They're actually smart glasses called Focals

made by the Canadian start-up North.

Focals are meant for everyday use,

and their main purpose:

to make you rely less on having to pull out your phone.

But these provide you notifications and other information

right in front of your face,

just like smartphones, but faster

and arguably more convenient.

But is it really as good as it seems?

I wanted to see if smart glasses

really will replace a smartphone

or if it's just all hype.

Watch out New York,

Alex has a pair of smart glasses.

So how do they work?

There is a holographic display

on the right lens that

shows notifications and

information directly from your phone.

This is all controlled by a

small ring called the Loop,

which allows you to navigate

and interact with your display all via Bluetooth.

Adam: The idea was, what can we create

that can be part of your everyday life

and seamlessly fit it into your life

and give you all of those benefits

of being connected to the world.

Alex: From the home screen alone,

I could check the time, weather,

messages, calendar notifications,

locations, and even my battery life.

Pretty much everything I could check on my phone,

well, maybe not everything,

just the things I wanna know right away.

It even has Alexa integrated into the glasses,

so you can ask Alexa questions through the

built-in mic and speaker.

Focals can even let you call an Uber.

You better believe we tried

all these features along the way.

First stop: getting fitted.

At North's showroom in Brooklyn,

they custom-fitted me and

even gave me a quick demo

of what I would experience

when wearing them.

A pretty unique sizing process,

measuring my head size,

width between my eyes,

and other measurements

to make sure the hologram

would perfectly align with my eyes.

The crazy part is they are just made for me,

so no one could see the hologram display

while wearing my glasses.

Gene: I hear little beeps

in my right ear, but nothing showing up.

Kara: Am I not looking in the right place?

Alex: After a few weeks,

my glasses were ready to be picked up

and sized for my final fitting.

I just got them, woo-hoo!

It is officially day one

of me wearing my Focal smart glasses.

I'm heading into the office

and mostly going to be

sitting at my desk during the day

just kind of performing simple daily tasks.

I'm going to just try and get used to

the look and the feel of these

and see how my first day goes.

I wanted to take my Focals

a step further today.

I figured it's day one, why not?

So I tried out the GPS feature

to get me from my apartment

to the PATH station.

Alexa, how do I get to the Hoboken PATH station?

Alexa: Directions to PATH station:

Hoboken on Hudson Place in River Road in Hoboken.

Turn left onto First Street.

Alex: It's kind of neat having each step

pop up, and then it will go away in about five seconds,

so it's not very distracting if

I'm walking or crossing the street.

And at one point I intentionally

wanted to make a wrong turn

to see if it would reroute me,

and it didn't, so that was like a little disappointing

and kind of shows that their

GPS is not so accurate.

I'm used to wearing glasses.

I do wearing them on a daily basis,

but after wearing these Focals

for a full day, my eyes do seem more tired.

Alexa, what's the weather today?

Alexa: In Hoboken, it's

6 degrees Fahrenheit with clear skies.

Alex: I just got to the office,

and I'm going to put my phone down for the day

and just rely on my smart glasses.

I was already informed that

when I'm sending a voice-to-text

message to one of my contacts,

a different number will appear

when they receive the message.

OK, so I did pick up my phone

just because I posted an Instagram Story,

but no more phone today.

I can't help it if my glasses

don't let me check social media.

Stay warm.

My eyes took awhile to get adjusted to the Focals.

At times they felt heavy, slid down my nose,

became loose, and I even had to make them refitted.

As my week went on, the holographic display

was very out of focus and even glitchy at times.

I even lost the nose pad, which kind

of threw off all the display,

and I couldn't really see anything.

So I ended going back to the store to get them realigned

and tightened to fit my face.

Let's just say day four was the true test,

when I tried calling an Uber right from my Focals.

Jay Street Subway station.

I have the option to walk or Uber,

and we are going with Uber.

This Uber is six minutes away,

and it's $8.

Looking for ride!

It's a little complicated ordering the Uber from my Focals.

I did have to bring out my phone just to kind of see

some of the notifications

from when my driver's arriving.

It's kind of neat. It is giving me updates throughout

my ride, and it's saying I'm three

minutes away from my destination.

I tried texting and responding more

and even using my calendar with the glasses.

Schedule a meeting for tomorrow at 10:30 a.m.

I ran some errands and asked Alexa to guide me

to the local grocery store.

Alexa: Would you like directions to Organic Basic Food

LLC on 204 Washington St. in Hoboken?

Alex: Which wasn't an easy experience.

Before I knew it, my journey into

the future of tech had come to an end.

After a full week of wearing my Focals,

here are my final thoughts.

As for the comforting fit of the Focals,

they were really uncomfortable at times.

They felt even heavy, and they would slide down my nose,

so I had to kind of keep pushing them back up,

and just really bulky on the sides.

Alexa was not very effective

when I was in a loud or noisy environment.

She couldn't easily connect and understand

the commands that I was asking her.

This just became really frustrating sometimes,

and I wanted to just pick up my phone.

The holographic display wasn't super clear

and easy to see in the sun, so

I often used my sun clips.

As for the Loop, it died a lot faster

than the Focals, and that could've

just been because I was navigating

most of the time with the Loop.

But the good part was I was able to get

all my notifications on my Focals,

and I was a lot more hands-free

and relied a lot less on my phone.

North has a lot of great features so far,

and they have a lot more to kind of grow

and integrate into these Focals,

but it would be nice if I could

play my music on them, maybe even pick up a phone call,

and watch some videos.

Since trying them out, North has added

a few new features like music controls

and transit updates to the Focals.

But it's going to take a lot more

than telling it to skip to the next song

before it's a must-have device.

My overall rating for the Focals

would be 3 out of 5.

Personally, I did not find them

to be an ideal everyday wearable.

I'm not really a techy person,

but it was a really nice challenge

to wear these smart glasses for a week

and step into the future.

I also responded to

What is this? What is this?

Hey!