Monday, 12 June 2023, Bengaluru, India
This week at TechCrunch, we’ve been waxing lyrical (and critical) about Apple’s Vision Pro, but the wearable technology industry is also experiencing other developments. With a headset that makes no additional promises, Sol Reader secured $5 million in a seed round. In actuality, it seeks to accomplish the exact opposite: concentrate all of your attention on the current book. Or, as it were, a book on the face.
Apple’s preview of the widespread use of AR and VR in the future. Ben Chelf, CEO of Sol, stated that even if it becomes more reasonably priced and has a smaller form size, the haunting question of “Do I truly need more time with my smart devices? At Sol, we’re more interested in how our devices might motivate us to use our time wisely than we are in spatial computing or augmented and virtual realities. We are creating the Sol Reader with reading as its only significant use case in mind. Furthermore, while Big Tech will undoubtedly lower prices and increase specs over time, we can today provide a time-well-spent option at 10% of Apple’s Vision’s cost.
Simple in design, the gadget covers your eyes like a pair of spectacles to filter out any distractions as you read. Even as I type that, I can feel a twinge of sadness: I’ve wanted this product to exist for years; I was virtually weaned on books and have recently lost the capacity to focus when reading. During the epidemic, something inside of me snapped, and I started checking my phone every ten seconds to see what Trump had done and how near we were to a COVID-19-powered abyss. I’ll just say that my mental health wasn’t the best, and I can’t say enough good things about the concept of Sol Reader.
The $350 gadget, which is presently available for pre-order, has two side-lit e-ink displays like the Kindle and is available in a few different colours. The glasses come with a charger and a controller (I wish my Kindle had a remote!). You can read for about 25 hours on a full battery. The 577,608-word novel Infinite Jest may be read in roughly 48 hours if you have an average adult reading pace of around 200 words per minute. If you’re trying to read Infinite Jest in one sitting, you’re a bigger book fanatic than most, so that means you need at least one charging break.
There is a diopter adjustment integrated into the product, allowing users of glasses or contacts to use the glasses without the need for further vision correction (up to a point, as the manufacturer doesn’t indicate the precise adjustment range). The screens are 1.3-inch e-ink displays with a 256256 resolution per eye. The glasses’ 64MB of storage should be enough to accommodate enough books for even the longest getaways from reality.
Garry Tan (Initialized, Y Combinator) was the round’s lead investor and the $5 million investment round for the business concluded roughly a year ago. A select group of early access testers is receiving the ‘advanced copy’ (read: private beta) of the glasses today from the business. Customers are now asked to sign up for the waiting list to secure a pair of Sols since the company is mum on when its full production batches will begin shipping.
[Source: Techcrunch.com]
