Smart Glasses With Subscriptions Are As Bad as They Sound

Here we go again. I’ve reviewed quite a few pairs of smart glasses at this point, and the story is careening toward redundancy.

If you can get past the inherent bad stuff that people could do with cameras discreetly placed on their faces (like cheat in court and spy on people), there’s oftentimes just more bad stuff to wade through. Trekking through the smart glasses category tends to feel unfinished at best and, at worst, like a Sisyphean test of one’s patience.

L’Atitude 52°N’s $399 Berlin smart glasses live somewhere on that not-so-great spectrum of dissatisfaction, and while there are glimmers of what could be decent hardware, they’re overshadowed by a mountain of dysfunction and frustration. Let’s start with arguably one of the worst parts of these smart glasses…

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Yes, smart glasses, the category of device that just started feeling mainstream about five minutes ago, are also now trying to hook you into recurring costs via subscriptions. What I know for certain via official L’Atitude 52°N channels is that there is a paywall on AI features after a 12-month free trial period. TL’Atitude 52°N has not confirmed its pricing on Pro-tier AI features, which is wild to me since it’s, you know, selling these smart glasses actively, but the company claims it will most likely cost “under $20.”

With that approximately less than $20 subscription, you’ll get access to “advanced” AI features, including more sophisticated AI tours that offer “richer guided tours with music, interactive elements, and more in-depth content.” You also won’t have a cap on using all the other AI features, unlike the free plan, which, confusingly, offers “100-200 minutes” of AI access per month. Why the range? I do not know. Don’t shoot the messenger.

What I do know is that, given the recurring cost, most people would expect features in L’Atitude 52°N’s smart glasses to work extremely well. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in reviewing smart glasses, it’s that expectations are a one-way ticket to disappointment, and disappointment abounds in the Berlin smart glasses.

An “F” in AI

A centerpiece for all “AI glasses,” the catch-all term for display-free smart glasses, is, well… AI. Everything that AI glasses can do hinges on sending data to the cloud and praying that it spits out a satisfactory result. That includes core features like translation, search, computer vision, etc… Perhaps even more critically, AI ends up being a main way of controlling such devices since voice assistants are key. Sure, most smart glasses have baked-in controls that can include a button and maybe a touch-sensitive arm, but voice feels the most obvious and natural way to control a gadget on your face.

Despite recent software updates from the display-less Berlin, I’m sad to report that the smart glasses are far from nailing AI. I had constant frustrations using Goya, the smart glasses’ onboard voice assistant, which struggled to hear me or just flat-out didn’t understand my queries. For instance, it refused to tell me the battery life of the smart glasses—something that I do frequently with success in pairs like the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses.

Goya fumbled simple queries like “what can these glasses do?” by timing out despite a good-enough internet connection. It responded with the weather when I asked it to tell me what I was looking at. When I tried to translate a menu I was looking at from Spanish to English, Goya told me, “show me the menu,” and when I activated computer vision by pressing and holding my finger on the right glasses arm, all it did was tell me I was looking at a menu. I could name dozens of failed interactions just like the ones above.

To make matters worse, Goya is a little hard of hearing. I wouldn’t recommend using these smart glasses in a loud setting, since shouting “Hey Goya” into the void isn’t a good look. Maybe it’s for the best, since actually talking to the voice assistant is deflating anyway. I’m rarely satisfied with Meta AI, which is the on-device AI in the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses and Meta Ray-Ban Display, but the Berlin make my experience with Meta’s hardware feel borderline God-tier.

Outside of the dysfunction, there’s other shoddy UX, like the fact that when I ask “Hey Goya, what’s the time?” while playing music, the track pauses and doesn’t resume once I’m given an answer. To get your music back, you either have to whip out your phone and press play again or use a voice command and hope that Berlin’s AI assistant hears you.

Somewhat unique AI features don’t work much better. While I was excited to try out the “AI tour guide,” I couldn’t quite get that to work properly. I visited the 9/11 memorial, which is one of the suggested tour sites, and walked over to the fountain. I tried to trigger the tour by tapping and holding the glasses’ right arm (that’s what the company says you should do to activate AI tours), and it appeared to turn on Berlin’s computer vision, which correctly identified that I was looking at the 9/11 memorial in New York. Outside of that, it didn’t do much else—no further information or suggestions on where to go next. I’ve reached out to L’Atitude 52°N to confirm whether the feature is working properly and will update this review when I hear back.

The Berlin were, at least, fine with recommending things to do in New York, offering suggestions when I asked, but bad UX got in the way of that small success, too. After giving me a list of things I could do in New York, Goya asked me what sort of things I typically enjoy, and before I could answer, it just stopped listening—these smart glasses do that a lot, so get used to it.

