Snap Spectacles 3 — specification and verdict
It is worth being precise about what Spectacles 3 are, because the name collects four unrelated products. This generation has no display of any kind. Two HD cameras on opposite corners of a steel frame captured 1728x1728 stills and 1216x1216 video at 60 fps from two angles at once, which let Snapchat compute depth and hang 3D effects on the result afterwards. Everything else follows from that single purpose: 56.5 grams, four microphones, four gigabytes of storage, a case holding four more charges, and a button on each hinge. At 380 dollars for 1,000 units it was a fashion experiment, and the AR waveguide figures that circulate under this name belong to the generation that came two years later.
There is nothing to deploy. Spectacles 3 shipped in a run of 1,000 units at 380 dollars, tied to a Snapchat account, with no device management, no enterprise tier and no API a company could build against. Prescription lenses existed only in the United States and only through a third party, Lensabl, which Snap states plainly it does not offer in Canada, Europe or the UAE. Two practical details for anyone who owns a pair: they are not water resistant by Snap's own statement, and the case holds four charges with a full recharge in 75 minutes.
Not a work device and never was. It has no display, so there is nothing to show a trainee, and its only output is a Snapchat-bound clip. Its one genuinely interesting property for a professional audience is depth capture from two synchronised cameras — but a modern phone does that better and exports the result somewhere useful. Buy one to own a piece of wearable-computing history; do not put it on a procurement list.
How it compares within its class
The axis runs from the lowest to the highest published figure among the AI glasses devices in this catalogue. The grey tick is the median of that class.
Median for this class: 49 g, from 13 models that publish the figure.
Median for this class: $499, from 16 models that publish the figure.
Controllers and hand tracking
Operated by Touchpad on the temple.
Bare hands
No hand tracking.
Full specification
An em dash means the manufacturer does not publish that figure.
- ManufacturerWho makes it — and who you buy support from.
- Snap
- CategoryWhich kind of product this is. It decides which rows below make sense at all.
- AI glasses
- Device typeWhere the computing happens, and therefore what you need to run it.
- Phone-powered AR
- AnnouncedThe day it was shown, which is not the day it shipped.
- 2019-08-13
- ReleasedYear the model went on sale. Older is not automatically worse in this category.
- 2019
- AvailabilityWhether you can still order it new today.
- Discontinued
- Support endsThe date the manufacturer stops supporting it. Decisive for a fleet you are about to buy.
- Support ends: not published by the manufacturer
- DisplayHow the image is produced. "No display" is a real answer in this category, not a gap.
- No display
- Resolution per eyePixels delivered to each eye. Higher means small text and labels stay readable.
- Resolution per eye: not published by the manufacturer
- Refresh rateImages per second. Higher feels smoother and helps people prone to motion discomfort.
- Refresh rate: not published by the manufacturer
- Pixel densityPixels per degree of view — the honest way to compare sharpness between a headset and a pair of glasses. Higher is sharper. Only shown where somebody published it; we never compute it ourselves.
- Pixel density: not published by the manufacturer
- WeightThe device alone. Anything above roughly 150 g is felt within an hour.
- 56.5 g
- Vision correctionHow somebody who wears glasses uses it, and in what dioptre range.
- Third-party lens inserts
- DimensionsWidth, height and depth of the device itself.
- Dimensions: not published by the manufacturer
- Weight with strapWith the strap it ships with — the weight you actually wear.
- Weight with strap: not published by the manufacturer
- Head strapSoft band or a rigid one. Decides how the weight sits over an hour.
- Glasses frame
- MaterialsShell and facial interface, in the vendor’s words.
- Materials: not published by the manufacturer
- ColoursColours the manufacturer sells it in.
- Black
- Haptics in the headsetVibration in the headset itself, not in the controllers.
- Haptics in the headset: not published by the manufacturer
- Tracking camerasHow many cameras it uses to know where it is.
