Brilliant Labs is back with a sleeker, smarter pair of glasses—and this time they’ll even remember the names of people you meet. Priced at $299, the Halo smart glasses pack a surprising amount of AI power into a familiar Ray-Ban Wayfarer–style frame, aiming to bridge the gap between private, everyday eyewear and futuristic augmented-reality assistants.

Last year’s Frame glasses impressed early adopters with open-source hardware, AI-powered translations and object recognition, but their chunky design and $349 price tag felt like a developer’s proof-of-concept more than a consumer product. With Halo, Brilliant Labs has slimmed down the profile to just over 40 grams—comparable to many prescription frames—and cut the price by $50, bringing it in line with Meta’s Ray-Ban entry-level models. The company’s Singapore-based roots and open-source ethos remain intact: design files and code are freely available on GitHub for anyone who wants to tinker or prototype.

Rather than hiding its tech under the hood, Halo proudly showcases a 0.2-inch color microOLED display that beams a retro arcade–style user interface into your peripheral vision. It’s not full-blown AR in the sense of digital overlays that stick to the real world, but it does give you onscreen prompts, translations and contextual info right where you’re looking—no smartphone required. Bone-conduction speakers embedded in the arms deliver private audio cues, while a suite of low-power cameras and microphones feed data to an onboard Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for AI inference. All told, Brilliant Labs promises up to 14 hours of battery life on a single charge.

At the heart of the Halo experience is Noa, a multimodal AI assistant that now “speaks” more naturally than before. Noa can parse both what it “hears” through binaural mics and what it “sees” via its optical sensors, responding with contextually relevant information in real time—whether that’s identifying a landmark you’re staring at, translating a phrase in a foreign language, or answering off-the-cuff questions. Voice-activated controls have been expanded, too: you can now mute the microphone or put the display to sleep simply by speaking commands, eliminating the need for physical buttons or touch-sensitive surfaces.

Perhaps the most headline-grabbing feature is Narrative, a patent-pending “agentic memory system” that quietly logs your visual and audio interactions into a private knowledge base. Over time, Narrative learns the names and faces of people you meet, the topics of conversations you’ve had, and even the locations you’ve visited—allowing you to later ask, “Who was the woman I talked to at the conference yesterday?” or “What did my friend say about that recipe last week?” Brilliant Labs emphasizes that all this data stays on-device or in your personal cloud, with no third-party sharing by default.

Tired of hunting through app stores? Halo’s experimental Vibe Mode may be your answer. Simply describe the functionality you need—“Build me a walking-directions app that alerts me 50 meters before each turn,” for instance—and Noa will generate a bespoke application on the fly. These “vibes” can be saved, shared with other Halo users, or remixed to fit new use cases, creating an open-source ecosystem of voice-coded apps that evolve with community feedback.

While the Halo frame comes only in matte black and a single Wayfarer-inspired style, prescription lens wearers aren’t left out: Brilliant Labs has partnered with SmartBuyGlasses to offer corrective inserts that snap into the Halo frame post-purchase. The display optic itself is adjustable from +2 to –6 diopters, covering a broad range of vision needs without extra lens inserts. And true to its roots, the hardware and software are fully open source—developers can build custom features via Brilliant’s SDK, available in both Flutter for mobile and native APIs on GitHub.

Next-gen wearables often spark privacy concerns—constantly recording video and audio raises awkward ethical and legal questions, especially for bystanders. Halo’s Narrative system and bone-conduction audio aim to mitigate data leaks, but it still hinges on user trust and strong security practices. Brilliant Labs argues that keeping data on-device and giving users full control over what is stored or deleted strikes the right balance, though regulatory frameworks around always-on AI eyewear have yet to catch up.

Halo is available for preorder now in limited quantities via Brilliant Labs’ website, retailing at $299 USD. Global shipping is slated for late November 2025—just in time for holiday gift lists—and those who preorder get early access to Noa Plus, the startup’s premium AI subscription tier. Standard Noa services remain free but subject to daily caps, while Noa Plus unlocks unlimited real-time dialogue and enhanced memory capabilities (pricing TBD).