Live translation is similarly wonky to use—I would call it borderline unusable. I tried on three separate occasions to translate a mix of either French or Spanish to English, and it failed all three times. The closest I got to the feature working was in a quiet coffee shop where a barista spoke some French, but it failed to understand his simple phrases. Goya also took a very long time to think about the translation, too, and I can’t imagine how awkward the interaction would be if you used this in the wild and another person was waiting for a response. Imagine a busy barista in Paris waiting awkwardly for your order? I literally shivered.

This last hiccup is particularly deflating, given the fact that L’Atitude 52°N positions its smart glasses as being useful for traveling. It’s even more deflating given that some of the worst smart glasses I’ve ever used, like the Dymesty AI Glasses, are okay at translation.

A few bright spots in Berlin

It’s a shame that L’Atitude 52°N fumbles AI so badly, because there are some redeeming aspects in the hardware department. Audio, for example, is better than I expected, and the Berlin get surprisingly loud without sounding too distorted. They’re not unseating the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, which are still (sadly) the best in the sound department, but they’re pretty damn good compared to what’s out there.

These smart glasses are so loud, in fact, that I was able to wear them on the subway and still kind of hear a podcast, which is more than I can say for Meta’s offering. Sure, they’re not going to make me swear off a nice pair of open wireless earbuds, like the Shokz OpenFit, any time soon, but I was still pleasantly surprised. Listening to music doesn’t sound tinny or cheap, and podcast audio was audible and clear.

Calling, however, was not nearly as good. I had a conversation for a few minutes on the sidewalk in New York, and according to the person I called, I was very hard to hear. The background noise was overwhelming. They rated the call quality a 2/10. For comparison, I’ve called people with the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 AI glasses on the sidewalk in Midtown Manhattan, and they didn’t even know I was in public.

Photo and video capture isn’t bad—at least most of the time. The Berlin glasses have a 12-megapixel camera sensor with a max resolution of 1080p at 30 fps. I was able to get some decent shots in full sun, like this one of the 9/11 memorial, but other times, it just missed the framing, like when I tried to send my partner a picture of the empanada I was eating. You can set pictures to either landscape or portrait aspect ratios, which is nice, though.

Video recordings can be set to record for 30 seconds, one minute, or three minutes total and are pretty smooth. I exported a video to my iPhone and then AirDropped that to my laptop to check the resolution, and it came back as 1,612  ×  1,014. Again, I don’t think these smart glasses are anywhere near challenging Meta’s Gen 2 AI glasses, which can record video at 3K resolution and up to 60 fps (higher fps is a max of 1080p), but they’ve got a fighting chance.

There are some privacy features built in, similar to other camera glasses, including a privacy light that flashes when you take a picture and record a video. I tested the privacy light by taking a video and then trying to obscure the light, and Berlin informed me that capture had been stopped, and then I needed to remove the obstruction before I continued recording. That won’t prevent anyone from using these for nefarious things, but they at least pass the bare minimum morality test. The privacy light is also a bit brighter than Meta’s, so points for Berlin there.

Though audio and video are solid, there are some dim spots in the hardware department. One of them is the touch controls on the right arm. You’re able to play/pause, skip tracks, and activate computer vision by tapping the right arm, but the Berlin are often late to register taps, which can cause misinputs. Luckily, there is a physical button on the right arm for taking pictures and videos, but that can’t be used for things like volume control. Bad touch controls are just another point of frustration in an already frustrating pair of smart glasses.

This will probably be an unpopular opinion, but I think the Berlin are pretty decent design-wise—I like that they’re going for something and not just defaulting to another Ray-Ban dupe like pairs from Rokid. And if you need to wear glasses, they’re also prescription-compatible according to L’Atitude 52°N. The included charging case is cool-looking as well, but it’s also humongous. This is not a case you’re going to want to walk around with unless you have a bag for carrying it in. The good news is, given the size, the case holds an additional five to six full charges, according to L’Atitude 52°N.

The battery is okay, but not spectacular. I ran a test by listening to music for an hour at 65% volume, and the Berlin dropped from 100% to 80%, which is actually better than I expected since the company estimates about 6 hours on a single charge with “mixed use.” Compared to the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 AI glasses, that’s a little worse on paper, since Meta rates its AI glasses for about 8 hours with mixed use and 5 hours with music playback, but it’s not a dealbreaker.

A bad L’Atitude

As I’m sure you’ve gathered, there isn’t a world where I would recommend spending $400 on these smart glasses, and I don’t think you should either. There are glimmers of what could be an okay pair, but glimmers don’t cut it for that price. If you’re the type of person who would wear a pair of smart glasses, Ray-Ban Meta are still—despite the utter disregard for user privacy and potentially ghoulish plans to imbue their glasses with facial recognition—pound-for-pound the best AI glasses out there at the moment.

If you’ve got Berlin on your radar, I’d recommend taking that $400 and putting it towards an actual ticket to Germany—you’ll most likely have a much less frustrating experience.