- Tracking cameras: not published by the manufacturer
- Tracking rateHow often position is recalculated. Higher is steadier.
- Tracking rate: not published by the manufacturer
- Depth sensorA dedicated sensor for distance, on top of the cameras.
- Depth sensor: not published by the manufacturer
- Hand trackingWhether bare hands can operate the interface, without a controller or the phone.
- No
- Face trackingTracks facial expression — for avatars, not for training scenarios.
- Face tracking: not published by the manufacturer
- Body trackingHow much of the body the device knows about. Estimated legs are not tracked legs.
- Body tracking: not published by the manufacturer
- Controllers includedWhether motion controllers come in the box, or are bought separately — or the device is hands-only.
- Controllers included: not published by the manufacturer
- Controller tracking6DoF controllers track position and rotation, so a hand reaches in space; 3DoF only point. “None” means hands only.
- Controller tracking: not published by the manufacturer
- Other input methodsWays in beyond controllers and bare hands.
- Touchpad on the temple
- Where it computesWhether the device computes on its own or depends on a phone, PC or belt-worn puck.
- Driven by a phone
- ProcessorThe processor and memory inside. This is what the performance grade above is derived from.
- Processor: not published by the manufacturer
- CPUCores and clocks, where the manufacturer publishes them.
- CPU: not published by the manufacturer
- GPUThe graphics part of the chip.
- GPU: not published by the manufacturer
- MemoryRAM on the device. Together with the chipset it sets how complex a scene can be.
- Memory: not published by the manufacturer
- PlatformThe platform an application is built against — and what an MDM has to speak.
- Platform: not published by the manufacturer
- StorageOn-board space for downloaded courses. More matters for an offline library in several languages.
- 4 GB
- SD card slotWhether storage can be added with a card.
- SD card slot: not published by the manufacturer
- BatteryRuntime as the manufacturer states it. A hot-swappable pack matters more than the figure.
- Battery: not published by the manufacturer
- Battery capacity (Wh)Energy in the cell. Bigger is longer, given the same power draw.
- Battery capacity (Wh): not published by the manufacturer
- Battery capacity (mAh)The same fact in the other unit vendors use. We never convert between the two.
- Battery capacity (mAh): not published by the manufacturer
- Charge timeFrom empty to full. Rarely stated by the manufacturer, so it usually comes from whoever timed it.
- Charge time: not published by the manufacturer
- ChargerPower of the supplied charger — it decides the charge time above.
- Charger: not published by the manufacturer
- External batteryBattery on a cable or a puck instead of on the head.
- External battery: not published by the manufacturer
- Charging caseExtra runtime carried in the case the glasses ship with.
- 1.25 h
- Hot-swap batteryWhether a charged battery can replace the empty one without ending the session. This is what decides if a headset can hold an all-day training station.
- Hot-swap battery: not published by the manufacturer
- Third-party appsHow a third party's application reaches the device: an ordinary Android package, a vendor-only SDK, or not at all.
- Closed platform
- Runs Skillsive appsOur own statement about whether Skillsive training applications run on it today.
- No
- Suitable for trainingOur judgement on whether it survives real deployment: comfort, hygiene, fleet management.
- No
- Kiosk mode / MDMVendor tooling to enrol devices, push an app and lock the headset to it. Practically required above ten devices.
- No
- Business tierAn official business tier, so devices belong to the company rather than to employees’ personal accounts.
- No
- CertificationsIndustrial certifications stated on the manufacturer's own page. Empty means unconfirmed, never "probably fine".
- FCC 2AIRN-003 · IC 22922-011 · EU 2016/425 PPE · EN ISO 12312-1 Cat. 3
- PortsPhysical sockets and charging contacts.
- magnetic charge port
- Wi-FiThe Wi-Fi generation — it decides how well wireless streaming holds up.
- 5
- BluetoothFor controllers, headphones and accessories.
- 5.0
- Video from a computerWhether a computer can drive it, over a cable or wirelessly.
