Google Glass. A tech guy’s first impression

This is a crosspost from my blog.

Last night, I received my Google Glass Explorer Edition unit and after playing with it for 30min I’m completely amazed and think it will have a big future, just not with ‘ordinary’ consumers, but I’ll save those thoughts for another post..

After opening the shipping box, I was greeted by this inconspicuous black box.

After opening the outer box, you presented with all white packaging — a stark contrast to the black box house it. There were two smaller boxes, once for the Glass device and one for the lenses. I ordered my Glass with the black shield which I’m sure I’ll wear all of three times before putting it away for ever…its just not my style.

Everyone always talks about how Apple’s products are packaged, but I think Google did an exceptional job with this packaging — everything was high quality and the packaging just felt solid. When you try to remove the Glass unit from the box you have to peel back a sheet of translucent (see below) paper which reminded me of removing some sort of freshness seal. There was a purity to everything that was in the box, like Google was saying, “We know this is a new experience for you, we’re going to keep it as pure and inspiring as possible.

After getting done with the boxes, it was on to the goods. I’ll shut up now and let you enjoy the pictures for a bit.

So first impressions. The unit felt pretty light, but very solid. At first I was afraid I was going to mess up the nose clips since you’re instructed to ‘fit the device to your nose’, but they were pretty sturdy and actually kind of difficult to move. Once the device is on your head, it does take some getting used to, but nothing too bad. It was reminded me of the first time I put on glasses; something was different, not good, not bad, just different, which, in retrospect sums up my ideas for the device, it is just different. By the end of my first 30min wearing it, I didn’t even notice it at all.

With the second edition, Google is shipping the device to people’s homes. This, I feel, is a big mistake because the device isn’t really that intuitive to setup and get going. I consider myself an early adopter and very tech forward, and it took me a good 10min to realize how to set it up online — there weren’t any instructions in the box other than how to turn it on. If this was a general population roll out, they’d be getting a lot of complaints that the deceive is slow or not working. Once i got that sorted out, it was easy enough to kind of figure everything out.

The one thing that struck me was the delay from when you active a piece of Glasswear, an app for Google Glass, on the My Glass site to when it shows up in your device. It took a few minutes for things to populate, which seemed pretty long especially since people are used to near instantaneous syncing now a days. Oddly enough, the hardest thing to sync was my GMail. Again, I have the feeling this could have been alleviated by having a Googler walk me though the set-up like was done with version 1 of Glass (note: there is an option to go to Google and have them set it up for you, but there is a wait and I wasn’t waiting). After searching the Google Explorer community for some info, I was fully up and running.

Wearing the device isn’t that bad. It’s doesn’t feel heavy on your head, but it does get warm ever so slightly. The main shock came at looking in the mirror. The look is still a bit strange and, even in a mellow color like charcoal, it really sticks out. Personally, I feel this will be issue number one when trying to gain mass adoption and something that gives watches like the Galaxy Gear a huge leg up. I know work is being done to improve the aesthetic of the device, so that can’t come soon enough.

So, all-in-all it was a very solid first impression. The device feels good and looks okay. The setup was a bit murky, but that is something that can easily be remedied with some better user guides. Once you get going with it, it starts to become pretty easy to use. I think the learning curve for the general person might be a bit steep. Over the next few days I’ll be posting on the utility of the device and where I feel it is going to fit in the lives of consumers and wearable devices.