At the new product launch in October 2022, Lawaken launched two products – Meta Lens S1 and Meta Lens S1 Pro. The editor got Meta Lens S1 and conducted a long period of experience evaluation.
What is the experience of Meta Lens S1, which uses Micro LED screen and focuses on outdoor cycling scenarios?
Micro LED+diffractive optical waveguide, supporting eSIM, specially designed for outdoor cycling scenes
Meta Lens S1 glasses adopt color contrast design. The glasses frame is white, and the lenses are silver. The lenses can be removed and replaced. Its appearance is avant-garde and bold. The editors feel that the rate of return is much higher when they wear it these days.
If we compare some split AR eyewear products, we can find that its “three dimensions” are a circle larger than other products, and the measured weight of the eyewear body (including lenses and nose rest) reaches 94g. However, I didn’t feel too much weight anxiety when I actually wore it. The weight of the mirror legs and the frame is relatively balanced, and it is equipped with a non sensory nose support, so I won’t feel heavy when I wore it.
Lawaken’s team said that AR glasses should avoid homogeneous competition with VR technology, and must go out of doors to give full play to the real advantages of AR technology. If you want to go outside, the display brightness has become the first problem faced by the product. Among many AR eyewear products that Top Gun has experienced in the past, most of them have low brightness and are not friendly for outdoor use.
Meta Lens S1 adopts the optical scheme of Micro LED+binocular diffractive optical waveguide. Micro LED has a series of advantages such as high brightness, high contrast, long life, excellent volume control, etc. It is one of the ideal display technologies for AR glasses in the future.
The optical mechanical supplier of Meta Lens S1 is JBD. From the parameters, its optical mechanical volume is only 0.5cm³， The weight is 0.6g, and the highest average brightness reaches 1150 nits. However, its screen can only display a single green screen, which is not a suitable choice for some movie lovers. However, the focus of this glasses is not on the viewing scene.
In other aspects, Meta Lens S1 also introduced the “single machine dual vision” technology: that is, a light engine is used to achieve dual vision display. The single beam is separated into two beams by a beam splitter prism, which are respectively displayed on the left and right sides to achieve binocular balanced display.
“Single machine and double eyes” are rarely used in the industry. The advantage of the scheme is that only one optical machine is used, thus saving costs; In addition, since the light coupled by the optical machine will have many branches, the “single machine binocular” will distribute two branches to the left eye and the right eye, improving the utilization of light and reducing the energy consumption of glasses. Finally, because the left and right eyes of the glasses use a whole piece of glass, the parallelism of the waveguide plates on both sides can be guaranteed, so it is more conducive to image combining.
However, it is not without shortcomings. The disadvantage is that the images displayed on both sides are identical, and it is impossible to achieve binocular differential display, so it is impossible to present 3D effects; In addition, the optical machine needs to be placed at the bridge of the nose, which makes the glasses need to have a very thick beam. If you want to build lightweight glasses like OPPO Air Glass 2, this scheme is not applicable. However, this point is put on the Meta Lens S1, and there is no great sense of disobedience, because this kind of cycling glasses itself has a beam.
In terms of product form, Meta Lens S1 adopts an integrated design, equipped with Snapdragon 4100 processor, and 1 GB RAM+8 GB ROM. Glasses can complete motion recording, music listening, navigation, photography and other operations without relying on mobile phones and other devices. The battery capacity of the glasses is 300mAh, which can provide more than two hours of endurance in normal use. However, if multiple functions, such as navigation+music playback, are enabled at the same time, the actual endurance of the gyroscope is about one hour and twenty minutes in a continuous use environment.
In terms of network, in addition to supporting Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, Beidou and other protocols, it also introduces support for the eSIM network. Currently, an order will give free traffic for one year. In other aspects, Meta Lens S1 is equipped with an 8 megapixel camera, which supports photography and video recording, but does not support SLAM and gesture recognition.
| Product Name | Lawaken Meta Lens S1 |
| From | All in one |
| Heavy | 94g with light shielding lens |
| Screen Type | Micro LED |
| Optical Solution | Binocular diffractive optical waveguide |
| Eye brightness | up to 1150 nits |
| FOV | 30° |
| Display Screen Size | 316 inch screen equivalent to 15 meters distance |
| Resolution | 2 x 640 * 480 |
| Diopter Control | Optional light lens |
| Camera | 8 megapixels, 120 degrees |
| CPU | Snapdragon 4100 |
| Memory | 1G RAM + 8G ROM |
| Network | eSIM 4G, WIFI, Bluetooth |
| Navigation | GPS, BDS |
| Battery | 300mAh |
In addition to the eyewear, its charging compartment is also a highlight. Its shape is similar to the space capsule. Through the transparent panel in front, you can vaguely see the eyewear body, which has a sense of technology. It is also a very good decoration on the desktop. Its battery capacity is 2500mAh, and it is equipped with indicator light for users to check the charging condition of the glasses box and glasses. The charging box can charge the glasses 7-8 times, which is very convenient for outdoor carrying.
Evaluation of actual riding experience: ultra-high portability, optimized interaction for navigation
At present, Meta Lens S1 can realize several major functions, such as walking/cycling sports prompt, map navigation, music playing, photography and photography, among which sports prompt is one of the core functions of Meta Lens S1.
