ION Glasses are a cooler, cheaper take on Google Glass

Setting itself apart from Google Glass, ION Glasses seems more like a peripheral device to your smartphone or tablet. That would be similar to what your smartwatch would be — a companion device. Moreover, it’s pretty damn cheap! Not exactly aiming for the exact same experience to what’s offered by Google Glass, you can get a pair of ION Glasses for less than US$100.

The Spanish team behind this project says that it’s the “first ever glasses that will interact with your smartphone or tablet.” This pair is able to give you notifications, remote control, alerts in case of loss and other customizations.

ION Glasses can support both prescription or sunglasses and carries a bluetooth 4.0 chip, a battery, a multi-color LED set, a buzzer and two buttons.

Though notifications and such will not appear as a little screen in the right-hand side of your vision, you’ll be notified privately through your pre-selected light code. Additionally, it can act as a remote control which means that you can use it to turn the volume up and down or skip a song or control your smartphone remotely, allowing you to activate its camera, video recorder and voice recorder.

ION Glasses come with an app that needs to be paired with your smart device that, when apart from each other, will beep and further help you find to find the device’s location.

Concerning it’s customization, there’s not that much to it really. You can change the LED colour of your notifications or change the lenses to fit your personal style.

Since the project was started a few weeks ago on Indiegogo, it has raised about US$11 000 out of an ultimate goal of US$150 000. ION Glasses will launch 16 November.