Would you wear $200 smartglasses to protect your eyes from your monitor?
Razer's Anzu glasses also double up as polarised sunglasses
As more of us spend time staring at our gaming monitors all day, protecting your eyes from the blue light they emit has never been more important. If you've bought a new PC screen in the last couple of years, chances are there's probably a blue light filter built right into your display. Windows 10 has its own night mode you can toggle on and off, too. But would you go as far as spending $200 on a special pair of blue light filtering glasses? That's what Razer's new Anzu smartglasses are primarily all about, although they do double up as polarised sunglasses, too, and come with a built-in mic and speakers so you can take phone calls on them and listen to music. I swear I'm not making this up.
Announced overnight during their RazerStore Live event, Razer's Anzu smartglasses represent their first foray into the world of eyewear. Weighing in at just under 48g, they have blue light filtering lenses installed out of the box that cut down screen glare by 35%, according to Razer, but they also come with 99% UVA/UVB polarised sunglass lenses that you can swap in and out for when you go outside. You can also choose from circular or rectangular lenses depending on your preference, and prescription versions will be available as well thanks to their partnership with Lensabl.
The mad thing, though, is that you can also talk and listen to these glasses, as Razer have crammed a tiny omnidirectional microphone inside it and a pair of speakers inside the Anzu so you can take calls and listen to music with them. They also support Bluetooth 5.1, and Razer say their "industry-leading 60ms latency" will ensure smooth, stutter-free audio. The downside? They only have five hours of battery life, and you'll need to charge them up to carry on using them. This won't affect what the protection offered by the lenses, of course, but they may not last an entire Destiny 2 raid, for example, if you wanted to use them to chat with your mates.
The Anzu's frame also has touch-sensitive arms you can tap to skip, play or pause your music, take calls, and even use your phone's voice assistant. It's hard to say just how audible the Anzu's 'open-ear' sound will be to those around you, admittedly, but if the RazerStore Live hosts are to be believed in the video up top there, it sounds like (sorry) that you'll be able to listen to music without anyone being the wiser.
Perhaps they're more of a believe it when you see it (or should that be hear it?) sort of deal, but I don't know. Even if the music claims hold true, $200 still feels like an excessive amount of money to spend on something that's already built into a lot of gaming monitors as standard. Likewise, I'm also the sort of person who wears contact lenses precisely because I find my glasses to be intensely irritating, so actively choosing to put another pair on my face is just one big old NOPE.
Maybe I'm alone in this thinking, though, so I open it up to you. Would you pay $200 for Razer's Anzu glasses?