New camera skills aren't enough to help Solos challenge for the smart glasses throne
With the AirGo V, Solos has taken its pair of good-performing audio smartglasses and added cameras that simply don't match up to the competition's quality or overall performance. The added ChatGPT-4o integration undoubtedly takes smart glasses down an interesting route, but we're just not convinced Solos has done enough with the AirGo V to come close to being the definitive AI hardware to own.
Pros
- Features removable arms and lenses
- Solid open-ear sound quality
- ChatGPT-4o support is neat
Cons
- The arms still feel too bulky
- Camera quality isn't great
- We're still not entirely won over by overall design
The Solos AirGo V is the latest pair of camera-toting smart glasses designed to challenge the Ray-Ban Meta dominance.
Instead of simply replacing your smartphone camera, these smart-ish glasses can tap into ChatGPT-4o and harness onboard cameras to reveal more information about the world around you. That means – at least for now – they offer features you won’t find on Meta’s connected eyewear.
This latest pair retains the Solos AirGo 3‘s audio-centric feature while offering different frame and lens options, giving users different looks to play around with.
So, there’s plenty to get excited about here. Yet, while ChatGPT-powered smartglasses certainly sound intriguing, we’re not convinced Solos has pushed the design or quality quite enough here.
Read on for our full experience wearing the AirGo V smart glasses.
Price and competition

The Solos AirGo V are $299 (around £250), which makes them $50 more expensive than the Solos AirGo 3 glasses. However, that overall price will depend on the frame and lens combination you opt for. If you add a prescription to the mix, you’ll quickly surpass that initial price point.
The leaders everybody is chasing down here are Meta and Ray-Ban, whose collaborative effort starts at $299/£299. So, the AirGo V costs the same as arguably the most high-profile camera smartglasses you can put on your face right now.
Design and controls

Solos gives you two frame options. So, there are fewer frames than with its AirGo 3 glasses, which aren’t being replaced by the AirGo V. Both options are rectangular, with a smaller and larger size to pick from. Ours is the larger of the two pairs. If you want round frames, you’re out of luck for now.
While the choice of frames is more limited, there is a wider selection of lenses this time around. We were able to add the same prescription as the AirGo 3. Plus, you can add lenses with an anti-reflection coating, or ones more effective at blocking UV rays.
Like the AirGo 3, the smarts are most noticeable in the arms. This adds the kind of weight you don’t get on a regular pair of glasses. This doesn’t make them uncomfortable to wear, but you still notice the difference.
The added cameras are another clear sign of its added smarts. However, unlike Meta’s glasses, these stand out more and don’t feel as well integrated into the frames. Solos include capacitive touch controls on the arms to turn the glasses on and adjust the volume. This is also where you can attach the proprietary cable.

To make things easier, you can plug the arm with the battery inside straight into the USB-charging cable. That setup allows you to power up other devices from it, too, which is pretty neat.
It’s always good to see some added protection against moisture, too. The AirGo V glasses boast an IP67 rating, giving them defense against sweat and water splashes.
There is a case to keep them stored in, too. And though this doesn’t offer any charging support, it does resemble a normal case and keeps them away from harm.
So, are these among the best-looking smart glasses available in 2025? We’re not entirely convinced. For now, that award still goes to Meta/Ray-Ban.
With that said, partnering with a glasses brand could be how Solos takes its designs to the next level and starts matching the competition. It’s not far off, but there’s still work to be done.
Features and performance

With the AirGo V, Solos is essentially providing everything in the AirGo 3 and adding cameras – and the smarts that come with it.
The open-ear design ensures the smart glasses can still stream audio via Bluetooth, and the microphones remain for features like SolosChat, a ChatGPT-powered chatbot.
There’s a useful translation feature, too, with the included group mode making it useful for meetings and such. We especially like Solos’ Whisper Message mode, which reads out messages and gives us one less reason to reach for our phone.

Solos even found room for sensors to track daily steps, power a posture tracker, and beam data to Strava. We wouldn’t say these are the type of glasses we’d want to go for a run with. After all, there are tons of smart glasses suited for exercise. Yet, we like the idea of a posture tracker. It makes plenty of sense for something you’re likely to wear while working at a desk.
All these features perform largely in the same fashion as on the AirGo 3. When streaming audio, there’s plenty of volume and relatively balanced overall sound for an open-ear design. This makes them a good fit for music, podcasts, or handling calls. At louder volumes, though, they do quite noticeably leak that sound.
We found the AirGo V’s translation skills were the most useful during testing, and are largely well executed.

Camera performance and ChatGPT support
Solos has fitted the frames with two 5-megapixel cameras, which fall short of the pair on the Ray-Ban Meta glasses (12-megapixel).
When you want to take a picture, you hold down on the larger touch sensor area. Next, the right camera sensor briefly illuminates white, letting those around you know you’re taking a picture. These cameras do not allow you to record or live-stream video.
Unfortunately, the close placement of the touch buttons led to us tapping the wrong area of the glasses on quite a few occasions. And when you do snap a photo, the quality doesn’t match Meta’s camera glasses – let alone what you can take on the average smartphone.
You can adjust the image resolution in the app. However, even when you crank the adjustments, the quality isn’t great. As expected, snapping in well-lit conditions will get you the most rewarding results. Yet, as soon as lighting conditions become more challenging, they struggle (as the image above illustrates).

Happily, the ChatGPT-4o integration is more up to the task. You can take a picture from the app and ask ChatGPT to tell you what’s in it. It does so with surprisingly high accuracy, but how useful this feature proves to be in long-term wear is another thing.
Like other camera smart glasses, you also face the challenge of lining up a shot. This undeniably takes time, whether for pure picture-taking or harnessing ChatGPT-40 support. Combined with the camera’s limited specs, this meant it was difficult to produce a good image.
Battery life

Solos says users will experience the same battery life as the AirGo 3 when using the AirGo V to handle audio. So, that’s 10 hours when streaming music, or 7 hours when handling calls.
If you instead use the cameras to take photos and analyze pictures using ChatGPT, you should get up to 16 hours. For context, the Meta Ray-Bans smart glasses promise up to 4 hours, so that’s a fair amount more battery to play with.
During testing, we found that those estimates matched up. The AirGo V delivered a similar battery to the AirGo 3 when streaming at reasonably loud volumes. And if you stick to only taking photos, it does go further.
A little frustratingly, though, we did have a couple of occasions when the glasses remained connected to a paired phone when not in use, draining the battery in the process.
As mentioned earlier, there are two charging methods – and we definitely favored plugging the USB-C arms into a USB-C charger over the proprietary magnetic cable. Otherwise, it just isn’t the most secure fitting, and is very easy to knock out of place.
It’s also good to see the quick charge mode to give you 3 hours of play from a 15-minute top-up.