Your device
What the Spectacles 5 knows about you
Snap Inc (NYSE: SNAP; Santa Monica) announced its fifth-generation Spectacles at the September 2024 Snap Partner Summit: standalone augmented-reality glasses running Snap OS with dual see-through waveguide displays, hand-tracking, and a voice interface. The hardware weighs 226 grams, carries four cameras and a roughly 46-degree diagonal field of view on a dual Snapdragon system-on-chip, and runs about 45 minutes standalone. Crucially, Spectacles 5 is distributed to developers only, through a $99-per-month subscription with a one-year commitment in the US, rather than at retail. The AI is genuine and multimodal: Snap partnered with OpenAI and supports Gemini on Google Cloud, so developers build multimodal AI Lenses and the My AI assistant can read signs, translate menus, and identify objects from natural language, making AI a defining axis rather than veneer. The registry records it at pilot maturity to reflect the developer-only distribution, the short battery life, and the program gating. Snap has separately announced a lightweight consumer product called Specs for 2026, reported by the press at around $2,500 for a fall 2026 launch and backed by an April 2026 Qualcomm Snapdragon-XR partnership for on-device compute, but that is a separate, not-yet-shipped future product noted here rather than a distinct registry entry, and its pricing and specs are not Snap-confirmed.
Track the Spectacles 5 and we will tell you the moment its privacy, price, or safety record changes.
Track this device →What it knows about you
10 findings on record · 10 verified against primary sources
What it collects about you
Where your data goes
What you can control
What it collects about you
The data this device picks up.
Recording you
An LED blinks when internet-connected Lenses are capturing camera, microphone, or location data. Published Lenses that combine internet access with sensitive data must show an explicit permission prompt.
Your body data
Collects hand size, knuckle spacing, hand position and motion, voice data, and eye distance measurements. Face, hand, and voice data is deleted within three years of last use of Snapchat, or immediately on account deletion.
Your location
Precise GPS is off by default and only enabled if you turn it on, used for location-specific Lenses and geotagging. Camera and microphone access are mandatory for the device to work at all.
People around you
Spectacles collect information about the physical space including walls, windows, furniture, and whether the user is in a vehicle; the microphone picks up surrounding sounds, and the camera captures face landmarks and hand joints of people nearby for AR functionality, with no consent mechanism for bystanders beyond a small LED ring indicator.
Where your data goes
Who else can see it once it leaves the device.
Training their AI
Snap uses hand tracking, voice, and environmental recognition data to improve its AR machine learning models, and shares hand position and gesture data with Lens developers for Lenses to function.
Sent to the cloud
User captures stay on the Spectacles device and app until deleted; TrueDepth face data for eye-distance estimation is used in real time and not stored on Snap's servers, but other sensor data including surroundings, hand tracking, and voice transcripts are processed through Snap's cloud services and shared with Lens developers.
Shared with others
Snap shares Spectacles data with Lens developers who receive hand position and gesture information; Colocated Lens sessions share display name, device information, Bitmoji, and certain camera data with other participants; service providers also receive shared information.
What you can control
Your say over the data it holds.
How long they keep it
User captures such as photos and videos are retained until the user deletes them; biometric data including face, hands, and voice information is deleted within 3 years of the user's last use of Snapchat, or sooner if the account is deleted.
Deleting your data
Users can delete captures at any time via the Gallery or Spectacles App; account deletion removes all associated face, hands, and voice biometric data; users can change fit adjustments anytime in the app and download their data via Snapchat's tool.
Kept on the device
Captures stay on the device until deleted; eye distance data persists on the device; TrueDepth face data is processed in real time without server storage; however, processed sensor outputs including face landmarks and hand joints are shared with cloud services and Lens developers, indicating a hybrid architecture.
The full record
- Specs
- Spectacles 5 (announced Sept 2024): standalone, Snap OS, dual see-through waveguide displays, hand-tracking + voice UI; 226g, 4 cameras, ~46 deg diagonal FOV, dual Snapdragon SoC, ~45 min runtime. Distribution: developer-only via $99/month subscription, 1-year commitment, US only (NOT retail). AI: OpenAI + Gemini (Google Cloud) multimodal Lenses + 'My AI' (read signs, translate menus, identify objects). Next-gen consumer 'Specs' targeted 2026 (separate, not-yet-shipped).
- Form Factor
- wearable (standalone AR glasses; dual waveguide displays; multimodal AI)