When the walking/cycling function is turned on, it will display in the interface such detailed information as exercise duration, mileage, steps, speed, and heat consumption, which is somewhat similar to the code meter and other products. However, compared with the code meter, Meta Lens S1 can provide a more intuitive information prompt effect.
The information on the glasses can be displayed directly in front of your eyes, which is similar to the intelligent assistant in the Iron Man film, with a sense of science fiction. In addition, its privacy is commendable. It adopts a diffractive optical waveguide scheme and is wrapped with a layer of reflective lens, which is very similar to riding glasses. It is difficult for others to perceive the content displayed on the glasses screen.
It is worth noting that although the sunscreen can effectively block the strong light in the daytime and improve the display saturation, scenes such as riding at night are easy to block the line of sight. At this time, the gyro king is used to taking off its sunscreen for use, but this exaggerated shape is easy to attract others’ attention.
During the sports experience, the editor noticed that the screen display distance of glasses is much longer than that of some movie watching products. Generally, the screen display distance of AR glasses products is more than 4 or 5 meters, while that of Meta Lens S1 is 15 meters. This should be a deliberate optimization design for sports scenes such as cycling. Similar to the car HUD, if the display distance is too close, the user’s vision will switch back and forth between reality and the screen, Vulnerable to danger.
In addition, the highest average brightness of Meta Lens S1 has reached 1150 nits, which makes it easily competent for most outdoor use scenes. The actual measurement shows that in the cloudy day scene, the text information of glasses looks very clear and there is no obstacle to reading. In the direct sunlight environment at noon, the text will fade, but still maintain a certain readability.
After the exercise, the data will be synchronized to their mobile APP for later management and viewing. What you think needs to be improved is that Meta Lens S1 can only record the user’s motion information when the motion switch is turned on, and it can’t monitor all day, so it will lose a lot of motion data when it is used.
In terms of interaction, Meta Lens S1 provides physical buttons, touchpad and voice. Its right mirror leg is equipped with a physical key and a touch pad. The key is used to switch the machine and the switch screen, and the touch pad is used to select the function menu.
In addition to touch input, Meta Lens S1 also supports voice recognition function, which can realize various operations through voice commands.
As a riding glasses, Meta Lens S1 has a very convenient experience in the navigation function. After voice wakes up, you can directly say the navigation command, such as voice saying to a certain address, and the screen will prompt you with several options you have searched, and the user will be prompted with which voice to choose. Then the user directly selects, and the navigation will start directly.
As users can not free their hands during the ride, the humanized voice interaction brings ultra-high portability to the ride.
In addition to the navigation function, you can also use the navigator to achieve more functions, such as music playing (navigation and music playing are not included in the menu bar of glasses).
There are two ways to play music in glasses: one is to play online music through eSIM networking, and the other is to connect a mobile phone to act as a Bluetooth headset. It is measured that when music is played in the office and other scenes, when the volume is adjusted to less than 50%, the outside world can hardly hear the sound of glasses.
However, the navigator is not “AI” enough at present, and there are many details that need to be polished. For example, using the navigator’s preset alarm clock will cause bugs; in addition, the navigator cannot “understand” relevant instructions such as “help me halve the volume”, “how much battery left?”. It is hoped that the official can improve this function through OTA in the future.
Record Vlog at any time, and record new ideas from the first perspective
In addition to motion prompts and map navigation, taking pictures is also one of the highlights of Meta Lens S1: after the voice command is called out, a viewfinder box will appear on the screen, and you will aim your eyes at the scene to be photographed. Wait a moment, and a picture will be shot. The video recording process is similar to that.
The photographing process of Meta Lens S1 is very simple: it can not perform real-time preview, focusing, dimming and other operations. Because glasses are worn on the head, the so-called moving mirror is actually moving the head.
You can view the captured content with the help of APP. This process is a bit like opening a blind box. Once, you found that the photos you took showed serious glare, which made you realize that the lenses of your glasses were not cleaned. In addition, because its FOV is only 30 °, the size of its imaging picture is much larger than the picture seen by the viewfinder.
The editor uses the iPhone 11 Pro and smart glasses at the same location to take photos straight out. Although the image performance of Meta Lens S1 is slightly inferior, thanks to its wide-angle camera, the image capture range is also wider. Considering that glasses are not professional cameras, and compared with riding with a traditional camera, glasses are obviously a better choice.
In terms of video, perhaps due to memory and power consumption, it does not support long video recording. The video recording duration is 15 seconds, which is suitable for publishing short videos and social platforms. Thanks to the characteristics of its first angle of view, it can take some photos or videos from a unique angle such as looking up and following. It is a good choice to take pictures of Vlog when riding.
Summary
Compared with other AR and intelligent eyewear products, Meta Lens S1 is more accurate and vertical in positioning, and for its main scenes, all aspects of detail polishing can also be remarkable. For some users who pursue technology and trends and want to record sports and life, Meta Lens S1 is a device worth tasting. We can also see from Lawaken that the era of AR glasses is just beginning.
More AR Glasses, please take a look at the online shopping site: https://amzn.to/3hTL9cz
