PROS + Very stylish aesthetics + Comfortable to wear all day long + Can swap blue light filtering or polarized lenses yourself + Built-in mic for smart assistant support + Touch controls are simple but effective + Water-resistant with IPX4, so sweat isn’t a major concern + Can add prescription lenses if you wish through Lensabl + Companion app is well designed and glitch-free + At lower volumes, sound leakage is very minimal (<50-60% or so) + Surprisingly useful with working from home + Have operated great, with no drop-outs or glitches + LOVE the concept/potential of smart glasses CONS - Sound leakage can be noticeable at higher volumes (>50-60% or so) – Glossy black exterior is a fingerprint/oil magnet – No way to adjust volume with touch gestures – Minimal EQ options and EQ presets aren’t great – Battery life likely won’t last you a full day if using a lot – Included USB-A charger is a bit awkward and needs to charge each arm separately – Companion app doesn’t offer much that is useful beyond the interactive tutorial – Included soft glasses case is bulky, hard case would have been preferred SO-SO ~ Sound quality is fine, but nothing to write home about ~ Wish you could order them with prescription lenses already installed ~ Low-Latency gaming mode is a nice touch, but still a poor choice for any serious gaming ~ Just doesn’t feel like a Razer product without a little optional RGB THE LONG & SHORT OF IT OVERALL: Honestly, these glasses have grown on me quite a bit in my time using them.
I was actually pretty excited to try some smart glasses like these. I had seen existing smart glasses already, but never tried them for any extended period of time. In many ways, the Razer Anzu Smart Glasses are exactly what I expected from the first generation of smart glasses from Razer, and yet they still managed to surprise me in other ways.
Whether these are worth the asking price I think is largely up to the individual user. For me, I really like the aesthetics of these glasses, and the Bluetooth functionality makes them really appealing for me as someone working from home in a lot of virtual meetings.
When you are paying a lot already for standard glasses frames and prescription lenses, the price of these with some prescription lenses doesn’t seem so bad. I don’t care too much for earbuds, and headphones can get uncomfortable for me while already wearing glasses over a long period of time, so these smart glasses fill a nice compromise when working all day at a computer.
This being said, if you already have nice headphones, or use nice glasses with some quality earbuds, these might not be worth the additional investment for you. BUILD/DESIGN: To start with a positive, I am actually most surprised by how much I love the aesthetics.
They are made of what feels like a fairly cheap glossy black plastic, reminiscent of what you would buy from a glasses rack at a drugstore, but with that they are very lightweight and comfortable. I can’t speak for their long-term durability, but the glossy black shines nicely and they feel well constructed, with minimal creaks and no signs of quality control issues.
This being said, they are surprisingly understated for a Razer product. There is no triple snake logo or RGB, just the word RAZER on the glasses arms. I would have no issue wearing these around all day or to work/professional meetings, and maybe that is exactly what Razer is going for.
I can’t see many people taking issues with the design of these, and I have found that I like wearing them quite a bit just for the look. The larger arms housing the batteries/speakers don’t look bulky on the face, and feel like something you might see Tony Stark wear.
My only complaint is that while I am generally not an RGB fan, it might have been nice to have just a taste of Razer’s well-known RGB added to the glasses somewhere as an optional feature, just to help these glasses stand out as being a unique Razer product.
You can use these glasses as either blue-light filtering glasses, which is how I have found I prefer to use them, or you can swap out the lenses yourself and turn them into polarized sunglasses. For me working from home, I am at computers A LOT, and so blue-light filtering is a very welcome feature.
You can also order prescription lenses through Lensabl for these, which I plan to do soon so I can use these more often. Swapping lenses is fairly straightforward, although I wish you could order these with prescription lenses already included, as I don’t plan to swap them too frequently, and I am hesitant to install expensive prescription lenses myself, even if it is largely a painless process.
FUNCTIONALITY: In terms of function, these have worked very well. I haven’t experienced any technical issues, which is almost a first with Bluetooth-based products, and the overall function of the glasses is very smooth.
You can single, double, or triple tap the temples of the glasses for different commands like play, pause, skip, and reverse, or you can add long-presses for things like the voice assistant. These can all be re-mapped with the app, but you can’t do too much customization, and more importantly for me, you can’t adjust the volume with the touch controls, which is something I personally miss a lot as I don’t like using the voice assistant every time I want to change the volume.
In terms of EQ, you only get 3 presets to choose from: Default, Treble Boost, and Enhanced Clarity, but I personally find Default to be the best, with the other two sounding very processed to my ear.
Beyond these, I wouldn’t really call these Smart Glasses very “smart”. They are more like glasses with a Bluetooth Speaker built-in, which depending on your uses may be more than enough, however, it may not be worth the price of admission if you are looking for more functionality.
For gaming, these are surprisingly light on features for a Razer product. In fact, the only real gaming centric feature is a Low-Latency Gaming Mode, which is good if you are gaming, but doesn’t really change the overall experience.
As I’ll talk about in the Sound Quality section, these glasses aren’t anything to write home about for sound quality, and if you are serious about gaming, these will fall very short of your needs. These might be fine if you are playing some mobile games and want to use something better than your phone speakers, but don’t expect these to drastically improve your online gaming performance.
In the future, it might be nice to see some form of haptic feedback built into the glasses, to enhance the immersion of using these glasses for gaming, or even the ability to map some optional RGB to games.
For productivity these have worked well for work, with the built-in mic working well for calls, and the audio being clear enough for virtual meetings. These are about equivalent to a decent pair of Bluetooth headphones, but don’t expect them to blow anything you have used out of the water in this regard.
That being said, in terms of comfort and ease of use, I far prefer these to putting earbuds in or headphones on. It just feels more natural for someone who already wears glasses everyday. SOUND QUALITY: These are fine, but don’t expect miracles for sound quality.
They sound fine at lower volumes, which is how you will want to use them if you are in public as they will bleed sound noticeably when you turn things up. If you are wondering how bad the sound leakage is, at max volume I found them to be like sitting next to someone wearing headphones with the volume blasting.
It sounds a bit muffled or diffused, but you can very clearly hear what they are listening too. This being said, if you are alone, these do sound best with the volume turned up a bit to open up the dynamic range, although at max volumes they might distort a little.
I am very much an amateur when it comes to audiophiles, but I do own many pairs of headphones in a variety of price/quality classes, and these are on-par with some of the more standard Bluetooth earphones I own.
They don’t sound bad at all, and actually a bit better than I expected, but don’t expect great things. I wouldn’t use these for any serious gaming or media consumption, as there is very little bass presence, and the sound doesn’t have much by way of depth.
However, for watching videos on your phone, or playing some light games, these will likely still beat your built-in phone/computer speakers.