I swapped my Ray-Ban Metas for these $20 smart glasses just to mock them — then they actually impressed me

(Image credit: Future)

In a time where we’re all feeling the pinch, dirt cheap tech is becoming the main way to treat ourselves, and the $20 wearIQ bluetooth glasses really give an experience that feels more than its price tag.

I didn’t expect to be writing those words. Instead, I was ready to dunk on them hard. But with a better microphone than I expected, decent speakers and a shockingly good battery life, these feel like just the right amount of smarts for most folks reading this.

But switching to them showed me you can actually get a pretty impressive pair of specs for $20, and made me question whether there’s such a thing as smart glasses getting too smart.

Can you actually call them “smart?”

Of course, it’s worth me noting what these actually are. They’re called “smart glasses,” but…well…they’re not. Think of them like a pair of bluetooth headphones with the tech packed into a pair of specs.

There’s no smart stuff in the glasses like some of the local AI capabilities you’ve got on your Ray-Ban Metas — all the smarts are completely dependent on that phone in your pocket.

That’s not to say that’s a bad thing (and I’ll go into that later), but your mileage will vary based on the smart assistant. On an Android phone? Great, you’ve got Gemini at your fingertips.

For iPhones, you’re stuck with Siri, which will be getting better soon through the sheer force of $1 billion per year to use Google’s Gemini, but your functionality is definitely going to be simpler for now.

The corner cut

And then that’s when I get into the one place where you can really feel that $20 price — the speaker quality. To wearIQ’s credit, I wasn’t expecting “great” or “good.” With managed expectations, I can safely say that the sound is “fine.”

Kudos to the team, the speakers here do have decent sound definition and clarity, and the volume is enough to hear phone calls on busy streets without distortion.

But with literally zero bass, don’t expect an auditory journey through your favorite albums. Keep your earbuds with you for that, and use these specifically for calls and a back and forth with your AI.

Feels like more than $20

With those early takes out the way, I got into actually using them and you know what? They’re better than I expected. With a huge variety of styles to pick from, there’s an aesthetic to match anyone, and without the obvious camera up front, people don’t do a double take thinking you’re spying on them.

Then comes the on-board microphone. When my mom called me, I was fearing the worst — a basic mic experience that is quickly washed out by surrounding noise (and yes, I did the dreaded running the kitchen tap test on it too).

But the wearIQs really held their own throughout most of my tests, and only really broke down when walking facefirst into gusty/windy conditions (the same point that I became impossible to hear on my Ray-Bans).

And finally, battery life has become a bit of a running joke for smart glasses. If you look at a pair funny, they do have a tendency of dropping to zero real quick. But what may be these “smart” glasses’ weakness (not actually being smart) may be one of its greatest strengths too, because these last long.

Taking a pair to CES 2026 and casually using them as I would any glasses (couple phone calls, some asks to set reminders and take quick notes), I got through two whole days before being warned about the low battery.

Just the right (cheap) middle ground?

My time with these glasses got me thinking about the whole idea of smart glasses. As the guy who regularly looks a little silly wearing AR and AI specs on this website, I’m very much on the lookout for that moment that I can say “the future is here.”

That moment where smart glasses are fully capable standalone devices while also being small and sleek enough to look like a normal pair of spectacles. Spoiler alert: we’re getting there, but the more technologically advanced pairs look a little silly on your face.

But…do you care? In the here and now, is the vision of glasses replacing your phone actually something the people want? Or are we all happy staying at the stage of not giving up our phones and just having something dirt cheap that is linked to it?

I’m thinking the answer is probably a resounding “yes,” but I’d love to know your thoughts in the poll below.

Outlook

My own existential crisis about smart glasses aside, let’s wrap this up. There are things about the wearIQ glasses that I can pick apart in comparison to the Ray-Ban Metas I swapped them for. But all of that melts away when you remember they’re $20.

All the styles you can pick from, the decent sound quality for calls, the strong microphones and that impressive battery life — all for the same price as a fajita at Chili’s. In a time when we both want to treat ourselves, but are really feeling the pinch, the wearIQs are a winner.

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Jason brings a decade of tech and gaming journalism experience to his role as a Managing Editor of Computing at Tom's Guide. He has previously written for Laptop Mag, Tom's Hardware, Kotaku, Stuff and BBC Science Focus. In his spare time, you'll find Jason looking for good dogs to pet or thinking about eating pizza if he isn't already.

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