Even G1 vs Hey Pocket in 2026

Even G1

The Even Realities G1 is minimalist display HUD smart glasses (44g, magnesium/titanium, looking like ordinary eyeglasses) with a monochrome green waveguide display and, deliberately, no camera, speakers, or audio. It does turn-by-turn navigation, teleprompter, real-time translation, notifications, and transcription well; its 'Even AI' is a thin cloud Q&A wrapper (Perplexity/ChatGPT), placing it at the veneer end of the AI-substance spectrum: the glasses are a good display device, the 'AI' is a light add-on. Pricing is $599 base, plus $150 for prescription lenses and $100 for a sun clip; about 1.5-day battery.

Hey Pocket

Hey Pocket, by Open Vision Engineering (San Francisco, a Y Combinator W26 company; CEO Akshay Narisetti previously built Omi), is a screenless AI voice recorder and 'thought companion'. The 52-gram device works standalone and MagSafe-attaches to the back of a phone, with dual studio microphones plus a contact microphone for calls and on-device storage, running multi-model cloud AI (routing across GPT-5, Claude, and Gemini) for transcription in 120+ languages, summaries, mind maps, action items, and an Ask-Pocket Q&A feature.

It sells for $99 at launch against a $199 regular price, with a free core and, distinctively, no subscription required (an optional Pocket Pro plan is $19.99 a month). DEPLOY records it at commercial maturity: a real, shipping product (live iOS and Android apps), not vaporware, and its AI substance is genuine. The editorial throughline is the no-subscription-core posture, a direct contrast to subscription-required rivals like Plaud.