Picking the perfect portable console

Today on the flagship podcast of nose bridge microphones: 03:10 - The Verge’s David Pierce enlists help from Alex Cranz and Sean Hollister to figure out the best gadget setup for his handheld gaming needs. The Steam Deck wasn’t born ready, but it’s ready now Nintendo Switch OLED review: screentime Sony PlayStation Portal review: flawed but fun Asus ROG Ally updated review: it’s a bit better now This amazing knockoff GBA SP comes stuffed with software piracy 42:10 - Victoria Song joins the show to test out the microphones on a bunch of smart glasses and headsets. Razer’s new Anzu smart glasses break from the pack with truly wireless audio The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses actually make the future look cool Amazon’s latest Echo Frames are more style than substance Meta Quest 3 review: almost the one we've been waiting for Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not 01:10:26 - Later, David answers a question from the Vergecast Hotline. North Focals glasses review: a $600 smartwatch for your face Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Nosebridge Microphones. I'm your friend David Pierce and I am sitting in my new bathroom. It's been almost a month since we've been doing this construction and I'm sure you've heard me complain about all of the construction noise and chaos on the show over the last month. You've probably even heard some of the noise and chaos on the show over the last month. So I'm sorry for all of my noise and chaos. But it's done. It's not all the way done because as I've learned with a project like this, it's never all the way done. I can like see the paint touch-ups and everything that I have to do. You do one of these things and you're suddenly just very like aware of your surroundings in a way that is honestly not helpful. I don't recommend it.

• 0:45David Pierce?

  It's better to just sort of live your life and not notice all the imperfections. But now I have a sink that works. We have a shower that works. We have a toilet that works. I have places to put things. It's all very exciting. And now honestly, given the amount of money and time and energy we've spent in this bathroom, it only feels right for me to just live in this bathroom. So this is my home now. I'm Vergecasting from the bathroom from now on. Anyway, we have a lot of stuff to do today, so let's dive into it. We're gonna do two things. First, we're gonna talk about a bit of a gaming hardware conundrum that I'm having and we're gonna see if two of my colleagues can help me figure out how to upgrade my PS4 and what I actually need to buy. Then, we're gonna do a test of some new wearable microphones.

• 1:29David Pierce?

  We love doing mic tests on this show and we haven't done them with the glasses and headsets and all that kind of stuff that is out there in the world in a big way. So we're gonna test some microphones and see how everybody sounds. We also have a really fun glasses question from the Vergecast hotline. Lots to do, so let's get to it. All that is coming in just one second, but first, I just, there's a grout line that I have to go fix and it's gonna drive me crazy if I don't do it. This is The Vergecast. We'll be right back.

• 1:59Speaker 01

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• 2:59David Pierce?

  Welcome back. All right, so as I mentioned up top, I'm in the middle of kind of a gaming dilemma. I've been really a gamer off and on over the course of my life. It's not something that is kind of a consistent activity, but I'll play a lot for a few months and then kind of put the console away for a few months because whatever things get busy or I get into something else. But then I always come back to games. And really, for me, it's sports games that are the most consistent. Like I play Madden every year. I like the NBA games. 2K is really good. I've been a FIFA player for forever. I like Fortnite. I like games that I can kind of come and go to and play a whole bunch all at once, and then leave for a little while and then come back. I also like games that I can play for like 15 minutes at a go.

• 3:44David Pierce?

  And the challenge I've always had with a game like Elden Ring is I just want to play it for hours. And I feel like it never rewards you for just a couple of minutes of playing at a time in a way that some of these more finite battle royale or like football game sized games really are. So all of this is to say, I'm pretty happy with my gaming setup. I haven't really felt the need to get a PS. Or anything like that. I'm still on a PS4 Pro. It works fine. Everything's great. But more recently, I want something new. We've been talking a lot about handheld consoles on this show over the last eight months or so, I would say. And there's just a lot of cool stuff happening. I also travel more than I used to and

• 4:26David Pierce?

  I'm back to wanting something I can play on the train or on a plane or in a hotel room when I'm not at home. I also just spend too much time sitting at my desk. Like right now, I'm sitting at my desk, my monitor's in front of me. My computer is underneath it. I have a Mac Mini that I use for most things. And then right off to the right is my PlayStation. And so having this one space be the place that I sit for work all day and then to play games at night, I just don't like it. And I want something that I can take and sit on the couch while I hang out with the dog or play out in the backyard when the weather's nice. So I'm really into the idea of a handheld console, but I have no idea which one to get. So I enlisted two people to help me figure it out.

• 5:07David Pierce?

  Sean Hollister and Alex Cranz. They both know this stuff way better than I do. And together, we are going to make a decision about which handheld console I'm gonna buy. Let's get into it. Alex Cranz, hello in Texas.

• 5:20Alex Cranz?

  Howdy, y'all.

• 5:22David Pierce?

  Well, this is, this is what we're gonna do here. Sean Hollister, hello.

• 5:26Speaker 05

  Hi, from the land of gaming handhelds.

• 5:29David Pierce?

  I have brought you here to do personal tech support for me because that is what the first test is about, is helping David figure out which gadgets he should buy. Good. I'm going to lay out for you my current situation. And then you are going to help me solve my current situation. So my current situation is I have a PlayStation 4. I've had it for a million years. It's fine. It plays video games. I would like to upgrade, but I don't think what I want is a PS5. I think what I want is something handheld and portable because my PS4 like lives next to my computer in my basement and I'm spending too much time sitting in this chair, looking at this screen. And I would like to have something that can like go out in the world with me and I travel a lot and all these things.

• 6:09David Pierce?

  So I want something that is like primarily, but not entirely, a portable handheld gadget. I would like to play. Lots of games. We can talk about which games I do and don't care about, but I have exactly one non-negotiable game, which is FIFA. EA Sports FC is the new name of it. I will call it FIFA until the day I die. I play that game more than I play every other game combined, and I need that game. That's it. That's literally like, that is the entirety of where I am, and I want to buy something, and I want you to tell me what to buy.

• 6:41Speaker 05

  Why? Why is that your game? Why is that your game? Because I have an answer for you, but the answer has just been foiled by the fact that you have picked a game, which, and I quote, "Runs a 'this program encountered E11100B during initialization'

• 6:57David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 6:58Speaker 05

  Error message when you try to run it on a Steam Deck." So I guess I'm not gonna tell you to buy a Steam Deck.

• 7:04David Pierce?

  My worry was this is going to be the shortest Vergecast in history, because I was gonna say all that, and you were both gonna say Steam Deck, and then we were gonna hang up and move on with our lives. If it were not for this one game that I require, is the world sort of that simple at this particular moment?

• 7:19Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 7:20Speaker 05

  It kind of is, and maybe it won't be in like,

• 7:24David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 7:24Speaker 05

  Two weeks. In two weeks or so, is it three weeks? There will be a Windows handheld with a battery that is bigger than any other handheld on the market, and maybe that will solve the issue of Windows handhelds don't have great battery life.

• 7:37Alex Cranz?

  That won't solve all the other problems with the Windows handheld. I'm gonna say, David, you're on the Vergecast, so I feel very comfortable saying, "You like to tinker. You enjoy a little tinkering."

• 7:49David Pierce?

  So I do and I don't. I will say what I'm, I am willing to tinker. Like, if it's a matter of I need to like buy this thing and spend a couple of hours, like downloading and tweaking and doing whatever I need to get it set up, fine. I am not buying a thing with the intention of screwing with it forever. I would like this thing to play video games, and I want to be able to sit down on my couch and be playing video games as quickly as possible. That's actually very important to me.

• 8:16Speaker 05

  Would you spend those two hours, hear me out, would you spend those two hours setting up your Steam Deck to dual boot Windows off of an SD card occasionally with the one non-negotiable game that apparently you must have?

• 8:32Alex Cranz?

  You can get FIFA on the Steam Deck without doing dual boot. I was looking this up.

• 8:38David Pierce?

  Tell me more.

• 8:39Alex Cranz?

  Um, you will need to be comfortable diving into the Linux side of Steam Deck.

• 8:46David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 8:46Alex Cranz?

  And do some tweaking. And also, does it have to be FIFA 24?

• 8:52David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 8:53Alex Cranz?

  Oh, it can't be FIFA 23?

• 8:56David Pierce?

  Well, no, it actually, what's important is that it's going to be 25 in like six weeks. And it's actually, what I need is that one.

• 9:02Speaker 05

  Do you have to play it online? Because it's the Annette sheet. That's the problem here. EA insisting on its own version of Annette sheet instead of the ones that actually work on the Steam Deck.

• 9:12David Pierce?

  Yeah, I need to be online.

• 9:13Speaker 05

  Shit.

• 9:13Alex Cranz?

  Well, I feel like the other FIFA games have appeared in Xbox Cloud. And I feel like this one would also appear in Xbox Cloud.

• 9:21Speaker 05

  That was my next thought.

• 9:22David Pierce?

  You make a very good point here, which is a thing that I should have said. I don't need to be able to play this game on the first day that it is available. I just need to play it at some point.

• 9:30Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 9:31David Pierce?

  And what I have discovered about the video game world is that those things are very different. Like when things come to Game Pass and there's stuff that comes to PlayStation's cloud stuff later on that isn't there like day and date when they release. Like, the reason I picked this game that matters is because I can just like get lost down this impossible universe with any game that I want and it's all very complicated. But just to tie off the one piece of this, if all I was saying is I want a handheld thing to play games on and I did not give you any specific games.

