There are a lot of things that rub people the wrong way when it comes to smart glasses, but if I had to pick one that really, truly, viscerally pisses people off, it’s the idea that they can be recorded without their consent. As a result of that aversion, no one has offered smart glasses that record video or audio literally all the time—just kidding, smart glasses that record all the time are coming.

The smart glasses in question are from a company called Mira (formerly Halo), which is gearing up to ship its $479 specs in January 2026. To clarify, your face is safe for now since the smart glasses don’t have cameras, but they do come equipped with microphones that are on perpetually. The idea here is the same as other AI gadgets like the Limitless recorder, a pendant that captures everything you say to augment your flimsy human memory. Similar to other AI recorders, Mira includes an app to store recorded conversations and summarize them with AI. That’s where Mira says you can pore over the minutiae of all 1,200 of your very important daily work meetings.

© Mira

There are some key differences between Mira and other AI recorders, though. One of them is that Mira seems to suggest that its smart glasses—which come with an on-board voice assistant and built-in speakers—aren’t just hanging back and waiting for you to query them about stuff like “What’s the weather today?” Instead, since the smart glasses are always listening, Mira is designed to butt in without you asking, or as they put it, “proactively offering relevant help and deeply personalizing their assistance to your habits, preferences, and who you truly are.” I don’t know about you, but having a voice assistant constantly beeping in my ear when I didn’t ask for help sounds like a nightmare, but maybe I’m just not task-maxxing enough.

There are some other differences between Mira and other AI recorders, too. Obviously, you wear Mira on your face, which introduces the opportunity for screens; in this case, a dual-lens display that delivers information at a glance. There’s nothing revolutionary about a screen for notifications, but Mira’s marketing of the features that screen offers is, uh… something. With its smart glasses, Mira says you’ll “never lose a debate,” promising “superhuman intelligence in under a second.” Again, my alarm bells are going off because (I assume) all of that computing is happening in the cloud, which means speed will depend largely on your connectivity and the complexity of the question, aka things that Mira has no control over. Oh, and you’ll be limited to three questions per day unless you pay $20 for its premium app, apparently. Transcription is free at least, and so is a translation tool that can allegedly interpret more than 60 languages “instantly” and “automatically.” I’ll believe that one when I see it.

A look behind the glasses with our founders, @AnhPhuNguyen1 and @CaineArdayfio

Mira helps you remember everything, so you can start anything. pic.twitter.com/Mgpllxxl3V

— Mira Glasses (@miraglasses) December 8, 2025

Like Even Realities and its Even G2 smart glasses, Mira is also shipping with a touch-sensitive ring that can be used as a controller for skipping songs you’re listening to, answering calls, and activating the voice assistant. This, fortunately, is included in the $479 cost (discounted to $429 until Dec. 31). Overall, technical details on the smart glasses are slim. There’s no listed resolution or information on what type of display they use. The company does list the smart glasses as weighing 39 grams, which is fairly light compared to the Meta Ray-Ban Display at about 70 grams. Mira also advertises “12+ hours” of battery life, which feels like a lofty claim and will depend largely on what you’re using the smart glasses for. I sincerely doubt you’ll get 12 hours of active audio playback time, that’s for sure. For the record, the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 AI glasses offer a max battery of about 8 hours. The smart glasses are compatible with prescription lenses, too, though that’ll cost you $599 (discounted to $549 until Dec. 31).

Look, it’s a ring. © Mira

Then there are the privacy implications. Mira says it does not ever store your audio recordings or use them to train AI, but that may not put everyone at ease. While the smart glasses may not be saving audio, they’re still actively jotting down everything you and other people say in a transcription, so… what’s the difference, really? There’s also the fact that the idea of introducing always-on recording to a pair of glasses feels like a slippery slope. What’s to stop the idea from moving on to video next? For its part in the smart glasses conversation, Google has already kind of floated that idea with computer vision that can remember where you put your keys in its Project Astra concept. It seems to me that Project Astra would necessitate always-on recording…

It’s also worth noting that the two Harvard students behind Mira have dabbled with the idea of camera glasses that record people’s faces all the time and automatically surface information on said unconsenting faces. In their defense, that exercise felt mostly like a warning of what *could *be, though it’s hard to tell. Either way, if you’re the type of person who hates the idea of discreet camera glasses, I’m going to assume ones that record your voice all the time feel almost equally as icky. Watch out, subway riders.