China-based projector manufacturer XGIMI launched a crowdfunding campaign in June for its first smart glasses, MemoMind One, which is banking on consumer interest in display-clad smart glasses that don’t contain cameras. Now the campaign has reached $1 million, giving the segment anther early vote of confidence.

The News

MemoMind One quickly surpassed its lowball fund goal of $80,000 HKD (~$10,000 USD) when the Kickstarter launched on June 28th, going on to secure $500,000 in less than a week after launch. Now the project just topped $1 million with 20 days left in the campaign, which closes on August 28th.

If you haven’t followed its progress, MemoMind One was first shown at CES 2026 in Las Vegas in January, pitching a pair of smart glasses that don’t include any sort of camera, instead sporting dual green micro-LED displays (2,000 nits), integrated audio, and a host of AI-assisted actions, such as real-time translation, note taking, contextual assistance, and navigation.

Notably, MemoMind One is positioning itself as one of the least expensive display smart glasses on the market, with pricing starting at $400 for the Standard Edition of all stylings: Nomad, Gotham and Archive. There is also the option to add prescription lenses ($500) and a Custom Edition with multiple colorways starting at $450, all of which are expected to ship in August 2026.

XGIMI hasn’t released any sort of stretch goals, as it appears the campaign is more oriented toward pre-orders. You can learn more about it on MemoMind One’s Kickstarter here.

My Take

This is a bit of a casual rehash of my original take when MemoMind One reached the $500,000 mark, but I’ll save you click with this (slightly) condensed version.

If MemoMind One’s campaign is any indication, not having an onboard camera is a much stronger marketing position than you might think, partly due to blowback Meta is getting from its own display-less camera smart glasses right now.

Until recently, Meta hasn’t properly kept creepers from drilling out capture LEDs, or otherwise vaunting the system by other means. It’s too early to tell since there are no major competitors yet, but Meta may have ‘poisoned the well’ somewhat.

While MemoMind isn’t the first to claim camera-less display smart glasses as a unique marketing proposition, it is doing it at a cheaper price than the main competition: Even Realities G2, which are priced at $600 before adding prescription lenses.

That said, I’m not certain ‘display only’ smart glasses will ever be truly massive; cameras and displays are difficult to run together in today’s power and compute constraints, so it seems more like a temporary division that’s being fashioned into a marketable segment. I’ll be putting those assumptions to the test when I go in for a long-term hands-on with MemoMind One, so check back soon.

VITURE today launched its latest AR glasses, VITURE Pro 2, which the company calls its thinnest, lightest and comfortable yet. Alongside it, Viture also unveiled a new, more pocketable USB-C dock which lets you connect to a wider range of devices, such as Nintendo Switch 2.

Viture Pro 2 – $300

Like many of the company’s AR glasses, Viture Pro 2 is mostly meant for traditional gaming and computing, albeit on a virtual screen projected in front of you thanks to its see-through AR birdbath optics.

And while it may look similar to the original 2024 Viture Pro from the outside, the company says it’s thinner, lighter, and brighter. Its optical stack has also been re-tuned optical stack, delivering better clarity overall, the company says.

Dubbed ‘UltraClarity 3.0’, the Viture says it’s tightened four key visual factors over its predecessor, including field curvature, image sharpness across the full 50-degree field of view (FOV), geometric distortion across the entire diopter range, and image stability as the pupil moves off-center.

“Sharpness holds not just at the center but into every corner,” the company says. “Horizontal and vertical resolve equally. Straight lines stay straight at any prescription. And the image stays put wherever the eyes wander, instead of swimming as the pupil moves off-axis.”

It’s also impressively thin and light, weighing just 63g, which the company notes is also the thinnest frame the company has ever built, making it 20% lighter and 16% thinner than the original Viture Pro.

Note: what you don’t see in Viture Pro 2’s promo photos is the required USB-C tether, as it’s not a standalone device, requiring you to attach the included cable from the left temple tip of the glasses right behind the ear. Equally important to note is that Viture Pro 2 doesn’t support 6DOF spatial tracking, as it lacks onboard camera sensors, meaning you can’t pin a display to a specific point in space.

Under the hood, or rather sandwiched on top of its birdbath-style AR optics, is a pair of Sony micro-OLED displays delivering the same 1,920 x 1,080 per-eye resolution and 120Hz refresh rate, albeit with a higher perceived brightness of up 1,600 nits over the original’s 1,000 perceived nits.

It also boasts a built-in diopter adjustment with independent dials per-eye, covering 0 to −5.00D, a slightly higher FOV of 50 degrees (originally 46 degrees), and three included nose pads for seven adjustment positions.