• 9:59Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 9:59David Pierce?

  Is the answer like the Steam Deck and it's not even close?

• 10:02Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 10:03Speaker 05

  It really is. It really is. The Steam Deck, we're in this moment where all of these other companies are like, we want a piece of that Steam Deck action, but we're going to build it on Windows because gamers tell us that Windows is where all of the games are and they want to just be able to play the games they already own.

• 10:22Alex Cranz?

  Which is true.

• 10:23Speaker 05

  Which is true. But the reality is that the Steam Deck plays Windows games and it plays more of them better than a native Windows system plays Windows games.

• 10:34David Pierce?

  What is the problem with the native Windows system?

• 10:36Alex Cranz?

  Because Windows is built for computers, for laptops and desktops and things you use with a mouse and a at least 13 inch display. And then you put that on a seven inch display and instead of a mouse, you have a joystick.

• 10:52David Pierce?

  Okay, that sounds awful. Now that I'm thinking this through, that sounds like a nightmare.

• 10:57Speaker 05

  That part's kind of, you can, if you want to spend your two hours of setup, you can certainly spend 10 minutes of them, setting up Steam to launch every time you launch your Windows computer, enter, to launch right into big picture mode, and then you have an interface that's similar to the Steam Deck, but it doesn't have the ability to like tweak the handheld very easily so that you get great battery life. The chips won't give you great battery life to begin with because there's all that other overhead for all the other shit you don't need in Windows. Sometimes you'll turn off your Windows system, you'll, you'll put it to sleep, and you'll turn it back on again and wake it up again, and all of a sudden your app will be gone. And where did it go? I wonder why it isn't fullscreen anymore. It's this tiny icon on the Windows taskbar. That's not great. Sometimes it won't wake up from sleep. It'll have restarted itself.

• 11:42David Pierce?

  I'm having like netbook flashbacks to 10 years ago as you're describing this.

• 11:46Alex Cranz?

  Sometimes for some reason I can't get it to stop asking for the password when I open one of my Windows game consoles, and so then I have to like figure out how to get the, the accessibility keyboard up, which always takes at least five minutes, and then very carefully type in the password, which is super long because I like to be safe. It's, it's my favorite thing to do. David, you don't want to do that?

• 12:08David Pierce?

  This is not the most compelling case you've ever made. But wait, Sean, you, you alluded to maybe there is something coming that solves this problem for me?

• 12:17Speaker 05

  Okay, uh, not most of these problems, but, but the battery life, the battery life problem.

• 12:23Speaker 05

  Asus with the ROG Ally, the ROG Ally, they're, they're gonna, they're gonna hop on me. So the ROG Ally came out a year ago as like a Steam Deck, but worse in almost every way, except that it had a better screen, a variable refresh rate screen. It has since been surpassed by the Steam Deck OLED, which has an OLED screen that goes 90 hertz. I'm going to stop getting into the weeds. But they're coming out with a new version of that later this month that will have a doubled battery in it and all kinds of other creature comforts. It'll be more comfortable to hold. In the year since they shipped the original ROG Ally, the UI has gotten a little bit better, it's smoother. Like Tom Warren likes his, I think he might prefer that over the Steam Deck. He is a notorious Windows fanboy.

• 13:08Alex Cranz?

  That's why he doesn't count.

• 13:10Speaker 05

  I think it's going to be, very possibly, the first Windows handheld that I can recommend. Because they've gotten so many things right, but it fundamentally still runs Windows. And Microsoft has not improved Windows in any meaningful way in the year and a half, two years since Steam Deck came out.

• 13:28Alex Cranz?

  They could though, right? Like, we've been hearing a lot of rumors that they're going to introduce some sort of Xbox handheld in the next couple of years. That'll very likely run on Windows because technically, the Xbox runs on that. There's like the opportunity. I feel like a lot like, remember when AMD was having its big resurgence? Nvidia was the game GPU? And then AMD was like, we're going to start doing this again. And the difference was Nvidia actually did software and made the games work really, really well. Whereas AMD didn't for at least a year or two. That's where the Windows handhelds are. No one's done those really important software tweaks. So the Steam Deck is better.

• 14:04Speaker 05

  But Microsoft would have to be like, we're going to ship a different OS on it. We're going to ship the version of Windows that's so stripped down, you don't recognize it as Windows anymore.

• 14:12Alex Cranz?

  Look, if it opens EA Origins, then like, I'm fine.

• 14:15Speaker 05

  EA is one of the Achilles of the Steam Deck. You brought up FIFA. FIFA, EA games will notoriously, particularly if you need online, they will just break on Steam Deck. Because EA does not give a shit about Valve's handheld. And they'll just like change their stupid mandatory like DRM app all the time. It used to be called Origin, now it's like EA app. And games will just break there on Steam Deck. But everything else works pretty good.

• 14:38Alex Cranz?

  But they do participate in cloud gaming. They, most of their stuff is available on the various cloud gaming platforms. And all of those work on the Steam Deck. And you can get them up and running pretty quickly. And then not have to like constantly go into the Linux backend to tweak them. Just the one time.

• 14:53David Pierce?

  Meaning like, I could do like Steam Deck plus Game Pass? And solve my problem?

• 15:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:00David Pierce?

  Is this a good idea?

• 15:02Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, you could do that. You could even, you could stream your Sony PS4 from there. So you don't have to like sit in front of it to play The Last of Us.

• 15:09Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, we can stream your Xbox and your Playstation and Cloud to the Steam Deck. It does all these things.

• 15:16David Pierce?

  I'm glad you brought this up because this is a thing I have deeply investigated and have come up with is is just a terrible nightmare that I will not subject myself to. There are, there are things about remote streaming your own console that are really great and they immediately fall apart as soon as you get anywhere outside of your house. Like it just doesn't.

• 15:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, do you, do you need to play FIFA outside your house?

• 15:39David Pierce?

  I do. Like for me, honestly, the, the two biggest things I'm trying to solve in switching from this console on my desk to the handheld is I want to play other places in my house than at this desk, which is a victory for console streaming. And I want to play when I travel, in part because I'm addicted to this game and it's set up in such a way that the mechanics are, if you don't play every day, it's actually kind of like, it's a real problem as I'm describing this, but this is where I'm at in life. And the console streaming thing is great for the first thing. Like I can, I can sit upstairs on my couch and play my PS4 on like an iPad. It actually works passably well. Total non-starter trying to stream any stuff over the internet. I just, it's just not even worth it.

• 16:20Speaker 05

  This goes for all streaming?

• 16:21David Pierce?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 16:21Speaker 05

  All streaming breaks down once you leave your house because you no longer have control over making sure you have a good internet connection. If you're out there like on 5G, if you have a great 5G signal and nobody else in the node is using it right then, yeah, you could have a great streaming experience. But I, I would sit, I would sit in, you know, a hospital waiting room or out in a cafe and I'd be using that, that Razer device, which could only really do cloud streaming. And I would have a beautiful streaming experience that would drop out five minutes later and be completely unplayable. Over and over and over again, I had that experience with cloud gaming, with a good cloud gaming service like GeForce Now. Great service. This connection would not maintain that. Now, if you're talking about going over to a friend's house, who, which, that your friend also has amazing internet at home and you want to stream from Xbox

• 17:06Speaker 05

  Cloud there, great. That, that could, that could, that could work great.

• 17:09Alex Cranz?

  I was just assuming that David has like a hotspot with him at all the time that gives him brilliant internet, like 90% of the time.

• 17:16David Pierce?

  To be honest, I do a lot. It's called, it's called an iPad Pro with cell connection and it's actually like an unbelievably great hotspot. The problem is, I'll give you the worst case scenario for my own gaming usage is on an Amtrak train from DC to New York. And at that point, realistically, what I need is games I can play offline, right? Which I think just rules out full reliance on game streaming services. Like, I actually, this is why I'm compelled by the combination of Steam Deck and Game Pass. Like, I can do mostly online stuff and like, I have, I don't need to be able to play FIFA online while I'm on Amtrak Wi-Fi. That's like not possible in the world that we live in. So I'm fine with that, but I need to be able to do something on that thing when I have crappy connection.

• 17:59David Pierce?

  And the idea of just having like a brick in my hands when the Wi-Fi is bad feels bad.

• 18:05Alex Cranz?

  I do have one other suggestion and it is actually even more basic than the Steam Deck and it's a Switch.

• 18:12David Pierce?

  I'm glad you brought this up.

• 18:14Alex Cranz?

  It's, it's like, the Steam Deck gives you all of the customization and gives you, it's like a Swiss Army knife. The Switch is like just a really good K-bar. Like, it's good for one thing and that's playing the games that Nintendo is okay with you playing on it.

• 18:29David Pierce?

  And one of those games is EA Sports FC 24, the dumbest name game in soccer.

• 18:35Speaker 05

  But you're still not gonna play it online on the Amtrak, right?

• 18:37David Pierce?

  No, but so I have almost landed there, except, and, and Cranz, I'm glad you brought this up because I want to know what you guys think, right now feels like a stupid time to buy a Switch. It feels like the end of a Switch cycle. They have already talked about the next one. Like, the Switch, by all accounts, is still very good, but this feels like a ridiculous time to buy a Switch.

