Vuzix Blade AR smartglasses are now available to pre-order from $999

Vuzix has announced that its pair of Blade smartglasses are now available to pre-order, after first being unveiled last January.

The glasses, which will be on show at CES 2019 next week, provide wearers with a view of the real world while concurrently allowing AR images to be shown and managed in a window.

First look: We test out the Vuzix Blade

Aiming to be the first consumer-facing device to hit the mainstream, the $999 asking price is notably less than the recently launched Magic Leap One AR goggles and Microsoft's HoloLens, which has so far focused on enterprise. As such, the Blade has been designed to overlay information such as GPS mapping, restaurant menus, weather information, sports updates, health data and more.

And really, that makes them much more like Google Glass than the aforementioned devices, which act more as headsets. However, as we found in our initial hands on with the pair of glasses, they also look and perform much better than Glass.

Also featuring on the Blade is an 8MP camera that shoots video, with support also available for calls, notifications and quick replies. And, as the video above shows, Alexa integration (though currently still in beta) will allow users to bring up the voice assistant into their field of view and bark commands to third-party apps like Uber.

Not everything we tried during our initial hands on was available at the time, but we'll be testing the Vuzix out again on the CES show floor, as the company demonstrates more of the software it has planned for 2019 - as well as Google Assistant integration. Stay tuned for our reaction.