The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona may be Europe’s tech show, but in the past few years, the event has been dominated by Chinese phone companies like Xiaomi and Honor. This year, they’re joined by tech giant Alibaba, which unveiled its Qwen smart glasses at the show — and after trying them out, all I can say is, the 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 big-name models, and the company brought two different models to MWC.
The first pair, the Qwen S1 specs, has a heads-up waveguide display built into the lenses, and serves as a competitor to the Meta’s Ray-Ban Display model (minus the touch control). My first impression of these AR glasses was that they were light and comfortable to wear — I wouldn’t have known they were smart glasses by their weight alone. At the end of each arm are replaceable, easy-to-disconnect batteries to keep the glasses running for longer when you’re on the go.
The battery modules in each arm are easily replaced
I opened the glasses with the phrase “Hey Qwennie,” which he picked up with his five microphones. I then asked it to complete a series of basic tasks, including asking the device to take a photo and tell me what I was looking at while holding a photo of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia in front of my face.
I was able to see a small version of the image I captured on the green screen, and the glasses were able to answer my build question both by displaying text on the head-up display and through the bone conduction built into the S1’s arms. Perhaps my favorite feature, though, was the turn-by-turn directions. This feature felt like it could be useful for getting around a busy city, and it’s much easier to use than using a phone or smartwatch.
Here you can see where the heads up display is recorded with the left lens.
I also tried the teleprompter feature, which scrolled as I read aloud from the text on the screen but I have to admit I didn’t find it as easy to follow as the same demo I tried earlier in the week on the MemoMind One glasses. As the Qwen booth assistant spoke to me in Chinese, I was able to see and hear the English translation of her words on the screen and in my ear at the same time, although there was enough lag to prevent our communication from being completely smooth.
The second pair of glasses that Alibaba brought to the show were the Qwen G1 glasses, which do not have the head-up display present in the S1, but otherwise offer very similar features thanks to microphones, cameras and bone conduction.
The G1 glasses do not have the head-up display of the S1.
Overall, I’m impressed with the look, feel, sound quality and power of these glasses, which may be for many people their first introduction to Alibaba’s Qwen AI (in the form of the Qwen App, which is included in the specs). In China, where pre-orders for glasses are live, people wearing glasses will be able to complete tasks like ordering food or hailing a cab completely hands-free.
Alibaba said the price of the G1 glasses will start at around $275 (for comparison, Ray-Ban’s Meta glasses Gen 2 cost $379), but did not say how much the more advanced S1 glasses will cost. Official sales in China will begin on March 8, with Alibaba promising an international rollout including integration with popular global services scheduled for an unspecified date later in 2026.