• 18:56Speaker 05

  It is absolutely the end of the Switch cycle. They're, they're delaying it a little bit. They're not like, they don't want to come out right away and do Switch 2. They're biding their time, probably because they want to get some great software lined up for it. And I imagine that that software, if you want to play Metroid Prime 4 or whatever the next game is that Nintendo does, it probably won't work as well on the current Switch because the current Switch is not only seven years old in terms of its processing power, but also was already weak to begin with. Like, when you played Zelda: Breath of the Wild on day one on the Switch and you go to the, the forest where the master sword is, like... It's choppy. It was choppy then. It was choppy seven years ago, you know?

• 19:39Alex Cranz?

  I was like FIFA will look like a bunch of potatoes are on a big green field. But but you'll be but you'll know what those potatoes are and you'll be able to control all the little potatoes. So like if the control of the potatoes is important and not how they look, the switch could be an option because there's a lot of good deals right now because there's a ton of different ones. Like I just recently picked up the the new Zelda one because somebody left it on a plane and I bought it at a thrift store.

• 20:04Speaker 05

  Have you played the new Zelda yet?

• 20:06David Pierce?

  I have. So I actually have an OG Switch and it worked great and I loved it very much. And then it got to the point where literally the battery lasts like six minutes. Like it's it's fine. The thing is seven years old. I got a lot of love out of it. I used it for a long time and it just basically doesn't work anymore. And so now it's just like a pretty yellow thing that sits over there.

• 20:27Speaker 05

  Do not trade that in because if it's an original Switch that the battery is six minutes, it also means that it is hackable and you can do fun things with it and it is worth money. So.

• 20:35David Pierce?

  I deal. Okay. Well, that's David's side business in selling old gadgets is is a whole nother thing you and I should do on this show, Sean. So yeah, so I think one of the outcomes I'm afraid of is that the answer is just wait a year because there's going to be a new Switch and they might fix Windows and maybe we'll get the Xbox thing. And it feels like in a weird way, we're in like a bad middle zone between good things.

• 20:57Alex Cranz?

  No, you need to get the Steam Deck with OLED and just be done and happy.

• 21:02Speaker 05

  I think what you need to do is you need to unlock, you need to unlock a mountain of amazing PC games you've been missing that are incredibly cheap and brilliant and beautiful and run on this handheld with an amazing screen. That's what you need to do.

• 21:17Alex Cranz?

  And it's also hackable.

• 21:18David Pierce?

  Sean, I gave you one game, one game that I need to play and you're telling me that I can have everything I want except the one game that I need to play.

• 21:27Speaker 05

  If you want to play Fortnite on there, it doesn't do that either. So unless you're gonna strip that.

• 21:31David Pierce?

  I literally, I almost wrote down that the two games were Fortnite and FIFA and I decided I can live without Fortnite because there are other good. David has an hour to kill Battle Royale games out there. I could, I could take or leave Fortnite at this point in my life.

• 21:43Alex Cranz?

  I was like, you can just use your iPad.

• 21:45David Pierce?

  That is, that is true. So let me float another idea by you, which is that I, instead of buying one thing, I buy several things. And, and I just acknowledged that at least for this next phase of my life, the right thing to do is get a PS5 and a PS Portal for my house projects. And then I get a Steam Deck for travel. I have just quadrupled the amount of money that this is costing. Is this the outcome?

• 22:14Alex Cranz?

  Don't do that. Save your money. Just get like, never, ever, ever, ever, ever buy a Portal unless you just have zero computer skills. If you have none whatsoever, if all you do, if you like struggle to turn your phone on, get the PSP Portal.

• 22:31Speaker 05

  People love the Portal. There, there are people who love the Portal. It is selling really well. I would never touch one, uh, except to like, to have the knowledge of having touched one. Uh, because the Steam Deck has an app on it and the app is the PS Portal.

• 22:47David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's.

• 22:47Speaker 05

  In an app for your Steam Deck.

• 22:49Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 22:50Speaker 05

  It's, it's called Chiaki. Chiaki for Deck and it, it works great. Just make sure your PS5 or PS4 has an ethernet cable plugged into it or it will not work very well.

• 22:58David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 22:59Alex Cranz?

  Don't get the PS Portal because that is, that's for like, that's for people who love to game and don't have a lot of computer skills. And so they're like, okay, I just need to go play right now. And that's great, but like you spend a little bit more money, you get the Steam Deck, you spend a little extra time and you have just way more capability.

• 23:17David Pierce?

  Okay. All right. So let me, let me play out this scenario. So what's happening here is I, I'm going to make sure that my PlayStation streaming setup is as good as possible. Uh, I'm going to make sure that I have an ethernet port. I'm gonna, I'm gonna plug my PlayStation into the Eero Gateway and not the Eero in the basement. I'm gonna, I'm gonna make sure that my internet connection for my PlayStation is as good as possible. TBD on whether that's going to be a PS4 or a PS5. We're going to see how poor I feel at the end of this episode, but that's. That essentially becomes my dedicated FIFA machine, which is an absurd place to have landed, but again, here we are.

• 23:55Speaker 05

  If you've already got the PS4, I mean, why not?

• 23:58David Pierce?

  So I'm relegating this thing to being my FIFA machine. And then I'm going to download the app you just said for the Steam Deck for when I want to play FIFA, and I'm going to play FIFA on the Steam Deck through my PlayStation, which seems ludicrous, but you're telling me will kind of sort of work as long as I have very good internet.

• 24:14Alex Cranz?

  It'll work great.

• 24:15Speaker 05

  Inside your house. Remote is theoretically possible, but you'll play it in your house realistically.

• 24:20David Pierce?

  So that's my solution to the how do I play on my couch instead of in the basement problem? Great. For everything else, I'm just going to broaden my horizons and play less FIFA and play more other games? Is this what you're telling me? This is where I need to land?

• 24:34Alex Cranz?

  I feel like you can find a really good FIFA clone, but like they all have swords or something. I feel like this exists. Someone's made this game, an alpha.

• 24:44David Pierce?

  So what is ironically possible is that because EA Sports FC is no longer called FIFA, somebody else is making a FIFA game, and maybe that FIFA game will be on the Steam Deck, which will solve all of my problems all at once. This is what I'm hoping for.

• 24:58Alex Cranz?

  Done.

• 24:59Speaker 05

  And also you will write about this experience, hopefully for The Verge, and then EA will start taking care of it.

• 25:05David Pierce?

  Okay, so EA, very large company, makes a lot of very popular games. Is there any hope for EA on the Steam Deck ever? Like, should I have any optimism for that to be a thing? The Steam Deck's very popular. What are we doing here?

• 25:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, they just break things willy-nilly and they don't think about it. It's not like they don't want money.

• 25:21Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, EA is kind of notorious for being one of the worst companies in the United States. Like, I think when Consumerist existed, it was regularly beating cable companies for being the worst, because they put money ahead of usability frequently. And so they could fix it, but I don't think they have a whole lot of interest, because most of their players, the bulk of their audience, it's on the Switch, it's on the PlayStation.

• 25:47David Pierce?

  Okay, one other Steam Deck question. The one other thing I forgot to mention is I do want to be able to plug this thing into a large screen and play it. I don't think that's like the most common use case for me, but I do want to be able to sit in front of a television and play it like a console as I normally would. And for me with the Switch, I have done that way less than I expected because you have to have such specific hardware to pull that off. And like carrying around the dock is annoying and I bought the little plug thing and that helped, but then I lost that. And so I want, I want something that is a little easier to turn into like a full-fledged console when I want to. Is the Steam Deck good at that?

• 26:23Alex Cranz?

  You're still gonna need a little dongle to mirror things.

• 26:28Speaker 05

  Dongle or dock?

• 26:29Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, you're gonna need a dongle or dock. I think the official one's like, what, a hundred dollars, Sean?

• 26:33Speaker 05

  It's less. It's, I want to say 70, 80, something like that. But you can buy much cheaper than that. I'd use like an off-the-shelf, like $35 USB-C hub that had HDMI that worked. I used docks from like JSAW, JSAUX, great company with an alphabet soup name, surprisingly. Forty, 50 bucks and those docks are, do all the things you'd want from a dock. It's really easy, once you get one of those things, to get it up there. The question is, is your TV like 4K and you're expecting 4K visuals from a console that normally plays at 800? Because it's not gonna look as good up on a big 4K TV.

• 27:07David Pierce?

  I will say, and Liam or producer can vouch for this, the least Vergecast-y thing about me is I don't care all that much about pixel density. So the idea of playing like at, you know, medium settings and having it work okay is completely fine by me.

• 27:19Alex Cranz?

  I just heard Neelai screaming.

• 27:22David Pierce?

  This is the last time you'll ever hear from me on the Vergecast, but that is, that is where I'm at. And especially with something like this, like battery life is much more important to me than like getting 10 extra frames per second. And so I think, again, the customizability of the Steam Deck, to be able to like dial that up and down as I want it, seems useful.

• 27:41Alex Cranz?

  You want a Steam Deck OLED, like get the Steam Deck OLED, every once in a while you'll plug it into the TV, you'll be like, oh, I did it. This looks kinda shitty. And then you'll unplug it and go back to the really pretty OLED display and be very happy.

• 27:54David Pierce?

  I do suspect my Switch experience has been that I set it up in such a way that it was gonna be really easy to dock, it was gonna be great, and then most of the time I would sit on my couch in front of the TV and just play on my lap. And I would assume the Steam Deck will end up being kinda the same way. Yep.

• 28:09Speaker 05

  It's so good. We'll watch them shows together with my wife and I'll have my hand held out and get to do some gaming at the same time. It's great.

• 28:16David Pierce?

