Making a real spectacle of yourself
Readyfor yourclose-up? Snapchat’snewSpectacles letyoumakefun,shareable videoswhileoutandabout
Snapchat is a phenomenon. Founded only seven years ago in California, it captured the imagination of young users with its fun smartphone app that sends self-destructing photos and short videos to your friends. It has more than 150million daily users and now has a stock market value of about $15billion.
In order to continue fuelling growth and expansion, the company has moved in to hardware and this has come in the form of an oddlooking pair of glasses. These are no ordinary sunglasses and they can record up to ten seconds of video that you can post online, wirelessly.
Unpacking the Snap Spectacles reveals a pretty standard pair of vintage-style sunglasses. The sandwich-shaped storage case also doubles as the charging unit and there’s a special Spectacles USB charging cable included.
You charge up the glasses and you then use the Snapchat app itself to pair them to your smartphone using Bluetooth. The app shows your unique code and you simply look at the code with the glasses on for the seamless pairing process. Using the glasses is, well, a snap. There are two small circular rings at the top of each lens, and one of these contains the video camera. On the left arm of the glasses, near the front, is the record button. To start recording video, you simply tap this button. To let your friends or family know the camera’s rolling, a small circular light on the front of the glasses will pulse, warning people they should put on their best face. It’s like a digital version of ‘say-cheese’ but it’s clever and helps Snap indicate that these are not intended as an intrusive technology, but a fun one.
When the video is finished, because the glasses are connected by Bluetooth to your phone the video will appear in the Snapchat app on your phone, in the Memories folder. Once it’s there, you can decide if you want to post it to Snapchat, or save it to your phone or share it other ways.
I was a little disappointed with the battery performance and I didn’t find it worked that well in low light.
But the pairing process is simple and the daylilght video quality is good. Most of all though, these are incredible fun. Snap have been careful to design them so people know what they are and video is being filmed. The build quality is excellent and the charging case is clever and compact with a rugged style USB cable.
Snapchat changed how a generation take photographs and with Spectacles, they’re likely to have another hit on their hands.