Watch Out, Meta. I Tried Alibaba's Qwen Smart Glasses and They're Mega Impressive

These AI-focused smart glasses are available now in China but will roll out internationally later this year. Mobile World Congress in Barcelona might be a European tech show, but for the past few years, the event has largely been dominated by Chinese phone companies such as Xiaomi and Honor. This year, they were joined by tech giant Alibaba, which launched its Qwen smart glasses at the show -- and having tried them, all I have to say is, Meta should watch its back.The Qwen glasses are among the first wearable devices Alibaba is building on top of its Qwen AI family of large language models, and the company brought two different models to the MWC. The first pair, the Qwen S1 specs, have a heads-up waveguide display etched into the lenses, and serve as a rival to Meta's Ray-Ban Display model (minus the gesture control). My first impression of these AR glasses was that they were light and comfortable to wear -- I wouldn't have known that they were smart glasses by their weight alone. At the end of each arm are swappable batteries, which snap off easily so you can keep the glasses running for longer when you're on the go. The battery modules on each arm are easily swappable Katie Collins/CNETI activated the glasses with the phrase "Hey Qwennie," which it picked up with its five microphones. I then asked it to complete a range of basic tasks, including asking the device to take a photo and to tell me what I was looking at when I held a photo of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia in front of my face.I could see a miniature version of the photo I captured in the green display, and the glasses were able to answer my architectural query both by displaying text in the heads-up display and through the bone conduction built into the arms of the S1. Perhaps my favorite feature, though, was the turn-by-turn directions. This feature felt like it could become essential for navigating a busy city, and far more convenient than using a phone or smartwatch. Here you can see where the heads-up display is etched into the left lens. Katie Collins/CNETI also tried out the teleprompter feature, which scrolled as I read out loud from the text appearing on the display but must confess I didn't find it quite as easy to follow as a similar demo I tried earlier in the week on the MemoMind One glasses. With the Qwen booth assistant talking to me in Chinese, I was able to see and hear the English translation of her words on the display and in my ear simultaneously, although there was enough of a delay to prevent our communication from being entirely smooth.The second pair of glasses Alibaba brought to the show were the Qwen G1 glasses, which lack the heads-up display present on the S1, but otherwise offer pretty much the same features thanks to the microphones, cameras and bone-conduction. The G1 glasses don't have the S1's heads-up display. Katie Collins/CNETOn the whole, I was impressed by the look, feel, sound quality and capabilities of these glasses, which for many people might be their first introduction to Alibaba's Qwen AI (by way of the Qwen App, which is integrated with the specs). In China, where preorders for the glasses are already live, people wearing the glasses will be able to complete tasks such as ordering food or hailing a cab completely hands free.Alibaba said pricing for the G1 glasses will start at around $275 (for comparison, Meta's Ray-Ban Gen 2 glasses cost $379), but didn't say how much the more advanced S1 glasses will cost. Official sales in China will commence on March 8, with Alibaba promising an international rollout featuring integration with popular global services scheduled for an unspecified date later in 2026.