  Okay. Are there any other like crazy wildcard possibilities coming that we know of that might win? Like you mentioned, the RAG IAX seems like a possible improvement, if not sort of equal to the Steam Deck. Is there anything else on the horizon that in three months I'm going to be like, oh, this is the one I needed?

• 28:36Speaker 05

  I don't think so, but there are two very different directions you could go in. I don't have one of them here in front of me. But one of them is a 10.1 inch laptop with like keys that actually feel good, full-size SD card reader. You could actually shove the SD card all the way inside. We've got full-size USB-A ports.

• 28:57Alex Cranz?

  It has more ports than a MacBook.

• 28:58Speaker 05

  USB-C ports. There's an Ocular port HDMI. It is your dock built into it. And then you take these little things off and you've got joysticks, a deep pad. And even this menu button in the center acts like an Xbox button, which for some reason, none of the other Windows handhelds have. And this thing is way expensive. I mean, it's twice the price of your Steam Deck. It costs more than any of the handhelds, but it doubles as a laptop that has the power of one of those other gaming handhelds and a decent-sized battery, all this stuff.

• 29:30Alex Cranz?

  But Sean, how is it to play?

• 29:33Speaker 05

  It is a laptop first and a game handheld second.

• 29:39David Pierce?

  It's such a perfect gadget because that is both the stupidest thing I've ever seen and I want it so bad.

• 29:44Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, right? It's beautiful.

• 29:47David Pierce?

  It's like, what if instead of the touchbar, we just put a PlayStation controller in pieces? Like, I love it.

• 29:54Speaker 05

  I can't get over the boss mode. Like you got this thing and you're like, no, I can't show my gamepad at work. Let's take this little metal, let's take this little slip of metal out of the back of the thing and drop it on top. Boss mode. It's a physical boss mode.

• 30:09Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 30:09Speaker 05

  Okay. Moving on from that. Okay, so your other possibility is you could embrace, you could embrace software piracy and you could buy... One of these things, which is, looks like a Game Boy Advance SP. This is the Envernik thing.

• 30:23David Pierce?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:24Speaker 05

  But actually just comes with thousands of pirated games. And, and so you could play all your Game Boy Advance and PlayStation games on this. Maybe you delete the pirated games first and dump your own ROMs or something like that.

• 30:36David Pierce?

  As I always do.

• 30:36Speaker 05

  As you do, yes.

• 30:38Alex Cranz?

  I feel like Anubis already gonna get wrecked for you just saying, yeah, it comes with all of the pirated games on it.

• 30:43David Pierce?

  Every time Sean talks about one of these, there was, I think you did a, you did a TikTok, Sean, talking about the, the new Envernik thing. And every single comment was like, Sean, be cool, man. Stop telling people about this. Give me my free game.

• 30:56Alex Cranz?

  TikTok shop is all over this thing. Like, it's been snitched on enough.

• 31:00Speaker 05

  Just to illustrate, though, that the EA, the EA FIFA game is not a Steam Deck problem. The top comment on EA Sports FC 24 is, EA FC 24 not launching on PC after anti-cheat back to EA app.

• 31:15David Pierce?

  Oh.

• 31:16Speaker 05

  So it's not a Steam Deck thing so much as it is an EA just care thing.

• 31:19David Pierce?

  Interesting. Okay, so it truly is, EA is like, there are ways you could get around the rules that we have. So we're just taking our ball and going home.

• 31:27Alex Cranz?

  Yep.

• 31:28David Pierce?

  That doesn't feel like it's getting better anytime soon. That, that does not give me hope for the, for improvements coming here. Which also means, listen, there's, there's a lot of sports games this means I can't play anymore. But now I'm gonna have to get into like, cool nerd games. It's gonna be great.

• 31:41Alex Cranz?

  You, you can play them streaming.

• 31:44David Pierce?

  That's true. Steam Deck plus Game Pass, I think, is starting to feel like the realist answer I have here.

• 31:49Alex Cranz?

  You'll have Halo and FIFA? Like, you will be the, the hit of every frat party you go to.

• 31:55David Pierce?

  Okay, last question. And then, and then we have to go.

• 31:59Alex Cranz?

  Uh-huh.

• 32:00David Pierce?

  Am I stupid for buying a Steam Deck right now in the same way that I might be stupid for buying a Switch right now? Where are we in the Steam Deck cycle?

• 32:07Alex Cranz?

  We're fine, right?

• 32:08Speaker 05

  We're mid, yeah. We're, we're mid-cycle. We're not late yet. The thing, the thing that Valve needs, they've, they told us, like, told me to my face. What they need to see is, they need to see a major improvement in performance without sacrificing battery life from a chip manufacturer before they start building the next true Steam Deck. And I've heard this from other companies too, like Asus with the, with the ROG LAX. They were like, we don't think we can get it right now, so we're gonna ship the ROG LAX with the same chip.

• 32:39Alex Cranz?

  And I don't think Qualcomm has changed that calculus at all with the Snapdragon.

• 32:44David Pierce?

  And even if it has, we're a ways away from that actually appearing inside of a product.

• 32:48Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I think I think we're probably a good, we're at least a year out. I think you'll have one beautiful blissful year before you get FOMO, at least.

• 32:56David Pierce?

  Okay. And that's, I mean, honestly, in gadget world, that's, that's all you can ask for.

• 33:00Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I was like, a year is an eternity in gadget world.

• 33:03David Pierce?

  I mean, listen, I've made it this far into the PS5 cycle without upgrading. Like, it turns out I can, I can manage my FOMO on this one.

• 33:10Alex Cranz?

  I am so impressed.

• 33:12David Pierce?

  Thank you. That's actually the other question I should ask. It's like, am I being ridiculous? Should I just buy a PS5 and move on with my life?

• 33:17Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 33:18Alex Cranz?

  I mean, have infinite, if you have infinite money, yes.

• 33:22David Pierce?

  If I buy a PS5, I almost certainly will end up buying a Portal. And I hate myself for it, but it will probably happen.

• 33:29Alex Cranz?

  Then I say, don't, because I want to save you from the Portal.

• 33:33Speaker 05

  You could buy a used Steam Deck LCD for the price of a Portal and also have a Portal built into it with an app.

• 33:38David Pierce?

  Oh, well, that's very compelling.

• 33:39Speaker 05

  But PS5, like, if you do love that I'm sitting on my couch with my 4K OLED TV experience, it's hard to beat the PS5 for that. I'm playing Spider-Man 2 on it right now on just a gorgeous new OLED panel that was deep discounted recently. And wow, the pop of that city, the lights at night, it's, it's, it's, it's really something.

• 34:01David Pierce?

  Yeah. And I do love that, but I think I am increasingly coming around to, like, having a thing with me is more important than the sort of very best possible experience. I would love to have both, but I don't think you can really have both right now in the world we live in.

• 34:18Speaker 05

  And if you, if you really want to have that thing with you, I don't think there's anything that beats the Steam Deck. There's just so much you can now take with you that you can't, the same way with the Windows handhelds, you can't really with Android.

• 34:30David Pierce?

  All right, well, we have ended where we began, uh, which I find very frustrating, but also sort of telling. I'm gonna buy a Steam Deck. Yeah. I probably should have bought a Steam Deck a really long time ago. Uh, I'm gonna buy a Steam Deck and I, I will start yelling loudly at EA. I will report back.

• 34:44Alex Cranz?

  I'm so excited for you. Everybody's excited about the EA, though.

• 34:48David Pierce?

  Do you have any immediate setup tips? Before we talk again, I will have purchased a Steam Deck. What, what should I do immediately out of the box with my brand new Steam Deck OLED?

• 34:55Speaker 05

  I have so many nerdy suggestions.

• 34:58David Pierce?

  I don't want nerdy suggestions, Sean. I say this with love. I wanna, I wanna get to playing games well as quickly and seamlessly as possible. Like, I am worried about the Steam Deck because I'm worried it's so fidgety and finicky that I'm gonna spend my whole life goofing with the joysticks and not playing games.

• 35:14Alex Cranz?

  So, so Steam Deck has this, like, on the Steam Deck, they have compatibility for games, and you can also see it on the Steam software. So, like, you can just go download Steam ahead of time, find some games you like, make sure they're compatible, and then it'll be just out of the box, ready to go. Anything that's like yellow or red, you'll have to mess with a little bit. That's where you have to start tweaking things. Like, I try to play Crusader Kings on it. Don't, that's, it's not for the Steam Deck. It's terrible.

• 35:39Speaker 05

  There's even a tab in the store where you can just, like, only show me games that work well with the Steam Deck. And for the most part, they do.

• 35:47Alex Cranz?

  They, yeah, and it's, it's a lot of stuff, right? Like, it's, it's a ton of stuff. The ones that don't is stuff that's like Mass Effect, which is an EA game, so you know why it doesn't work well.

• 35:56David Pierce?

  I will say the other game in my life that I have loved with my whole heart the way that I have loved FIFA with my whole heart is Portal. And the idea of having a Steam thing that will let me play the Portal games forever is very exciting.

• 36:08Alex Cranz?

  And it'll just, straight out of the box, you'll be, you'll be off to the races, having a great time. Yeah, it really is so easy to just get going on the Steam Deck, provided you already own games.

• 36:19Speaker 05

  Elden Ring plays well there. Ori and the Will of the Wisps, if you haven't played that yet, play that on a Deco Lit. Oh my god, it looks brilliant on the Deco Lit. That game is made for HDR. Persona 5, have you played any Persona games?

• 36:33David Pierce?

  Bits and pieces, but never, never super deeply.

