Halliday G2 First Impressions: AI Glasses With No Camera

A minute into someone’s presentation, I’d stopped listening. So I pressed a button on my glasses, looked up, and there it was: what I’d missed, in order. Four seconds later I was back in, and nobody at the table knew I’d been gone. That’s the Halliday G2, and this is my first-impressions Halliday G2 review after wearing a pre-production pair in real meetings.

The G2 has a display in both lenses and no camera. Where plenty of AI glasses try to do everything, this pair picks meetings and keeps the rest simple. (Halliday sponsored this video. That pays for the work, it doesn’t buy the verdict.)

A second try after a rough first pair

The first Halliday glasses got rough reviews, and hardware companies rarely get a second chance after that. To their credit, they haven’t hidden from it: their COO told Engadget they made a lot of mistakes, spread themselves too thin and didn’t know how to manage manufacturing. Since then they’ve rebuilt the engineering team, cut back to fewer features done properly, and switched to a deposit instead of the full price up front.

So my question going in: did they fix it, or does it just look nicer?

Meeting Flow

Most work AI gives you a summary after everyone has left. Meeting Flow runs while the conversation is still going, and that difference is bigger than it sounds. You turn it on for a meeting, lecture or presentation, and most of it then works on its own:

• Thread tracker follows how the conversation moves from topic to topic and keeps that path in front of you. It’s what made me take these glasses seriously.
• Decision confirmation shows up when the room actually agrees on something.
• Commitment check catches a “let’s follow up next week” and flags that nobody owns it.
• Open item checker lists what’s still unresolved before the meeting ends.

It kept me more focused than I expected. It also labels my voice self and everyone else other, so the summary knows what I said versus what was said to me.

The button handles the rest. Quick Summary catches you up on what was just said (about a minute, in my case). Quick Research pulls up context on a term you don’t know, no laptop needed. My complaint: the button can only be set to one of the two, and you have to choose before a meeting you can’t predict. I’d like both.

Afterwards you get a summary with decisions, commitments, open items, next steps and the full transcript, and you can export it.

Everyday features

• Dashboard with your schedule, weather and reminders.
• Four open-ear speakers. A bit hollow for music, fine for calls and talky videos.
• Notifications from your phone. On my iPhone most came through, but it’s plain text only: no images, GIFs or videos, and emojis show as blank boxes.
• Halliday AI. Long press the button, ask out loud, get web results.
• Translation in over 45 languages, unlimited on every plan, free one included. With my parents and Chary speaking Chinese and Dutch, I got English in my lenses. There’s a small delay, but a few sentences stay on screen so you can catch up. This is the one I’d want on a trip.
• Cheatsheet, a teleprompter for notes or a script. I’m not dragging my autocue through an airport, and in a presentation you keep eye contact.

It’s a short list on purpose. Whether that feels focused or thin is up to you.

Design, weight and display

They look like normal glasses: thick acetate in a classic shape. The frames are bigger than some display glasses, but nobody looked twice. Chary says they suit me; I’m still deciding. They weigh 48 grams on my scale, a bit heavier than some, but comfortable. And with no camera, nobody has asked me to take them off in a meeting. Not once.

The display is what I’d flag. It’s readable and I never struggled with it, but text isn’t as sharp as on other display glasses I’ve used, which look crisper out of the box. It got better the more I wore them, so it might be fit or my IPD (I don’t wear a prescription). This is also a pre-production pair, and final units may be sharper.

It uses two micro-LED projectors, one per lens, each 600 by 300 pixels, monochrome green, rated at 1,600 nits. The first pair didn’t use waveguides, which makes this the biggest change. At 1,600 nits I could still read it outside in daylight.

App and controls

You set it up in the Halliday app, which also stores your transcripts. Unlike most display glasses, it won’t let you move the image up, down, closer or further.

After setup you barely need the phone. A touchpad on the right arm lets you swipe four ways and back through a proper menu, so almost everything is reachable from the glasses. The top button:

1. Long press wakes the AI.
2. Single press opens a shortcut you pick in the app.
3. Double press opens the control centre.

The trade-off is more steps and your hand at your temple a lot, and my long hair sits right on the touchpad. Annoying, but it never triggered anything.

Battery life

Halliday rates the G2 at 12 hours of typical use. Three hours of wear, one of them with Meeting Flow running, took me to 55%. That’s about six and a half hours, not twelve. Halliday told me continuous use of a high-power feature can drain it in about three hours, while standby lasts 60, so twelve is a middle figure. Back-to-back meetings mean charging. It’s quick, though: 20 minutes gets you to around 80%.

Price and subscription plans

The Halliday G2 costs $600, with an early bird deal at $549 that includes $50 off plus some extras. Translation, the AI, Cheatsheet and notifications are unlimited on every plan. Meeting Flow runs on credits:

• Pre-orders include a free year of the Basic plan, about four hours of Meeting Flow a month.
• After that, the free tier gives around two hours a month.
• $10 a month gets you four hours, $20 gets you ten.
• The top plan, for heavy meeting users, is $99 a month.

If Meeting Flow is why you want them, check which plan fits your week before you buy.

Halliday G2 review verdict so far

Did they fix it? On what I’ve used, yes. The meeting software is more finished than I expected from a company that got it this wrong the first time, and it keeps me in the conversation instead of catching me up afterwards. I have a working unit, not a render and a promise, but you’re being asked to pre-order, so my read is cautious, not cynical.

It’s a first impression, not a verdict. I haven’t had the back-to-back meeting weeks these are built for, and I haven’t compared them with the other display glasses on my desk. That’s our next video, against a pair doing live conversation work that’s further along on software. It comes down to whether you want glasses that do a lot of things or one thing properly. If it’s the G2, you can find it here.