It’s no doubt that the next market everyone has their eye on is wearables. I have a strong feeling that 2014 is going to be all about the wearables, which makes plenty of sense, the smartphone market is pretty much locked up tight. We’ve already seen a few companies looking to create wearables similar to Google Glass, one that comes to mind is Recon Jet. Although they’ve just pushed theirs back til Spring 2014, unfortunately.
On Tuesday, another competitor to Google Glass has gone up for sale.This one is the Vuzix M100 Smart Glass. It’s got a 16:9 WQVGA display, which is equivalent to a 4-inch smartphone screen hovering 14-inches away. So think of it as the size of an iPhone hovering about 14 inches from your eye. It’s small, but it’s also much closer to your eye. There’s also a 5MP camera on board to take still images, and it’s capable of recording 1080p video. On the inside, there’s a 1GHz processor along with 1GB of RAM. It’s also running on Android. Although we don’t know which version of Android just yet. I’d venture to guess it’s either Jelly Bean or ICS. I think it’s too early to be KitKat. Even though KitKat is made for wearables. The Vuzix M100 can also pair with your Android phone, and run many Android apps out of the box (which is a huge plus in my book), as well as the ability to connect to WiFi networks.
While the Vuzix M100 are cheaper than Google’s Glass, by about $500. I think I’d still rather grab Google Glass, as we know they’ll be supported longer and get more Google services integrated. But it is nice to see more competition for Google and Glass. I’m excited to see some other OEMs come out with their version of Google Glass and see what they come out with.
How many of you are interested in the Vuzix M100 Smart Glass? Let us know in the comments below.