Even G2 Review: A Brighter Display, No Camera, and Ring Control

Engadget published its review of the Even Realities G2 smart glasses on Oct. 19, 2026. The review follows Engadget's earlier G1 review and a beta test of the second-generation hardware by Sam Rutherford, who reported issues with that early unit Engadget.

The G2 is display-first eyewear with no forward-facing camera. Even Realities positions it as an alternative to a smartwatch, pushing notifications, news headlines and turn-by-turn directions into the wearer's field of vision via waveguide prisms, thin glass optics that place text in view. The camera is gone by design. Interaction relies on glanceable text, audio and small physical inputs rather than capture.

The hardware figures changed from the G1 as follows. Waveguide display resolution is 640 x 350, up from 640 x 200. Field of view, the width of the visible image, is 27.5 degrees, up from 25 degrees. Refresh rate, how often the image updates per second, is 60Hz, up from 20Hz. Peak brightness is 1,200 nits, up from 1,000 nits. Microphone count is four, up from two. The frame is IP65-rated for dust and water ingress and has on-device touchpads on the temple tips.

The base model costs $599. It is offered in Panto and Rectangle styles and in grey, brown and green colorways. Prescription lenses cost at least $159 and up to $349 for stronger prescriptions. The lineup is listed as Even G2 A, Even G2 B and Even R1, with the G2 A and G2 B variants sold with configurable color, lens and accessories options. Frame selection covers frame style, color, lens type and addition of the Even R1 smart ring.

On software, the G2 can be used for real-time translation, as a teleprompter, and to speak to AI. Even Realities describes the G2 as everyday display smart glasses with a 3D heads-up display that is visible when needed and out of the way when not needed. Even Hub is the central place for Even G2 applications ranging from books to productivity tools. Listed features include Dashboard for tracking daily goals, Conversate for understanding speech during on-stage interviews or in noisy environments, Translate for watching content in other languages and language learning, plus Teleprompt, Health and automatic AI prompts. The glasses will also show a persistent icon telling the wearer what their AI agent is doing, including when it is thinking Engadget.

The companion R1 smart ring costs $249 extra and only works with the second-generation G2 glasses. It is made of zirconia ceramic, is IP68-certified and has four-day battery life. It tracks activity, steps, heart rate, HRV, SpO2, body temperature and sleep duration. The glasses can be controlled with the ring without touching the frames or using voice commands Engadget. The ring doubles as a tiny touchpad with a flat touchpad surface.

The practical context here is legibility and control. A jump from 20Hz to 60Hz matters less for video than for stable text during head movement. Higher peak brightness and a wider field of view address the two practical limits of waveguide prisms, which are washout outdoors and a narrow text box that forces scrolling. Four microphones suggest beamforming, combining microphones to focus on one voice, for translation, Conversate and voice AI in noise, though microphone count alone does not fix latency or transcription accuracy.

In my view, the more interesting decision is what Even left out. No camera removes a whole category of social friction and permission prompts. It also removes capture-based AI memory, object lookup and barcode-style workflows that camera glasses now lean on. That leaves Even competing on subtlety and stamina, short glances, directions, prompts and health data, rather than on multimodal sensing. The R1 fits that logic. Temple tips are awkward to find while walking. Voice is awkward in a meeting. A ring touchpad is discreet and always in reach, and pairing it with health tracking gives it a reason to stay on the finger when the glasses are in the case.

The broader context here is input cost. Display glasses live or die on how quickly a wearer can dismiss, scroll or act without pulling out a phone. If the G2 and R1 lower that cost enough, they enable a different habit, checking a headline, a turn cue or a translated line in place, then looking away. That is a modest change. Modest changes tend to stick.