Xiaodu Pro AI Glasses vs Omi in 2026

Xiaodu Pro AI Glasses

The Baidu Xiaodu Pro AI Glasses are camera-and-audio AI glasses with no display (explicitly not AR glasses): 39 grams, titanium hinges, a Sony 12-megapixel camera (4K photo, 1440p/30fps video), a four-microphone array, and prescription-lens support, in Boston and Cat-Eye styles. They went on sale in China on November 11, 2025 via JD.com and Tmall at 2,299 yuan, roughly $322, with next-day delivery.

The AI is genuine and primary, built on Baidu's ERNIE large language model (first-person 'ask about what you see' Q&A, object and calorie recognition, encyclopedia lookup, audio and visual translation, reminders), and made via Baidu's Xiaodu Technology subsidiary; the assistant runs on ERNIE, not on Xiaomi's XiaoAI. They complete the Chinese consumer wearable-AI cohort alongside Xiaomi AI Glasses and the RayNeo V3.

Cap-flag: pricing is China-market CNY (the USD figure is a conversion) and the glasses are not officially sold outside China; the AI is cloud-dependent rather than on-device.

Omi

Omi, by Based Hardware (founder Nik Shevchenko, San Francisco), is a shipping AI necklace in the ambient-recording 'second brain' category: a small circular orb on a neck lanyard that captures conversations and runs them through GPT-4o for ambient transcription in 25+ languages, auto-summaries and tasks, a searchable memory database, daily recaps, and a 'Brain Map'. It sells for $89 as a consumer unit (about $70 dev) one-time, with a free tier (unlimited on-device transcription plus 1,200 cloud minutes a month) and an optional Omi Unlimited plan from $16 a month; the user owns the device.

It is one of the few genuinely open-hardware entries in the cohort: an MIT-licensed GitHub repo of about 12,700 stars with firmware, apps, and open hardware designs, maintained into 2026. The AI is genuine cloud functionality, not veneer. One significant cap-flag: the aspirational brain-interface and EEG 'reads-your-mind' marketing is not the shipping product, which is audio-only; the BCI module is roadmap with no code, and TechCrunch could not verify it. (Omi is distinct from Friend, Avi Schiffmann's pendant; Shevchenko's device was originally also named Friend and was renamed Omi.)