s photo-focused glasses, where everyone gets to shape their tech.
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