First Week with Snapchat Spectacles

I was lucky to get the Snapchat Spectacles as they showed up here in Honolulu on New Year’s eve for 1 night only.

They cost US$130 from a vending machine you have no doubt already seen and have been watching this site for updates. I found out about it via Twitter as I do most stuff.

I see the Spectacles as the iPhone 1 or the GoPro 1 of Snapchat and think they will be collectors items even if I dont use them again after this week — yes I saved the packaging!

Here’s a video I made editing together a bunch of snaps together with amazing ukulele soundtrack by Honoka and Azita:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BPBHE6QBnit/

First impressions

1. Easy to pair with your iPhone.
2. Easy to use — just put them on and click the button and it records 10 seconds of video with audio in a fisheye lens like the GoPro. The video is low res but there is HD that you can download over wifi. It automatically downloads from the Spectacles to your phone when Snapchat is open and then you can edit with stickers and text before uploading to your feed.

1. they come in these circle videos because the cool thing is you can move your phone around and the video can become widescreen not just vertical so the final video comes in that circle you see below.
2. That’s good for Snapchat — no good if you thought you‘d use this for Instagram stories too. It goes in there to just without the fullscreen.
3. The sunglasses are just plastic sunglasses and as you can see from my profile pic they have white circles in the corners and one them lights up when it is recording.
4. I really like the case because its also the charger all-in-one. The charge seems to last awhile.
5. I wear glasses so I had to put on contacts to do these moped shots but hey I’m used to it when I go to an IMAX 3D movie.

IMHO

You can read all about how this thing works elsewhere. So I will just give you my straight up opinion: they are great! And I dont really use Snapchat because my generation doesnt know how to use it (old people!) so only my close social media nerd friends are on it and the views I get are low compared to my Instagram Stories which are usually just crap photos not worthy of making it into my actual IG feed.

I loved the movie Strange Days by Kathryn Bigelow (starring a young Voldemort /new M)

I remember this teaser trailer on Apple.com that I thought was so cool:

That movie got a lot wrong but also a lot right — the selling of other people’s memories I can see this type of product turning into that (one day). Black market memories. Not just sexual but ones to cope with day to day stress, depression, anxiety. This thing is either a step forward or like the smartphone a step to the next stage of the singularity. VR/AR and whatever you call this — live video feed from your brain. Its coming, trust me — and Lenny Nero will be hooking you up.

The fish eye lens makes it feel like a GoPro but you dont have to buy a harness or a helmet to go handsfree and the 10-second (or 20 or 30-second) burst allows for less crap videos you have to edit later — though I wouldn’t take Spectacles on a surfboard either.

I tried editing some clips together but they don’t have the full screen when I reuploaded it to Snapchat — you know like how you could with Vine. Maybe version 2.0.

For a version 1.0 of a product it’s amazing. I can already see a bunch of things they will add to it in the future — and then I can see Instagram/Facebook copying it and tweaking it. Hey there are a dozen Spectacle accounts on IG already showcasing the best snaps. But when I tried to put my SC URL into my IG profile it wouldnt let me do it — interesting!

I just watched a hernia operation as shot with Spectacles via the @throughspectacles IG account. 😳

Another thing to mention is the brilliant distribution method. Those snapbot vending machines look cool and the brand is so on point with people lining up to get one and watching Twitter to see where it shows up next. You can try and get a pair yourself easily on Ebay with a $100–200 markup from the $130 retail price.

The people at Snap Inc are doing it right — I’m excited to see how this helps with their IPO. Everything I’ve seen them do inside the app is amazing — the geofilters, the stories, the content producers, the filters, the event videos. No wonder Facebook is going crazy with ads for Facebook live. It really is a competition for video this year.

As Lenny Nero puts it: “You can trust me, ’cause I’m your priest, I’m your shrink… I am your main connection to the switchboard of the soul. I’m the magic man… Santa Claus of the subconscious. You say it, you think it, you can have it.”

Follow me on Snapchat to see more of my shenanigans.