• 36:35Speaker 05

  Okay. Get Persona 5 or Persona 5 Royal, whichever one's better for your budget. Play that on Steam Deck. It's epic. We could spend the rest, you've spent another hour talking about games to play on.

• 36:46Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I was about to say, have you played Final Fantasy Remake yet? Like, beautiful on Steam Deck.

• 36:51David Pierce?

  Okay, alright. My list is long and none of them are the only game that I needed, but you know, we're doing the best we can here.

• 36:57Alex Cranz?

  You can get FIFA 23 fairly easily on the Steam Deck.

• 37:01David Pierce?

  Okay, that might help. Maybe that's like my gateway drug out of being obsessed with FIFA. I'll just play old games enough to satiate me and then go play better games.

• 37:11Alex Cranz?

  You get Ted Lasso in that one, you'll be fine.

• 37:13David Pierce?

  Exactly. Alright, thank you both, this was very helpful. I'm gonna go spend a bunch of money.

• 37:18Alex Cranz?

  Right.

• 37:19David Pierce?

  Alright, we gotta take a break and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna talk wearables. Specifically, one feature about wearables. We'll be right back.

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• 39:03David Pierce?

  Welcome back. So before we get into the next thing, one last note on that last segment. Listening back to it, I realize I don't know that I actually solved any of my problems. It was a really interesting discussion, and I think the place we landed is the right one for almost everybody. But I was realizing, listening back, that actually one of the games I'm most excited about this year is the new college football game, which is also an EA game and is also probably not going to be on the Steam Deck. So for me now, I go from one game that I play a ton that doesn't work on the Steam Deck to two games that I'm probably going to play a ton that won't be on the Steam Deck. So I don't know what to do. I think I'll probably still buy a Steam Deck, ideally with a good return policy, just to really get into it and play with it and get used to it.

• 39:48David Pierce?

  But I don't know that I've solved my problem. And I think I'm not alone. These are very popular games. The EA stuff is huge. Game streaming is going to solve a lot of problems for a lot of people, but hasn't yet, so I'm still stuck. I haven't bought anything yet. If you have ideas, please let me know. Vergecast at theverge.com. Call the hotline 866-VERGE11. What do you think I should buy? Tell me everything. I'm still so torn. I think Sean and Alex gave really good advice, but I don't know if I've actually solved my problem yet. Anyway, let's get into the next thing. Every once in a while on this show, we like to test some microphones. I think this stuff really matters, and it doesn't get talked about a lot when we talk about headphones and when we talk about wearable devices. We talk to our gadgets. A lot. And if you believe that AI is the future of how we talk to gadgets,

• 40:32David Pierce?

  it's gonna get more vocal over time. Microphones really matter. Whether you're just talking to Siri to set reminders, which is a thing I do constantly all day, every day, or it's gonna be how you talk to ChatGPT or your robot AI best friend for forever. Microphones really matter. And we've tested a lot of earbuds. We actually probably overdo for an earbuds test. But the thing that we haven't really done is maybe one of the wearable categories I'm most excited about, which I'll say broadly speaking is face gadgets. You have things like the Meta Quest 3 and the Vision Pro. You also have things like the Meta Smart Glasses and Amazon's Echo Frames and the idea of just a thing you wear on front of your eyes on your face

• 41:18David Pierce?

  that is a super powerful computer. I think we're at the very beginning of that genre of gadget, but I already think there's a lot of interesting stuff out there. So as we do, it's time to do a microphone test. I asked V Song, who has almost all of these gadgets, somewhat remarkably just lying around her house, to come on and do some tests with us. So we're gonna hear how it all sounds. Let's go. V Song, welcome back.

• 41:42Speaker 07

  Thanks for having me again.

• 41:44David Pierce?

  You and I have done so much stuff together recently. This is very exciting. This is terrible for you and great for me. I'm happy about it. So I have brought you here for the thing I have been like very excited to do for months because what I have discovered in my own life is that now when I take a phone call and I'm at home, instead of holding my phone to my ear, I actually put on the Meta Smart Glasses and that is now my like hands-free phone experience. And I love it very much. And I have found myself wondering a lot how I sound to other people when I do that. So you and I are going to do, I think, maybe the most ambitious microphone test we've ever done on this show because it involves a deeply weird set of gadgets and I'm very excited about it.

• 42:24Speaker 07

  I spent so much time yesterday and this morning prepping the gadget. For the technical logistics of all of it. And I looked ridiculous at every step of the way, so.

• 42:36David Pierce?

  As it should be. So yeah, okay, run me through the list of all the stuff we're about to test, which is basically like every weird face gadget in Fee's house.

• 42:45Speaker 07

  You know, it's a very thoughtful selection of the weird face gadgets in my house. So we have the Razor Anzu, which are a productivity pair of smart glasses. You know, they marketed it as basically like smart glasses for hands-free calls. And when you're on your computer that has blue light, what do you call these lenses? So we have those. Then we have the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses. We have the Apple Vision Pro and we have the Meta Quest 3.

• 43:14David Pierce?

  Amazing. I will say the only one in this category I feel like we don't have in here is probably the Echo Frames. I think anecdotally, no one seems to care about the Echo Frames. So I don't feel that bad leaving it out, but I do think it's like, it's like the one in this category that I'm curious about that we're not testing. So we'll have to come back and do that another time.

• 43:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, I do have a pair. I just moved not that long ago and then did spring cleaning. So the charger, where is the charger? I have been tearing my house apart for the charger because it's a, it's a weird charger.

• 43:45David Pierce?

  Okay, this is a good point. It's not just a USB-C port, which is what all chargers should be. It's a stupid like stand that you have to stick them on top of. And if you don't push them down at the right angle in the right way, it doesn't work. It's one of the worst chargers I've ever used. I hate it.

• 44:01Speaker 07

  It's also the glasses that stay on my face the least because I have a low nose bridge and it just slips down.

• 44:08David Pierce?

  That's my problem with the Meta Smart Glasses. So I'm sort of hoping that the Meta ones don't win so that I can convince myself to buy something else, but we're gonna see how this goes. So before we dive in, I think the one caveat we should provide here is that so far you're talking into your podcast mic. So I would say this is, this is kind of the gold standard of the audio that you should hear. Anything that we test is going to be compared to this. There are a couple that we're about to test that are Bluetooth devices. So you're going to be pairing Bluetooth devices to your computer. So you're going to get whatever. Bluetooth weirdness exists, but I would say that's fine because that's pretty indicative of normal Bluetooth weirdness. Like, most of the time, people are talking through Bluetooth gadgets, so we're going to do that. But then there's a couple, I think the headsets are going

• 44:51David Pierce?

  to be basically treated like microphones on computers, because we're actually going to be able to do it natively inside of the device. So we'll talk about those when we get to those. But let's just dive in. Which one do you want to do first?

• 45:02Speaker 07

  I've got the Anzu on right now, so let's just do that, because I swear to God, this is going to be a logistical nightmare when we're switching.

• 45:10David Pierce?

  I cannot wait. This is one of those times where podcast editing becomes very, very, very helpful, because you don't have to listen to us fiddle with Bluetooth settings. But all right, let's dive in. Let's go.

• 45:21Speaker 07

  All right, I am talking. I am saying a sentence.

• 45:24David Pierce?

  Oh, no.

• 45:25Speaker 07

  And your face is like saying that it does not sound good.

• 45:28David Pierce?

  This is terrible. This is like, okay, how would I describe it? You sound like you're on a phone call on speakerphone, but you've done the thing where you put your phone down on the kitchen counter while we're talking, and then you've like walked into the other room.

• 45:44Speaker 07

  Cool. Love it. I can imagine what that sounds like. And, you know, I'm not really sure where the mics are on this particular thing, but I don't think they're like the Meta Ray-Bans, where the mic is in the nose bridge, so it's like kind of close to your mouth. It says that they have omnidirectional mics, probably in the temples. So if they're in the temples, that's, you know, pretty far away from the actual sound source.

• 46:10David Pierce?

  And actually, in a certain way, sort of defeats the purpose of why I'm excited about these devices, because as you're talking about, one of the nice things about glasses is just that they're closer to your mouth, right? We have all these Bluetooth headphones and stuff, they are constrained by the fact that they're on your ears, so they have the stems that point towards your mouth, and that kind of helps, and they're getting smarter with the software. But fundamentally, like, the way to get a good microphone is to put it closer to your mouth, where the sound is coming from. And it feels like Razer just sort of beefed this one. So to Razer's credit, I guess, defense slightly, these aren't necessarily meant for this kind of like communication sorts of calls, right? These are things you're supposed to wear, like, at your desk to make it a little less painful to look at a screen all day.

• 46:52Speaker 07

  Um, so they, you know, there's like a while where Razor was just like, we're not just gaming. We do productivity stuff too. Yay for the office. Uh, and I think this was part of that push. Like, yeah, they do have blue light lenses so that if you're looking at the screen a lot, it's easier for you. They are your typical pair of glasses that are also headphones. So you can just listen to stuff. But you know, like when I took the briefing a couple of years ago and was testing this, it was just basically like, yeah, it is meant for like productivity in the office. So you can take phone calls and you'll sound really great. So obviously that was some marketing spiel. Uh, because clearly, uh, judging by your reaction, I do not sound that great.

• 47:33David Pierce?

  Yeah, you will not sound really great. I can tell you that now with, with great confidence. Um, Andrew Marino, I don't usually get to do this when we're here, but Andrew is, is our sound expert and podcast editor. Andrew, I, I want you to weigh in on all of these with me. What do you think of this one?

