Can 'Specs' Snap Snap's Losing Streak?

Look, it's easy to dunk on Snap's new Specs.¹ They're big and bulky, last for four hours, and cost $2,195. That said, there are obviously impressive bits too – namely in the fact that they don't require you to tether to a power brick (as the Vision Pro does) or a puck (as Meta's AR glasses have thus far). The main thing I'm worried about is that they're seemingly not ready to let anyone actually use them yet. Perhaps not a surprise given they're aiming to ship in the fall. But who on Earth would pre-order these at that price point without at least someone vouching for them? Snap may be popular with the youths, but they're not Apple when it comes to consumer hardware. Also, even Apple has had a hell of a time selling the Vision Pro.

To be fair, people have been trying the Specs for quite a while, but older versions that were a dev kit for this one. The impressions range from people impressed by aspects to those frustrated by many others. That, I suspect, will be roughly the same reaction to these consumer-oriented Specs. But again, it's just hard to see how you can justify the price point. Snap itself can because they have a business to run. And well, it hasn't been running so smoothly, at least from a stock perspective in recent years. The reality here is that they simply can't afford to sell these Specs at a massive loss, quite literally.

And while Evan Spiegel is quick to point out that the original Mac was also insanely expensive, and that the Vision Pro still is, again, Snap is not Apple. And again, the Vision Pro hasn't sold well! Neither did the Mac at first!

So why on Earth is Snap launching these now?

Well, for one thing, Spiegel said they would. He previously promised they were coming in 2026. Lest his product be tagged with the dreaded "vaporware" label, he's aiming to get them out the door before the end of the year – note the "Expected to ship starting Fall 2026" wording on their site.² "Expected" is seemingly doing some work there...

For another thing, as mentioned, Snap is in a tricky spot as a company. While the core product, Snapchat, continues to hum along with their key demographic, life as a public company is hard. They've simply never been able to monetize as well as their main rival Meta and that, in turn, has given them even less leeway with Wall Street when it comes to far afield bets such as this one. Also, Wall Street has long hated Meta's bet on the Metaverse and clearly views this as analogous – though again, without the great profit engine to back it up.

Spiegel would say – and is saying – that Specs are simply an extension of what Snap has always been doing with Snapchat. That is, a "more human" approach to bring technology into your life. And that they've owned and perfected "AR" for years at this point, albeit on smartphones. Again, Specs aim to bring that further into the real world. Spiegel is good at selling his vision, he always has been, the problem comes when he actually puts on the product (more on that below).

But the real problem is the price point. Thinking through the strategy a year ago, I noted that it felt like sub-$1,000 was key – and the closer to $500, the better. Well, there goes that dream. You can blame tariffs or trade wars or actual wars or memory chip wars, the reality is that $2,195 is just not going to cut it. It's just hard to see anyone buying it, be it Wall Street all the way down to consumers.

That's harsh, but also just reality. At the same time, it is hard to see what other choice Snap has. Their attempt to make the Spec's business a separate subsidiary with other funding possibilities hasn't eased Wall Street concerns. Meanwhile, the aforementioned Meta and Apple continue work to come after the space. Those efforts seem further out with "smartglasses" (think: less AR and more AI) the focus for now.

Therein probably lies the answer. Snap probably should have doubled down on AI instead of AR. But hindsight is obviously 20/20 – even in Specs. One can almost envision a world in which Snap was a player in "human-centric AI" right now, an angle that everyone from Meta to Microsoft is trying to own as the backlash against AI continues to swell. Meta was able to pivot from their Metaverse bet, but it took billions upon billions of dollars. Snap simply doesn't have that luxury. Or time.

Because, again, Wall Street continues to punish the stock. To the point where at some point, one has to imagine Snap is an attractive takeover target. Thanks to founder-controlled shares, a hostile takeover seems unlikely if not impossible, but Spiegel still has a fiduciary responsibility to take any offers on the table seriously. Snap is currently an $8B company. That's like an AI seed round these days...

The better option may be for Spiegel and team to team up with some PE players to take Snap private again. The Dell playbook is what I'm imagining here. Back in 2013, the company was downtrodden when Michael Dell concocted the largest LBO ever at just under $25B. This allowed Dell to operate back under the covers of being a private company while they reworked the business.

It worked. Dell later went public again and is now valued at $260B. That's undoubtedly an unreasonable goal, but there's a lot of room between Snap's $8B market cap and Dell's $260B. Coincidentally, Snap's peak market cap five years ago was exactly half of Dell's right now: $130B. Sure, it was inflated as many such things were during the pandemic, but wow, that's quite a steep drop.

Anyway, back to the Specs themselves. In a certain light, from certain angles, they actually look pretty good. Granted I may be biased as someone who has worn thick black-rimmed glasses much of my life, but still... you could see them working. Then you see them on actual people, not in their marketing shots and they look... well, not great, Bob. Still entirely too thick and bulky.³ Like glasses that a caricature of a mobster in the 1970s might wear. Or someone who needs the thickest prescription lenses you can buy.

Again, with no puck for either battery or compute, this is not a surprise. But we're still clearly not at the point where we can ditch the puck yet. Four hours of battery life is okay... unless you actually need to wear the glasses to see.

So no, these aren't actually replacements for real glasses, which Meta Ray-Bans can be if you were so inclined. That doesn't mean they're useless, it just means it's still way too early to push ahead here with such specs for Specs.

Obviously how they do their core task, AR, will matter. But again, no one knows for sure yet because Snap isn't letting anyone know for sure yet. And again, the dev kits suggest some interesting elements, but it's early. Far more interesting may be the notion of using these as a secondary monitor for your computer, which Spiegel says is one of his core use cases. This is certainly a compelling use case for the Vision Pro too, but that device is so comically cumbersome to put on and start using that it's a non-starter for most. But a headset you simply slip on, with no cables required?...

But then it comes back to: would I pay $2,195 for that? I mean it's better than the Vision Pro's $3,499! But it's still way out of range for most consumers. Which Snap obviously has to know, I'm just not sure they had any other choice but to launch here and hope that some use case boosts them to the point where they can survive until a simpler, svelter, and cheaper version is ready. Can Snap make it long enough as a stand-alone entity to find out? The question simply must be asked, sadly.

¹ Especially, it seems to me, on Threads, owned by Snap's main rival, which is interesting in a Twitter-under-Elon sort of way, though perhaps not unexpected in a self-selecting sort of way... ↩

² I will say the virtual "try-on" element of the site is one of the best I've seen. It's so simple – though also oddly in black and white? ↩

³ I do appreciate Harry McCracken's note on the matter: "The new version is 40% lighter, has more than five times the claimed battery life, offers a wider field of view, and, though still decidedly chunky, no longer vaguely resembles a Cybertruck affixed to your face." ↩