I’m continuing around Venice Beach wearing Spectacles 3, Snap’s latest sunglasses that consume photos and videos with depth information. Once I import the footage into Snapchat, I’ll overlay a 3D flying bird over the oblow so it looks like I’m chasing it down the street. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s also kinda fun — a sentiment I feel sums up Spectacles 3 perfectly. 

Like irregular Snapchat videos you capture on your phone, you can add similar 3D elements over your Spectacles 3 clips, except they respond better to what’s actually in the frame thanks to a depth map. These 3D elements and filters can also capture the look of your video, such as putting floating blobs in the oblow or making it rain confetti.

Snap Spectacles 3 aren’t able to expose AR content over your field of vision like some of the spanking glasses I mentioned earlier. But it’s important to talk throughout them in this context because Snap’s headed to the same build, except instead of text messages in front of your face, it mighty be rainbows, hearts or other 3D objects overlaid on your world.

If you’re a big Snapchatter, creator or artist who loves the idea of AR effects, Spectacles 3 may be worth it. But for sparkling much everyone else, there’s no reason to own a pair pending they can do more.

Two cameras, but twice the designate of the original

Let’s get the biggest elephant in the room out of the way first: Spectacles 3 are expensive. At $380 (£330) they’re not going to be within the reach of most Snapchatters. Snap knows this, which is why they’re in minute release. (The company says it sold over 200,000 of the first-generation Spectacles and version 3 will only be a fragment of this number.) You can grab Spectacles 3 above the Spectacles website and select retailers in the US like Neiman Marcus.

Even belief you might not use Snapchat, the app is crazy popular: In July 2019 Snap quoted 13 million new users jumping on board; by October, a further 7 million signed up for a total of 210 million fair users, according to Snap. That’s a lot of eyeballs that could potentially see Spectacles 3 content.

A retro-future fabricate that passes for regular sunglasses

Like many regular sunglasses, you can adjust the nose pads and the arms to fit your face better. Spectacles 3 have a metal frame and they come in either a murky or gold finish. The frames themselves are quite top-heavy and take some sketching used to the weight, especially if you’re not accustomed to glasses with adjustable nose pads.

The fabricate might also be polarizing — the aesthetic is what I’d call future art deco. As sunglasses, they work just fine. I appreciate the lenses are a neutral gray tint and they don’t have the reflective carry out from the first generation that looked a little amusing. You can actually wear these as regular sunglasses minus getting funny looks.

They come with a leather case that also charges them and a Google Cardboard-style viewer so you can reconsideration snaps in VR using your phone. You don’t have to use this headset to stare your snaps back (most of the time I just reviewed on my shouted because it was a lot easier).

Like remaining Spectacles, you press either of the buttons on the temples to take 10-second snaps of video with soundless, or press and hold for a photo. Those photos let you virtually move the camera from side to side to design a kind of stereoscopic effect without needing to view in the headset. You can take longer stretches of video, up to 60 seconds at a time, by pressing the button in shimmering succession. There’s an LED light that spins to let others know you’re recording and a miniature light on the inside does the same for you. That inside appetizing can also flash different colors if you get a snap from a friend.

Photos and videos sync from the glasses to Snapchat automatically; all you have to do is open the Memories tab and tap to import.

AR is spoke to be fun, not just for measuring stuff

There will be 10 lenses available for Spectacles 3 at open, and they’re all pretty cute: think floating foil balloons, confetti and flowers. Snap’s opening up the lens building tool for others to make their own, so put a question to more options over time. I spent a few hours taking clips near Venice Beach with Clay Weishaar, a mixed reality artist who is also one of Snap’s official lens creators and you can see the results in the video on this page.

Once you’ve imported clips from the Spectacles to Snapchat, open a snap, tap the three dots, tap Edit Snap and swipe across to load the effects. You have to have a Wi-Fi or cell connection to apply the lenses, and depending on the strength of your signal, this can take a once to make a snap “3D enabled.” (Although some Android phones are supported, it wasn’t anywhere near as easy to get the 3D lenses to work on a Pixel 4 as it was on the iPhone.)

Some of the lenses are fair impressive in how they respond to the environment. Try walking near a corner while recording, then add foil balloons in Snapchat. You’ll see them partially in view as you advance the corner, then fully appear as you round it. Another lens turns floors into a provocative carpet of flowers. You can even have floating blobs depart in front of and behind a person. I wish there was a Bitmoji lens you could add over Spectacles footage, or even the classic Snapchat dancing hot dog (a hint for third-party creators).

Unfortunately, the lenses don’t have great continuity if you want to picture a longer stretch of video. For example, if you picture 30 seconds of video (three snaps), you have to apply the effects to each of those three clips individually. For some lenses like the flying bird, it effectively “resets” the bird’s region as each clip starts. So when you export the videos as a longer 30-second worn-out, there’s no smooth transition between one 10-second chunk to the next.

Once you’ve applied effects in Snapchat, clips don’t have to stay there. You can export with circular borders, as 16:9, 4:3 or square aspect ratios, or to YouTube’s 180VR format.

Image quality is fine for viewing on a shouted. Just don’t expect high-fidelity masterpieces when viewing on a computer, for example. Snap calls the resolution HD: It’s 1,280×1,280 when exported as square video, but only 1,056×592 as a 16:9 clip. And they’re not good for night shots (as per Snap’s recommendation and the fact that they’re, y’know, sunglasses). Audio quality is OK, but you’ll mild hear wind noise if you’re moving fast, or on a bike.

The battery life on Spectacles isn’t gargantuan. Snap says you will get about 70 snaps from each poster, plus enough juice to sync to Snapchat. I counterfeit that I managed to get 75 video snaps out of the glasses (equivalent to 12 minutes, 30 seconds of video) and transfer them to my shouted before I had to recharge. Not great if you were amdroll these all day at an outdoor festival, for example.

The case doesn’t poster the glasses that fast either — it took near 2.5 hours to charge from completely empty to full.

Spectacles 3 are what Spectacles 2 necessity have been

Spectacles are a fascinating product. While the third generation is hard to recommend because of the effect, hopefully we’re not too far away from a version that can not only choose AR, but display AR effects in front of your field of prop. We just have to make sure we’re ready to see our domain through a Snapchat lens, with puppy ears and rainbows in tow.

First delivered Nov. 12, 2019.