• 47:48Speaker 08

  Okay. So these aren't as bad as I thought. It is obviously a clear difference between the podcast microphone and, and this, but I don't hear a lot of background noise.

• 47:59David Pierce?

  That is true.

• 47:59Speaker 08

  That is good. I would actually like to hear how this sounds compared to like someone wearing AirPods though too. Because would you prefer hearing AirPods microphones or would you prefer hearing the glasses microphones?

• 48:13David Pierce?

  I was just thinking about that actually. And I think the thing that the AirPods do that these aren't doing is at least the AirPods push the voice more to the center of the mix, right? Like it's trying really hard to like raise the volume of your voice as opposed to everything else. This feels flatter in a way that is like probably more pleasant in a certain way, but also just means I can like hear you less well.

• 48:36Speaker 07

  I also wonder what it would be like if, you know, the other proposition for glasses is that like you're on a walk. You can go outside and take the phone call as well. And you know, outside, there's a lot more ambient noise. There's cars, there's wind. I wonder what this would sound like if you were on a walk. Cause I've taken calls on the Meta Ray-Bans while I'm on a walk and people think they're pretty decent, pretty good just because of where the microphone is situated. So I, you know, they always claim that they're great for wind. And I'm always like, but are they, are they?

• 49:04David Pierce?

  Yeah, we should say you're in your house in what I would call like a relatively quiet space. This is kind of as good as it's gonna be. We'll have to come back and do this another time with worse environments, but I think particularly because we had some of the headsets and these are like things you're mostly going to be doing inside, we wanted to give it its best shot.

• 49:23Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 49:23David Pierce?

  But okay, I'm done with these. These are not great. Let's move on. Let's do the Ray-Ban ones next. That feels like a good one-to-one comparison here. Let's switch to those.

• 49:32Speaker 07

  All right. Okay, this is me in the meta and I just want you to know that I'm blind because I have my contacts on and these are prescription lenses. So you are just a big blob on my phone.

• 49:44David Pierce?

  This sounds way better, like night and day to the last one. This is actually like the sound I was hoping that this was going to give me. It's not like amazing. It's definitely, I'm hearing a lot of compression on your voice. It's like clearly trying very hard to get your voice and cancel even not a lot of background noise, but this sounds great. I should say also, you're on your phone to do this normally record these things to your computer, but because of the weirdness of these glasses, you had an easier time connecting them to your phone than to your computer because Bluetooth is dumb and bad and complicated and nobody is good at it. But you sound really good to me.

• 50:21Speaker 07

  Yeah, so this was like one of the limitations that Becca pointed out when we were both doing the Ray-Ban meta testing and she like went all in on the microphone testing for these and it's just not really all that easy to, you know, connect with your computer while having these on. This is just a very phone-first kind of pairing situation, which is a little annoying, but great if you want to take these outside, I think, and just like walk around and take calls while you're... I do that all the time. Like I'll be on a walk and a friend will call and I'll just gab and people will look at me crazy because I don't have the social cue of having AirPods in my ear and these just look like a normal pair of glasses. So I just look like a psycho.

• 51:06David Pierce?

  Well, and right now you have sunglasses on indoors, which I would say is like an extremely cool move.

• 51:11Speaker 07

  Is it, is it, is it, is it cool? Who can say? Also, like, yeah, so I got these sent with prescription lenses as sunglasses. And I was like, I would have loved it if these were the transition lenses. But alas.

• 51:26David Pierce?

  I have the transitions and they're awesome. My dad, who does not have smart glasses, just has transition lenses in his regular glasses. And we made fun of him about it for so long because it's like, you go inside and for four minutes, you just have sunglasses on. And we always used to make fun of it. And like, boy, has history proven him right. Like, congrats, dad. You made transition lenses a thing. They are great. I'm a fan. So the thing that I like about these, this is the one where they put the microphone like right next to your nose, right? So it's, it's sort of perfectly where it should be to sound good here.

• 51:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, there's, I believe there's five microphones in the glasses at various points, but the one that captures your voice is just right in the nose bridge. So it's like right above your mouth. So like, I think that was the kind of low key genius move that they did with these compared to the other smart glasses that I've tested. So I gotta say, I really enjoy these as my outdoor, walk, outdoor. I wear these while running too. And it's pretty great as like a pair of open ear headphones. I can take calls. The sunglasses are great. The sound quality is great. So I just wish I had transition lenses because then I could just use these all the time. That'd be great.

• 52:38David Pierce?

  Totally. Andrew, what do you think?

• 52:40Speaker 08

  Yeah, these sound better than the Razer ones. I wouldn't be mad at all about this as far as like Bluetooth goes. It's pretty, pretty good.

• 52:47David Pierce?

  Yeah, I agree. This is definitely one that is like notably better than AirPods. And it just, you feel much closer, which is really nice. Like a lot of the things, and this is the challenge with the Razer one is a lot of Bluetooth headphones just make you feel sort of far away because you are far away. This one, you feel much closer to the mic, which makes you feel much closer like to me as we're talking, which is, which is very cool. This one I'm calling a victory. Let's, let's move on to some of the other ones. What do we have next?

• 53:14Speaker 07

  We have your pick of which headset, the Vision Pro or the Meta Quest?

• 53:20David Pierce?

  Let's start with the Quest because I would assume that the Vision Pro is going to sound better, but also I think more people have Quests. So let's, let's start with the Quest.

• 53:28Speaker 07

  This is going to be logistically fraught, so.

• 53:31David Pierce?

  We're going to play some hold music. We'll be back in like 45 minutes once we get this set up. Let's do it.

• 53:36Speaker 07

  All right.

• 53:38David Pierce?

  Meta Quest, is this the Quest 2 or the Quest 3 that we're on here, V?

• 53:41Speaker 07

  Quest 3, I believe. Yeah, Quest 3.

• 53:43David Pierce?

  All right, let's hear it. How do we sound?

• 53:45Speaker 07

  I am talking. Supposedly, you can hear me, even though this gave me a lot of grief about there being no microphone while logging into this, so it's very confusing.

• 53:55David Pierce?

  Okay, this sounds really good. This is kind of right in line with the smart glasses, actually, which I'm realizing now it's two Meta products that sit on your face. Maybe there's some shared technology there, but I don't know how that didn't occur to me until just now. But yeah, you sound pretty good. This is just another, like, big microphone on your face. And this is another one that I think they put the microphone pretty centrally on the thing, so it might even be closer to your mouth than the smart glasses.

• 54:23Speaker 07

  Oh, it certainly is weighing on my head, so it feels like it's falling on my face more than the smart glasses.

• 54:30David Pierce?

  It's gonna be on top of your mouth here in a couple of minutes as you're trying to talk. It'll be good.

• 54:33Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's actually, it's because I don't have it super tight on the back, because I get headaches when these are too tight. Oh, there we go. There we go.

• 54:42David Pierce?

  Okay, so what I also want to know is, tell me about the experience of getting into this call from the Quest. Because there's like, one of the things that Meta would really like to convince you of is that eventually a VR headset is going to be a work tool and you can just like open up a browser and use it for Google Meet or whatever. I have never done that one time, and I'm very curious how it's going for you.

• 55:05Speaker 07

  So I basically had to log into Slack, right? Because I need a link to this meeting. And so how am I going to get a link to this particular meeting? So, you know, like, either you have to have your calendar in here in some capacity, or you have to basically go into the browser, go into your Google Calendar and whatnot. But then I was just like, oh, God, okay. So I went into Slack, which, in our workplace, because things are secure, was real F'ing annoying.

• 55:36Speaker 07

  Because.

• 55:37David Pierce?

  Two factor authentication in a headset, not a solved problem.

• 55:40Speaker 07

  Two factor authentication in a headset, let me tell you, is not fun. And I was a good Vox Media employee. I have a very complicated password for my work thing. So I'm just going in in this 13, 14, 15 character long. I don't know how long it is. It's long, but I'm just like punching it in with this stupid little keyboard, just going eh eh. Capital, oh, that's not a capital. I have to re-enter all of this. Then we have two factor authentication and I have to go. Thankfully, I got it sent to my watch. So I get it boom into the watch. I'm like, yeah, cool. Awesome. Then I'm in Slack and then I have to go like in the browser in Slack. And I have to go, okay, now I gotta go to the link that I know is in this DM. And then, oh, okay, I gotta scroll in the DM, click on the link. That opens up Riverside in the browser.

• 56:23Speaker 07

  And then I'm like, cool, I'm gonna just log in, even though it's saying that there is no mic or camera detected. So, yeah. Andrew helped me test this before.

• 56:35David Pierce?

  It is, it is quite a project. So, okay, Andrew, I'm really curious for your thoughts on this one because I want to know how you feel about this versus the smart glasses. Because what I'm hearing is very similar, but this sounds like it's compressing harder to me. But what are you hearing?

• 56:50Speaker 08

  There's a bit of compression here. I'm also wondering if it's Riverside's echo cancellation here, but it is not significantly better than the Meta Ray Bans. This is a great sound for taking a meeting call, but if he was like, hey, can I join the podcast with the Quest 3? I'd be like, oh, can you use your phone?

• 57:14David Pierce?

