HTC Vive Eagle smart glasses finally launch in the West
A year after debuting in Taiwan, HTC is bringing its Vive Eagle smart glasses to the US, Europe, the UK and Australia. The device pairs an AI assistant with a camera and speakers, keeping its original specs largely unchanged.
HTC is expanding availability of its Vive Eagle smart glasses, a year after their original debut in Taiwan, finally bringing the device to buyers in the US, Europe, the UK and Australia. Following the initial launch in HTC's home market, the company stayed quiet about plans to sell the glasses elsewhere, leaving international customers waiting for more than a year.
On the hardware side, little has changed during that journey westward. The glasses run on a Snapdragon AR Gen 1 chip, paired with 4GB of RAM, 32GB of storage and a 235mAh battery rated for up to 36 hours of standby time. A 12-megapixel front-facing camera is also built in. HTC says it has taken steps to prevent the notification LED from being disabled, that the glasses won't record while not being worn, and that recording automatically stops if a bystander asks the wearer to stop filming.
AI and audio
One of the Vive Eagle's key selling points is built-in AI access, letting users choose between OpenAI and Gemini depending on the task. HTC states that collected data won't be used to train its own models and that requests are anonymized to prevent user profiling. The AI communicates through open-ear stereo speakers built into the frames, which also handle music and podcast playback.
Design and pricing
The glasses come in two frame shapes, square and panto, offered in several translucent colors including black, coffee and berry. They ship with Zeiss lenses in clear, tinted or adaptive versions, and prescription lenses can be added afterward. US buyers can purchase the Vive Eagle starting today, with prices beginning at $499 for the base model without special lenses. In Europe and the UK, shipping begins on September 21st, with the base model priced at €469 / £429.
