Lenovo recently launched Yoga smart glasses at the Berlin International Consumer Electronics Show. As Lenovo's first product for the consumer market, smart glasses are mainly positioned as next-generation wearable display products. Yoga smart glasses have a high pixel density display, are plug-and-play compatible, and are compatible with most USB-C devices. At the same time, for privacy protection, the device can also protect the user's screen privacy and set it to be visible only to the user.
"Early smart glasses have always been limited by content, and their research and development cycle is relatively long. In the game field, it is difficult for VR/AR devices to support 3A-level games." Fang Xing, senior product manager of Yoga smart glasses research and development, said.
He feels that the current display equipment is difficult to meet the needs of users for large-screen displays. Smart glasses can not only help users watch large screens anytime, anywhere, but also share video resources with mobile phones. At Lenovo's headquarters, Zhishi and a few media outlets experienced this product, which has not yet been released in China, in advance. What's so mysterious about these smart glasses? Let's take a look together.
Using BOE display and smart glasses to achieve localization of core components
Yoga smart glasses are designed to resemble sunglasses and connect to other devices through a data cable.
The smart glasses are equipped with two Micro-OLED screens developed by BOE, which can achieve 1920×1080 resolution on the micro screen.
Yoga smart glasses use Nedega's free-form diamond AR optical solution, users can get the visual effect of about 108-inch large-size TV at about 4 meters in the field of view. At present, Yoga smart glasses have three major features in the display field: high brightness, pure black without light, and a contrast ratio of 50,000:1.
In addition, Lenovo is also actively expanding the adaptation space of hardware. Yoga smart glasses support the USB-C interface and can support PCs, tablets, smartphones, game consoles, etc. that output the USB-C interface and DisplayPort (DP) protocol. In terms of battery life, according to reports, Yoga smart glasses can be connected to mobile devices to stream video or play games for hours.
The form of wireless smart glasses is still immature, and AR lacks killer applications
At the sharing meeting, in the face of the recent new products of smart glasses, Fang Xing believes that this is related to the maturity of the supply chain. "In the past, the technology and product yield rate was relatively low, the price of its products was relatively high, and the cost of the whole machine was also high, making it difficult to face the consumer market."
However, as domestic players continue to break through technical bottlenecks, both optical modules and microdisplays have been able to achieve relatively stable mass production in China.
In addition, Fangxing also analyzed that with the increase of players in this track, the cost of R&D investment by manufacturers has gradually decreased, and the current cost of smart glasses is enough to support its consumer market.
In terms of product form, Lenovo has repeatedly considered different product design directions, such as whether to adopt the design of wired smart glasses and whether to require a built-in operating system. Considering multiple factors, in the end, Lenovo still hopes that the smart glasses will focus on the screen display function, and position the Yoga smart glasses as the next generation of wearable display products.
"We haven't seen killer AR content yet. The current AR content in the market is difficult to attract most users to use it for a long time. Therefore, we still choose to focus on movie viewing and entertainment ." Fang Xing was talking about the development of smart glasses. Said to the time.
In addition, he also said that there are still certain technical bottlenecks in wireless smart glasses, such as how large-capacity and high-density batteries are integrated into smart glasses, and the current transmission rate is difficult to support smart glasses to display images stably.
The localization of the smart glasses supply chain is accelerating
Since the beginning of the VR/AR industry, Lenovo has been continuously deploying in this field, and the Yoga smart glasses are Lenovo's first step in the consumer smart glasses market. When laying out a new generation of products, Lenovo also leveraged its advantages in the supply chain field and adopted localized optical modules and microdisplays to promote the localization of smart glasses equipment.
Judging from the recent trends of Qualcomm, Lenovo, Meta and other giant companies, the Metaverse in 2022 is still one of the main themes of the industry. Among the new devices in the direction of smart wearables, smart glasses have become one of the easiest products to integrate with Metaverse devices.
However, in the process of experience, we can also clearly feel that the development of smart glasses is still in a relatively early stage, and its key issues such as myopia adaptation, wired form, product weight, and battery life still need to be improved. In the field of entertainment and viewing, it remains to be seen whether Lenovo Yoga smart glasses can seize the top market position.
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