Smart AI glasses are getting popular, and many manufacturers are riding on this wave to offer more choices for the consumers who cannot afford premium AI glasses like Ray-Ban Meta AI Glasses. Padmate has had decades of experience in making wireless audio products, and I have reviewed numerous wireless earbuds made by them. With their expertise, they have now developed their own smart glasses called ViewMate, retailing at USD 199 (S$262), with USD 30 off when you order using promo code VIEWMATE30.
What are some of the benfits of wearing a pair of AI Smart Glasses:
- Content creation: capture first-person point of view videos and photos
- Listening to music and make calls
- AI assistant via image recognition
- Real-time translation
- App language supports 25 languages (English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Czech, Dutch, French, Greek, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Turkish, Urdu)
The ViewMate features the following specs:
- Sony IMX219 – 8MP camera
- JL7018F Stereo chipset
- Allwinner V821 AI processor
- WiFI 5GHz for data transfer
- Bluetooth 5.3 for smartphone pairing
- 2GB storage
- 290mAh battery
- 9 hours continuous music playing
- 2 hours charging
- 42.5 grams
The package comes with the frame, blue light filter lenses, dark lenses, charging cable, cleaning cloth, pouch. It is highly recommended that you get the optional PU leather glasses pouch to better protect the smart glasses (comes free for a limited time).
The smart glass frame is made of glossy plastic material (PC + ABS paint-coated finish). There are two physical buttons as well as a touch panel located along the right temple.
- Power: Press-hold front red button
- Take photo: short-press red button, or say “Hey Cyan, take a photo”
- Record video: double-press red button, or say “Hey Cyan, record a video”
- AI assistant: short-press rear button
- AI image recognition: double-press rear button
- Record audio: press-hold rear button
- Play-pause music: tap the raised touchpad area
- Next track: touch-hold touchpad
- Previous track: triple-tap touchpad
- Adjust volume: swipe forward to increase, swipe backward to decrease
POV Video Content Creation
For sure, the biggest benefit of wearing a pair of smart glasses with built-in camera is the ability to record videos from the first-person point of view, hands-free. Before ViewMate, I was using the Insta360 Go 3S for POV videos and it has very limited battery capacity. But without a doubt, the Go 3S video quality is far better. With the ViewMate, it requires good lighting and avoid harsh lights which cause haze and burnt highlights. The dynamic range is also more limited compared to the more premium action cameras or smartphones, but the footages look fine under indoor and low lighting with no frame loss.
The other limitation is that the microphones are so good with noise cancellation that the videos did not manage to capture any ambient noises other than my voice, and if I did not speak during the recording, then the video is practically silent. This is not good for vlogging, so a separate mic may be necessary for capturing audio and then sync it to the ViewMate video.
The video recording comes with duration options, from 15 seconds to 12 minutes max. While there is no option for unlimited recording, It would be wise to make recordings in short snippets instead of one long video, because you need to keep the app on the foreground during the file transfer, else the transfer would stop and you have to restart all over again. I set my duration to 3 minutes.
What the ViewMate offers is a casual solution to document first-person video footages that are quite invaluable. During my recent short vacation at Batam, I used the ViewMate to record me riding on the ATV. Though the Go 3S did a better job in dynamics and audio quality, the battery could not sustain the subsequent activities, while the ViewMate was able to continue shooting. Also, during video recording, the white LED on the left will light up for privacy reasons, but at least it does not look as obvious as a blinking red “recording” LED on other smart glasses.
On my review unit, the resolution of the photo output is actually 6560 x 4928, which is far higher than the “8MP” mentioned in the official specs. Also, the video output is actually 1600 x 1200, which is not “1080p”.
One mistake that I always make whenever I pair the smartphone with the ViewMate: when I use the smartphone to do video recording, it would use the PadMate microphone as an input source. Hence, you need to change the microphone source before you start video recording.