- Video from a computer: not published by the manufacturer
- AudioBuilt-in sound. Matters most where somebody has to hear a remote expert while working.
- Audio: not published by the manufacturer
- MicrophoneBuilt-in microphone — the other half of talking to a remote expert.
- Yes
- MicrophonesHow many. An array picks a voice out of a noisy hall; one does not.
- 4
- CameraA camera is what makes a remote expert call and photo documentation possible.
- Yes
- Price bandThe band it sits in, rather than a price that goes stale.
- Mid range
- Launch priceThe manufacturer's launch price. Fixed history, so it never goes stale.
- $380
- Price by configurationWhat each configuration cost at launch.
- Price by configuration: not published by the manufacturer
- Price todayApproximate current net price in USD — a general figure, since these barely differ between regions once tax is stripped out. A snapshot from the date shown, not an offer.
- Price today: not published by the manufacturer
Who this device is for
Collectors and anyone researching the history of camera glasses. In 2019 the buyer was a Snapchat creator willing to pay 380 dollars for depth effects nobody else could make. There is no professional use case: no display, no enterprise tier, no API, and everything it captures ends up in one app.
What is missing, and what the manufacturer does not publish
Snap never published a processor, memory, battery capacity or runtime for Spectacles 3, and there is no speaker specification because the glasses have microphones only. The release date exists as a window rather than a day — Snap said shipping in fall 2019 and nothing more precise — so no date is recorded. Snap also never published a discontinuation notice, so the status here rests on the product being absent from its own store rather than on a statement. The camera field of view is given as 105 degrees in 2D and 86 in 3D, with no axis named for either.
Snap Spectacles 3 in independent reviews
Reviews we consider worth your time, each with a note on what the reviewer actually tested and why it matters for a training rollout. We do not own this hardware, so the tests are theirs — the reading of them is ours.
- The Verge2019
The Verge's review carries the weariness of a third attempt at the same idea, and that is the useful part: it places Spectacles 3 in the arc of a product line that kept relaunching without finding an audience. Watch it for the verdict on whether depth capture alone justified the price.
Watch on YouTube - CNET2019
CNET frames them as sunglasses first and a camera second, which matches how they were sold. Between this and The Verge you get both halves: whether the hardware is pleasant to wear, and whether anything useful comes out of it.
Watch on YouTube
Nothing is sent to YouTube until you press play. Once you do, Google receives your IP address and device data and may process them outside the EEA — see our privacy policy for the details.
Snap Spectacles 3 — frequently asked questions
- Do Snap Spectacles 3 show you anything, like AR glasses?
- No. This generation has no display at all — it is a capture device. Two HD cameras in opposite corners of the frame record from two angles at once so Snapchat can compute depth afterwards and attach 3D effects in the app. If you have seen waveguide and field-of-view figures quoted for Spectacles, those belong to the fourth generation from 2021, which is a different product with a genuine AR display.
- Can you get Spectacles 3 with prescription lenses?
- Only if you were in the United States. Snap partnered with a third party, Lensabl, for prescription lenses and states plainly that it has no authorised prescription provider in Canada, Europe or the UAE. That makes them unusable as everyday eyewear for most people outside the US, on top of a run of only 1,000 units.
- What is actually recorded by Spectacles 3?
- Stills at 1728 by 1728 pixels and video at 1216 by 1216 at 60 frames per second, from both cameras simultaneously, onto four gigabytes of internal storage. There are four microphones for audio and built-in GPS and GLONASS. One practical warning from Snap itself: neither the glasses nor their accessories are water resistant.
Compare this device
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The nearest devices in the same class, ranked by availability and launch price — not by our opinion of them.
Specifications checked against the manufacturer's page on 2026-08-17. Manufacturer's specification
Product and company names used here are the trademarks of their respective owners and appear only to identify the hardware being compared. We are not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any of these manufacturers. Illustrations are our own.