  I think that's right. Like, none of this has gotten even up to like wired AirPods quality. But at least so far, this is definitely better than Razer, but I would say not quite as good as the Meta ones. My theory, I wonder about the echo cancellation too, but I also wonder if because Meta assumes you're going to be playing games all the time on this thing, that it's going to have audio all the time. And so they've just turned up the echo cancellation on the device itself, just so it's trying to noise cancel against what's coming out of the speakers all the time. Because it's just. It is compressing this pretty aggressively.

• 57:49Speaker 08

  It does sound like there is some processing happening.

• 57:51David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 57:51Speaker 08

  Before it gets into here.

• 57:53David Pierce?

  V, how are the speakers on this? Like, the actual listening experience is pretty solid, right? I feel like.

• 57:58Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 57:58David Pierce?

  Yeah. So this, this, I agree, it would work in a pinch in a meeting, but Andrew would not allow you on the Vergecast in the headset, under normal circumstances.

• 58:07Speaker 07

  Also, like, if you're reaching for a headset in a pinch for a meeting, something has gone terribly wrong.

• 58:14David Pierce?

  Consider your choices.

• 58:15Speaker 07

  Something has gone terribly wrong, terribly, terribly wrong, because where's your phone? There's just easier things to do than to swap on a headset and then, you know, like, I had gotten logged out of my account because the spouse logged into this at some point and was playing games. Then it was just like, wow, where's my account? Oh, I forgot. I don't remember what my Facebook password is. Oh, you're telling me I have to log into this with that? That, this was an ordeal yesterday, getting this prepped for today.

• 58:43David Pierce?

  Well, in the name of making everything simpler and better, let's make it more complicated. Let's switch and do the Vision Pro. Let's try that next.

• 58:48Speaker 07

  Oh, good lord. Here, you know, actually, that might be slightly easier than this one, because.

• 58:53David Pierce?

  Okay. All right. Well, we'll go back to the hold music. We'll be right back.

• 58:56Speaker 07

  All right, hold on.

• 58:58David Pierce?

  All right. Well, it took, it took some digging in settings and some app rebooting, but we got it working and now your persona is here and I, I hate this already. But I'm, I'm gonna not look, I'm just gonna listen. How do we sound? How are we doing?

• 59:11Speaker 07

  This was a nightmare. This is a nightmare. Everything's a nightmare. I can't stop looking at my horrible persona. Why is my hair so lumpy? My eyebrows are all so misaligned, so I just look dubious.

• 59:27David Pierce?

  The good news is you sound great. I'm actually like amazed by how good this sounds. I suppose it's a $3,500 headset. Again, it's a thing on your face. There are a lot of microphones. Apple's pretty good at noise cancellation. I sort of figured this would be, just in terms of raw audio, the best one. But it is, I would say, like, a full leap be above anything else we've tested so far.

• 59:51Speaker 07

  Is surprising, just because of how annoying it was to get into this app.

• 59:57David Pierce?

  There's definitely some compression, I will say, that I'm hearing more and more as you talk. It's doing a lot of the same, like, processing and cancellation stuff, but it still sounds very good. And it's very central. Like, you are right in the middle of the mix, and it sounds like you're talking to me instead of shouting at a phone from several rooms away, which is very nice.

• 1:00:19Speaker 07

  I will say that whenever I've done my cursed Vision Pro FaceTimes with Wes, everything sounds great. Like, because he's obviously in the Vision Pro and using that mic. And it's always sounded like he's in the room with me, which is uncanny and freaky on top of his mustache that won't move.

• 1:00:41David Pierce?

  Yeah, the real takeaway from this is FaceTime audio is your friend on the Vision Pro, not FaceTime video. And that is the way to live your life on the Vision Pro.

• 1:00:50Speaker 07

  Now, half the time, our FaceTimes are like, "Oh, why do I have this over my mouth? This is loud, because my hand is there."

• 1:00:58David Pierce?

  All right, well, it sounds good. Let's get you out of your misery here. I do, we should, we weren't planning to do this, but we should test AirPods last, just as kind of a control on the rest of it. Do you have a pair of AirPods lying around?

• 1:01:10Speaker 07

  I do.

• 1:01:11David Pierce?

  All right, let's go get those. Take off this godforsaken headset, and let's try those.

• 1:01:17Speaker 07

  Thank you. Thank you for letting me leave virtual jail.

• 1:01:27Speaker 08

  I don't know what it's having right now, but your voice is sped up like...

• 1:01:32David Pierce?

  Like 100x.

• 1:01:35Speaker 08

  I'm gonna have to kick you out, V, and then you're gonna have to come back in. I can't even understand what you're saying.

• 1:01:41David Pierce?

  Yeah, I got nothing. Yeah, just kick her out. Yeah. V, you're back with AirPods on.

• 1:01:46Speaker 07

  My AirPods Pro, USB-C version, so I guess the latest versions of the AirPods Pro you can have.

• 1:01:52David Pierce?

  Okay, so, I have to say, this is, this sounds comparatively worse than I actually expected. I would say, I would put this, like, pretty close to the very first, the Razer ones that we listened to, in the sense that it kind of sounds like a faraway omnidirectional microphone. And like, you sound fine, I can hear you, I can hear everything you're saying, but like, I expected this to come on and me to be like, "Oh yeah, this sounds kind of like the Ray-Ban smart glasses." This is like demonstrably worse than those, at least to my ears. Andrew, is that, am I way off here?

• 1:02:23Speaker 08

  No, absolutely. I actually would like to hear how the Razer ones sound again because those were a lot more fuller sounding in a frequency range than these. These kind of sound pretty tinny, actually, in comparison.

• 1:02:37Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, I do have an assortment of just gadgets in my strewn across my room, which is like, uh, my office, rather, which is the frickin', it's a disaster zone. It's like, uh, late in the week, so I haven't put my gadgets away, like a naughty, naughty gadget reviewer. So it's literally right here. I could put them back on if you want.

• 1:02:56Speaker 08

  Let's, let's do it really quickly.

• 1:02:57David Pierce?

  Let's just do it. Yeah, just really, really quick and then we'll let you go.

• 1:03:00Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:03:02Speaker 07

  All right, I'm back in these glasses, which you guys say look fine on me, but I think I look a little, like, I look a little bit like the grandpa from Up.

• 1:03:13David Pierce?

  First of all, that's a compliment. You should be psyched to look like the grandpa from Up. But yeah, Andrew, I'm, I'm kind of hearing what it sounds like you were saying that like this is a little fuller, but to me a little sort of further back, where like it, it sounds further away, but in a certain sense, better?

• 1:03:31Speaker 08

  Yeah, so it's probably like their worst microphones, but they are closer to the face. So you get a little more detail of what he is saying.

• 1:03:40Speaker 07

  I mean, uh.

• 1:03:41Speaker 08

  There's a trade off there, but like, if I'm on a call, like I would almost prefer these. Not on a podcast, but in a meeting, yeah.

• 1:03:48David Pierce?

  Yeah, you do sound clearer in this. Like, I feel like I hear your voice more clearly. It just sounds to me like you're further away from it. That's really interesting. Big win for headsets today. I expected AirPods to come somewhere in the middle, but I think you could make a pretty compelling case that all four of the things you just tried are better microphones for talking to people than a pair of AirPods.

• 1:04:11Speaker 07

  Wow, that's a, that's a big boon to the smart glasses category.

• 1:04:16David Pierce?

  Yeah, right? This is also a big win for you and me wearing glasses, walking around, talking to ourselves like maniacs kind of situation.

• 1:04:23Speaker 07

  You know, I, my neighbors have seen me do walk and talk, like, uh, just filming social videos and just, I did a social video while doing a walk and talk and someone was just like. This, this hoe really just be walking out here talking to, to thin air. And I was just like, yeah, you know what? This is the future, baby. Everything is a microphone.

• 1:04:45David Pierce?

  I really hope you say that to people. You just say, this is the future, baby. And then you just high five them and move on. I love it. All right, well, we need to get out of here, but big giant win for smart glasses today. I'm going to say in terms of like, the combination of you don't look like a lunatic and you sound pretty good. I think the meta smart glasses here are probably the winner for me in terms of like, what would I tell you to go get for a good microphone? Andrew, what's your read?

• 1:05:11Speaker 08

  Yes, I would like to note that V, how much are the Razer Anzu? How much do they cost?

• 1:05:18Speaker 07

  On Amazon, you can get them for $40. Jesus Christ.

• 1:05:22Speaker 08

  Right.

• 1:05:22Speaker 07

  That's pretty cheap.

• 1:05:23Speaker 08

  That's really cheap for that.

• 1:05:25David Pierce?

  That is really cheap.

• 1:05:26Speaker 08

  If someone was like, should I get the $250 meta glasses? Or should I get these $40 glasses that I can take calls with? I might just say, get those.

• 1:05:37David Pierce?

  That is fair. That's a big price difference. The meta ones definitely sound better, but yeah, for, for 50 bucks as a, as a thing to just throw on when you have a phone call, the, the Razer one's not a terrible choice.

• 1:05:48Speaker 07

  That's shocking to me. That's like, obviously I've tested these a long time ago, so I didn't remember, but that's just wow. Talk about bang for your buck.

• 1:05:57David Pierce?

  The thing that I use the, the meta smart glasses for a lot is it's like, I, I've had, I had, I was in a car accident a couple of weeks ago, so I spent a lot of time on hold with the claims department. And rather than wear headphones, I can just like throw them on and sit on hold and then I can like listen to music in the room or whatever. And actually for sitting on hold, a pair of smart glasses is like weirdly great. So I think i- in that case, again, like the, the $50 Anzus are, are also a pretty solid choice, but I feel like raw sort of quality and usability meta, but Andrew, you make a good point. $50 for, for this is, is not the worst deal in the world. And you get to look like the grandpa from Up, which is an incredible, huge victory.

