Google opens Gemini smartglasses preorders, starting at $395

Preorders for Google's Gemini-powered smartglasses opened today, marking the company's latest swing at putting a computer on your face. The devices are a three-way build: Google supplies the software, Samsung packs in the computing hardware, and eyewear designers Gentle Monster and Warby Parker shape the frames.

Warby Parker's version comes in three frames — Alden, Reid and Wren — in Pine, Saddle and Jet Black, with standard optical or sun lenses on offer. Prices start at $395, and Warby Parker is only shipping within the US. Gentle Monster went wider with six styles, though Google hasn't revealed their names yet. Those arrive in dark red, pink, gray and yellow, with clear, tinted, blue or brown lenses, and start at $449 across the US and South Korea.

Google is making privacy part of the pitch this time, according to Ars Technica. That's a pointed shift for a product category that has struggled with the camera-on-your-face problem since the original Google Glass. Google has teed up these plans a couple of times already before today's launch.

None of it comes cheap. The entry point sits at $395 for Warby Parker's frames and $449 for Gentle Monster's, prices that put the glasses well past impulse-buy territory for anyone curious about the Gemini era of wearable computing.