You can find Viture Pro 2 available today for $300 across Viture and Amazon.com, which includes a free lens shade in the box for better immersion.

Mobile Dock Mini – $100

As a part of the company’s five-year anniversary, Viture also unveiled a new, smaller mobile dock called Mobile Dock Mini ($100), which is now available for pre-order.

While Viture Pro 2 can already connect to a variety of USB-C devices natively, the modular, pocket-sized dock expands that to more devices —notably Nintendo Switch 2—while doubling as a USB-C hub and extended battery.

In all, it’s essentially a more compact version of the company’s original Viture Pro Mobile Dock ($100), featuring a slight smaller at 10,000 mAh battery than the original’s 13,000 mAh. The new Mobile Dock Mini is however 34% smaller and 30% lighter, making it a more pocketable way to charge a phone, Nintendo Switch 2 while powering any of Viture’s glasses models at the same time.

It works in two different modes: ‘Hug Mode’, which “hugs” the back of a Switch 2 as a single unit via a magnetic mount, and ‘Solo Mode’, which allows it to become a compact standalone USB-C hub.

You can find this and the whole gamut of Viture glasses and accessories over on Viture’s website.

Snap announced it’s hosting an event dedicated to Specs, the company’s next-gen AR glasses, on September 16th in Los Angeles, California.

At the event, Snap co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel is said to share “the first in-depth look at SPECS, demonstrating how they bring AI assistance, work tools, entertainment, and shared experiences into the world around us, helping people create, connect, learn, and get things done while staying present,” the company says.

While the company characterizes it as a “launch” event for Specs, the device’s pre-order page maintains it’s still slated to ship sometime this fall across the US, UK and France, suggesting we’ll get a more precise ship date during the event.

Snap launched pre-orders for Specs in June, priced at $2,195. Similar to the company’s fifth-gen Specs released in 2024, the new device don’t require an external compute puck or tethered connection to external devices, as the glasses pack in two Qualcomm Snapdragon processors—one dedicated to computer vision and another for running AR experiences, or “Lenses,” as the company calls them.

In the meantime, you can sign up to watch the Specs event live here, which takes place on September 16th at 4:00 PM PT (local time here). Attendees of the physical event will have an opportunity to be some of the first to go hands-on.

The team behind SideQuest, Quest’s alternative app library, announced it’s bringing Microsoft’s social VR platform AltspaceVR (2015) back from the dead.

The News

Initially released in 2015 and then acquired by 2017 by Microsoft, Altspace was one of the first successful social VR platforms, launching across PC VR headsets, Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Go, and both Quest and Quest 2.

In early 2023 however, Microsoft announced it was shuttering Altspace in a bid to shuttle resources to its cloud-based mixed reality collaboration platform, Microsoft Mesh, which was subsequently deprecated in 2025 and parted out to Microsoft Teams.

Now, SideQuest CEO and founder Shane Harris reveals in a Reddit post the company has acquired the rights to the Altspace name, noting it will be “a brand new Altspace” for a modern audience as well as “a spiritual successor to the Altspace we know and love and capture what made it great.”

Check out Altspace’s final moment below, courtesy ‘Vitua Zone’:

Harris reveals SideQuest will be re-launching Altspace with many of the same features and functionality the app had circa 2016-2017, further noting he’s assembled a team of previous Altspace staffers and “some of the most prolific OG players” to help shape the platform.

One such re-hire is Christian Boe, the original concept designer behind the original robots in Altspace, which were discontinued in favor of human-only avatars, which means the new Altspace will most definitely feature robot avatars of some sort in addition to custom avatars, Harris says.

Harris maintains we’ll hear regular updates and developer insight in the coming weeks and months.

My Take

Altspace likely shut down for a myriad of reasons, although one of the biggest is it never actually monetized; in its eight years of existence the platform never featured an in-world economy or creator marketplace, and its avatar system was decidedly much more ‘off the shelf’ than something like VRChat, which lets you upload, sell, or style your avatar in any way imaginable.

Starting Altspace back up, and importantly employing those people who helped define the platform in the first place, is a giant win, although being able to pick up where they left off and find an economic model that benefits both players and creators alike will be a tall order.

Still, there must be some contingent of VR-using Rec Room refugees out there looking for a platform that isn’t VRChat, and Altspace may try to fill that gap. Whatever the case, getting back to its roots means putting on a lot of events to attract regular users.

For all of the team’s know-how though, relaunching Altspace is roughly like starting from scratch with the new generation of younger players, as even in 2023 Altspace had waned a lot since its heyday in 2016-2017. I’d like to hope they can also attract back a bulk of the OG users too looking for that socially tame sweet spot Altspace seemed to fill so well.