• 1:06:36Speaker 07

  Jury's out on how, how these look on me. Like you guys say, it looks fine, but.

• 1:06:41David Pierce?

  It's one to think about. Uh, all right, V, we gotta let you go. Thank you so much as always for doing this and putting up with all of our Bluetooth nonsense.

• 1:06:48Speaker 07

  Thank you. I'm just gonna lie down and take a break and recalibrate my Vision Pro.

• 1:06:55David Pierce?

  All right, we gotta take a break. Then we're gonna come back, we'll do a question from the hotline. We'll be right back.

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• 1:08:35David Pierce?

  Welcome back. All right, let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11. The email is [email protected]. We love all of your questions. Please keep sending us all of your wildest, weirdest questions about technology. Also, in particular, I'm really eager to start doing more like teeny tiny tech mysteries. So if you have a weird tech problem that you can't solve and we might be able to help with, let us know. This week, we have a question, which seemed fitting, about glasses.

• 1:09:05Speaker 09

  Hey David, it's Ruby from the UK. I have that eyesight and I wear glasses all the time and it's getting to the point where I really need new glasses, but I told myself I wouldn't buy new frames unless they were smart glasses. I don't like Meta, so those are out of the question, but I don't know if it was you, but The Verge reviewed a pair of smart glasses called Focals by a company called North. It got bought by Google and they have a little laser projector that just gave you a hug. And from those reviews, it looked pretty cool. Do you think that's maybe something we might see in the near future? And maybe even an AI version of it that's not stupid? Thanks and take care.

• 1:09:47David Pierce?

  Okay, so real quick, if you don't remember the North Focals, and you'd be forgiven for not remembering the North Focals. Basically, the way that they worked was instead of being two screens in front of your eyes, there was a little laser projector off to the right, I think, of the glasses. So it would project the laser onto this little polymer in the middle of the right lens, which would then reflect that light back into your eyes. So instead of looking at a screen, you are getting what amounted to, I think it was a 300 pixel by 300 pixel display, kind of right in the middle of your right eye. And you could see through it when it wasn't projecting. It looked just like a little smudge on the lens itself. It was a very clever system.

• 1:10:28David Pierce?

  North had a real problem making these things work, though. For one, it's expensive technology, it's a startup. They ended up trying to sell these things, I think, for a thousand dollars, which most people are just not gonna spend a thousand dollars on a pair of glasses. Google ended up buying North, I think mostly for the technology, but obviously, Google has a complicated relationship with smart glasses, all the way back to Google Glass. I do think the company is committed to doing some kind of AR XR thing. The company keeps teasing it and talking about it. There was that thing in the Project Astra video, where you can see the glasses, like it's out there. Google is still thinking about this stuff. But what North did was really clever, honestly, and I'm sort of sad to have seen the company go.

• 1:11:12David Pierce?

  But it was tough, right? Not only was it really Expensive, but North famously had trouble with people with longer eyelashes. And evidently, the display struggled when people were wearing mascara. So this stuff is hard, is my point. It's hard and it's expensive. And there is just not a lot of progress being made towards putting this kind of technology in something that looks and feels and costs like a normal pair of glasses. All that said, I do think something like the Focals is probably where we're headed in the immediate future. Like, look, sure, someday, the whole Vision Pro Meta Quest thing might be the future, but it's only going to be the future when those things look like a pair of glasses.

• 1:11:56David Pierce?

  And I think we're just a bunch of huge technical innovations away from that being the case. So what we're going to see instead, I think, is something that feels more like a heads up display, right? Something that projects little bits of information at a time onto your face. And as we've been talking about this whole episode, if you believe that chat, in particular, voice in, voice out chat with AI systems is going to be a key part of how we talk to computers, something like that becomes really powerful, right? It can display your text message and you can respond to it. It can show you the answer to a question that you asked. It can show you the information that you asked for. It becomes this really useful thing in a way that even North, five years ago, was

• 1:12:40David Pierce?

  trying to like awkwardly rewrite apps to make them make sense on this tiny display in a way that was just really hard. Now, we have a confluence of things, whether it's voice, or we've had a lot of work with widgets on, you know, lock screens and home screens of phones. That stuff has also been transferred to smartwatches, which have made a lot of progress in the last five years. Put all of that together and you can sort of see how the interface for a pair of glasses that is just listening to you talk, maybe doing some gesture control. Again, we have these new smart rings, like the Galaxy Ring, that are starting to experiment with maybe you can use your fingers to control devices just with your hands. Meta is also working on this kind of stuff. Mark Zuckerberg even said that there is a new wearable that the company has been working

• 1:13:25David Pierce?

  On that it's getting ready to release that is going to be a new way to control gadgets. So again, all of this is just coming together. The question is going to be, can anyone make a product out of it? Can you do North's thing where North also had a little ring joystick thing that was kind of neat, but also kind of got in the way? Can you do that well with a smart ring? Can you figure out the interface in a way that is useful and will make people want to spend the extra money on it? Without being too much extra money to the point where people just don't want it in addition to their regular pair of glasses? Can you make the battery last long enough that it doesn't feel like I have to charge my glasses twice a day? Because that's a terrible experience. And then I think there's the biggest question, which is just that we haven't solved how any of this is supposed to work.

• 1:14:07David Pierce?

  A Google executive a few years ago said to me that one of the most challenging things about AR is figuring out kind of the relative noise level of an AR system. And I mean noise in the sense of like how in your face it is and involved it is in your life, right? Sometimes you want lots of information. You want it to be telling you what's going on around you. You want it to point you to the coffee shop down the street or the cool place that you totally should go, or the fact that your friend is over there. And then other times you want it to just shut up and go away. And you want all of that to happen automatically and seamlessly and without you having to decide what you want. Like your phone, you can just leave somewhere else. You can walk away from your phone in a way that you can't walk away from a pair of glasses,

• 1:14:51David Pierce?

  especially if they're corrective, if you need them. And so all these interfaces are going to have to be automatic and perfect and uncomplicated in ways that just no one has figured out yet, right? Like if you got as many notifications on your face as you get on your phone every day, you would stop wearing glasses the very first day. You just would. We all would. It's a bad interface when it is literally in front of your eyes whenever you get a notification. And that stuff, I think, is going to take longer to solve because it's about who we are as people and how we use technology and what we care about and what we don't care about. And putting all those pieces together, I think, is actually the hardest part of all of this. Because again, you have rings, which I think are doing interesting gesture and sensing stuff.

• 1:15:35David Pierce?

  You have other devices doing that. There's we who knows, we might get like brain computer interfaces soon enough. I think the glasses technology is getting better pretty quickly. North's projector was not amazing, but it was pretty good. And that was a while ago. And frankly, it's a bummer that we haven't gotten to see five years of progress there. We also are seeing companies like Meta really start to bet on the smart glasses space. I think the idea that we were going to get headsets and we were all going to learn how to live inside of headsets was just the wrong one. And I think even the success that Meta has said it's seeing from the smart glasses is proof that what we're doing is saying, how do we make glasses that look like glasses and work like glasses and feel like glasses? And then how do we make them more useful over time? And I

• 1:16:19David Pierce?

  think that is a really interesting road that is going to lead to interesting things fairly quickly. So I would say to your question specifically, I think if you need a pair of glasses today, you should just buy a pair of glasses. There's not anything that is so smart and so good, even at doing one thing beyond being a pair of glasses, that it feels worth making a huge bet on. But it's kind of like the one after this one, right? Like someday in, you know, a couple of years when you lose these glasses or need to increase your prescription, or they break or whatever. I think at that point, we might be somewhere where there is a heads up display in your glasses that is pretty useful. It won't do everything. It won't be a full on metaverse AR experience where you can like play games

• 1:17:04David Pierce?

  in the world around you. But it'll be something. Maybe it'll just show you your text messages. But that'll be something. And I think that'll be pretty cool. There are companies out there working on this. I think Google has intimated that there's stuff going on. There's some indication from reporting that we've seen from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg and others, that Apple is starting to really work on smart glasses. Meta is very clearly investing in this more and more over time. There's a company called Brilliant Labs that is doing some interesting work here on trying to create a whole ecosystem of these smart glasses. So like, I think this is coming. And I think you're on to the right idea that just a little display, a little bit of information, a little bit of sort of additive interface over top of the real world is the next thing and feels achievable. But I just can't think of something

• 1:17:49David Pierce?

  I would tell you to buy right this minute that feels like it's the answer. So maybe go buy like, you know, the junkiest pair of glasses you can find that still look good and work well. And then just try to keep them around until you find the right thing.

• 1:18:04David Pierce?

  All right, that is it for The Vergecast today. Thanks to everybody who came on the show and thank you as always for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about, from the gaming handhelds to all of our reviews of all of those wearable face pewter thingies at theverge.com. I'll put some links in the show notes, but as always, read theverge.com. There is a lot going on right now, so go check out the site. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or handheld gaming consoles that I should buy, email us, [email protected] or call the hotline 866-VERGE11. We'd love hearing from you. It's my favorite. This show is produced by Andrew Moreno, Liam James, and Will Poor. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neelai, Alex, and I will be back on Friday to talk about all the AI news, all the Apple

• 1:18:49David Pierce?

  public beta stuff, and everything else happening this week. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

• 1:19:04Speaker 10

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• 1:19:35Speaker 11

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