Handsfree Audio and Calls
With ViewMate, I am able to listen to music and take calls instead of wearing earbuds. The audio quality is loud and powerful at midrange, with little bass feel and rolled-off treble. At noisy places, it can be hard to hear the speakers, while at quiet areas, the speaker audio leaks and becomes audible to people around you. Mic quality is good in eliminating background noises, so the other party would have no problems hearing me, but I might have trouble hearing them at noisy places. It’s really a compromise: if the speakers are any louder, it would be too audible to people around you and you lose the privacy. The other option would be to switch to the smartphone speaker for all outputs.
AI Assistant
When you say the prompt phrase “Hey Cyan”, it will wake up the AI assistant to let you ask questions, just like Siri or Google. You can also ask Cyan to take a photo and describe what the photo, or ask about the object that you are looking at. The accuracy depends on whether the AI visual model can find the correct information.
What I gather is that the AI visual model is very detailed in describing the scene, most of which are quite accurate. However, I would prefer a more concise response as I always find the answers too long. Also, it is unable to perform actions outside the app, for instance, make a phone call or send message which Google is capable of.
During my use, I find that the AI assistant gets activated out of the blue, probably due to me saying something that sounded like “Hey Cyan”. The occurance was quite frequent that I had to disable the voice command option. I would prefer to initiate the assistant manually by pressing the rear button. The AI assistant functions cannot work when video recording is in progress.
On the whole, this feature is very useful and entertaining, and the AI voice is very realistic. But I don’t find it practical in real life scenario, as the visual model is limited by its database. If you really want a powerful AI assistant, then it is better to get a smart product that can integrate with Google or Meta.
AI Translate
The ViewMate supports three AI translation functions. First is on-screen translation, allow you to interact with another person by pressing the mic button and talk to the smartphone. For this feature, it uses the phone mic to capture the conversation and plays the audio to the ViewMate. The other party sees their own language through the phone towards their orientation, while you see the translated version. The translation is very fast and highly usable. You can also tap the play button on each dialog to listen aloud.
The second function is “Simultaneous Translation”, where the smartphone mic will pick up conversations in other language and you will hear the translated messages through the ViewMate speakers. What it cannot do is to allow the wearer to speak and re-translate it back to the native language. So this seems more useful to listen to people speaking in different language, so this is a very useful tool to use when traveling in a foreign country.
The third function is “Meeting Minutes”, which is just another variant of the above translation feature. What it does is that it will transcribe and translate what it hears into the main language that you select. After the recording ends, you can request for a summary as well as a “Mind Map” of the meeting content.
These AI functions can continue to work while video recording is in progress. They also work predominantly on the smartphone but requires ViewMate to be connected.
Overall Experience
As I have high myopia, I would need prescription glasses and so I am not able to wear the ViewMate all the time during my review. Of all the functions, I would use the POV recording the most. The AI translation is also impressive as it can perform translations and transcriptions really fast and accurate.
The battery can last a whole day or more if you leave it connected to your smartphone without much activities. I find that I was able to shoot about 30 minutes of video footage on-and-off before I need to recharge.
At USD 199, this pair of smart glasses are quite affordable when you compare to the other models in the market. No doubt some competitors have more advanced features, but so are their prices. The ViewMate is a good starter product for consumers who want to have some fun with this technology. If you need higher video quality, then you really need a good action camera to mount on your head. If you need a more intelligent AI assistant, then you have to pay more for more advanced models that cost more than double.
Would I wear smart glasses as a permanent accessory? Not at the moment, because some places might not be permitted to be worn and it would be a hassle to swap glasses. For now, smart glasses remain as novelty items for the every-day person with the major purpose of capturing occasional hands-free POV shots.
Likes:
- Affordable means of creating POV video content
- Useful AI Translation functions
- Good battery life
Dislikes:
- Microphone only records wearer’s voice, not surrounding ambient sounds
- Image quality is average
- AI assistant does not support external actions for now
The Padmate ViewMate smart glasses can be bought from the official website here: https://padmate-tech.com/en-sg/products/padmate-viewmate-ai-smart-camera-glasses-with-1080p-hd-recording-voice-control. Use “VIEWMATE30” code to get USD 30 off!
