I've just landed in Los Angeles, and I've set myself a tough assignment. Leave my iPhone at the hotel, and record the entire trip with just the new generation of Snapchat Spectacles. Can it be done?
Well, I needed to download Snapchat for a start.
Of all the cities on earth, super outdoorsy LA seemed the ideal place to trial a new pair of Snapchat Spectacles, which take videos and photos hands-free (sort of like an elegant GoPro for your face). On my itinerary was hiking Runyon Canyon, cycling along its mega-famous boulevards, a private tour of the Broad art museum and generally stalking minor celebrities around West Hollywood Peep Show-style, which was far more discreet than chasing them with my iPhone.
I wanted to test if they were the ideal travel companion.
The first iteration of the Snapchat Spectacles had a lukewarm reception when huge hype didn’t translate into sales. Snapchat's developers have upped the ante with the second generation models, which came out in September. They're waterproof and stylish (the operative syllable being ‘ish’) – as well as having polarised lenses like regular shades.
I packed the new Nico model, which from far away could pass for regular matte-black shades but up close looked suspiciously like chunkier versions of the 3D glasses given out at Imax cinemas.
The Spectacles take snappy 10-second videos and photos with just the press of a button, hidden Matrix-like on the top of the thick frames. It was just a flashing light – perhaps they’re not that discreet, after all – at the front that showed when they were recording.
There was a rather painful period of figuring out how they work: downloading Snapchat, hooking the app up to the glasses via Bluetooth, then actually filming the videos. When the glasses finish recording, the videos and images are filed automatically in the Snapchat app.
First on the LA agenda: cycling. I borrowed a bike from the hotel I was staying at and set off on two wheels to explore West Hollywood (which – I should add – nobody does in LA. It’s still a car city at heart) with the Snapchat Spectacles balanced uneasily on my nose.
Pedalling furiously along sun-drizzled Santa Monica Boulevard, I recorded short videos of me whizzing past sceney restaurants such as Sur, palm trees and a branch of In and Out burger, occasionally dipping my head down to record the fact I was on a bike. The speed is hard to capture with the glasses, regardless of how quickly I was pounding along the bike lane. Plus, LA roads are so long and same-y that the footage didn't do it justice.
The same for Sunset Boulevard, a traffic-clogged highway studded with celebrity hangouts. I thought I saw Kylie Jenner brunching outside at one place, which caused my head to snap back 90 degrees and my video to jerk halfway through. Cycling past the tourists nipping in and out of luxe boutiques of palm-tree-fringed Rodeo Drive was better short video fodder – although what seemed to be glamorously exhilarating in my head looked surprisingly slow when I watched it back.
It was on an adventurous hike up Runyon Canyon with Hikes and Bikes LA that they really came into their own. The glasses meant I could surreptitiously film the mega-mansions of Drew Barrymore, Slash and Patrick Dempsey (supposedly) buried in the Hollywood Hills with just a tap of my finger, while I pretended to look thoughtfully out across the canyon.
The fish-eye-style videos looked surprisingly dramatic when hiking, but probably because my heart rate was as jerky as my movements. After running to the top, the glasses allowed for an unshaky panorama over Griffith Park, the Hollywood sign and the neighbourhoods that make up urban LA. One benefit was that using the Spectacles meant I could fully see and appreciate the view, rather than viewing it second-hand through my phone camera.
The glasses' last outing was to Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirrors at the Broad art museum in Downtown LA. Spinning about on the spot, recording 360 degrees of blinking white, red and blue, only added to the disorientation of the exhibition itself. The Spectacles are definitely more suited to a wide-open panorama than a fiddly Instagram exhibition where your head aches from the constant spinning around trying to capture everything. There was one (possible) last reprieve for the Spectacles: I skulked around Craig's, a super slebby restaurant on Melrose Boulevard, late one night wearing them in the hope of catching some stars eating (Mariah Carey had been seen there the week before, according to Instagram). Unfortunately not even Snapchat could help me flush out some A-listers.
I downloaded the videos later that night while waiting at LAX: a convoluted process that involves connecting to the glasses’ own WiFi network to transfer them onto my iPhone's camera roll. The short, circular videos don't seem to have captured how bright and pacey my trip was, and the jerky panoramas I captured while on the bike are enough to induce a fit.
In short, they're a fun gimmick that were more a conversation starter than anything else. The shaky bursts I captured of Griffith Park and Rodeo Drive have yet to make it past my camera roll. I'll be sticking to my regular old Ray-Bans for the next trip.
The Snapchat Spectacles cost £199, and are available at spectacles.com/uk/
