Vuzix
Vuzix for third-party developers — SDK access, app model, distribution, capabilities & AI, and where it sits in the 2026 smart-glasses landscape.
Verified 2026-08-24 against primary sources
Openness verdict. Build-time: genuinely open — a free, publicly downloadable native SDK (Android + Apple) plus an MIT-licensed, now-GA third-party OS (MentraOS, whose third-party app SDK completed its move from the cloud runtime to a phone-local Miniapp SDK — a public beta — in MentraOS 3.0, which reached Google Play on 2026-08-08 and the App Store on 2026-08-15), no gatekeeping. Ship-time: fully open — a Z100 app is an ordinary phone app shipped through Google Play / the App Store, since the glasses are a display-only Bluetooth peripheral with no on-lens store or review gate. The MentraOS path strengthens this further: it is funded, open-sourced on GitHub, has an app store (rebuilt for local miniapps and due back later in 2026), and is cross-vendor, so a Z100 integration written against it is portable to other makers' glasses.
Covered here: Vuzix Z100 (Ultralite lightweight smart glasses).
Not covered here: Vuzix M400 · Vuzix M4000 · Vuzix Blade 2 · Vuzix Shield · Vuzix LX1 · Ultralite OEM platform / waveguide reference designs · Ultralite Pro.
Overview
Vuzix (Rochester, NY) is a long-time waveguide-optics and smart-glasses maker whose consumer/prosumer play is the Z100, a lightweight heads-up display in a normal-eyewear form factor. This page scopes to the Z100 (the "Ultralite" class); Vuzix's other products — the M400, M4000, Blade 2, Shield and the newer LX1 — are standalone Android head-mounted computers aimed at enterprise, with on-device compute and cameras, covered under a different SDK family (see below). Hardware snapshot (Z100): a single-eye (right) transparent 640×480 monochrome microLED waveguide display; no camera, no microphone, and no speaker (Vuzix positions this as a privacy/battery/weight advantage); tap-on-frame input; ~38 g; up to ~48 h battery; Bluetooth to an Android or iOS phone. It is a display-only peripheral, not a standalone computer — all logic and any AI run on the paired phone.
Status: shipped — general availability 20 Nov 2024; as of July 2026 it is no longer sold on Vuzix's own store, whose Z100 product URL now resolves to a smart-glasses index listing only the LX1, M400 and an in-development "Vuzix AI Smart Glasses", with only Z100 accessories left in the storefront. Vuzix has published no end-of-life notice, and the Z100 support docs and Ultralite SDK remain live.
Price: $499 at launch.
Regions: was sold direct and via resellers in North America and Europe; exact regional list not published.
What you can buy
| Model | Price | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Vuzix Z100 (Ultralite-class monocular HUD smart glasses) vuzix.com ↗ | $499 at launch (Vuzix GA press release, 20 Nov 2024: "priced at just $499"). No current price is published — the Z100 glasses SKU carries no listing on vuzix.com as of 30 Jul 2026. | No longer sold, no EOL notice |
| Vuzix M400adjacent vuzix.com ↗ | $1,499.99 USD | On sale |
| Vuzix LX1adjacent vuzix.com ↗ | $2,199.99 USD | On sale |
| Vuzix AI Smart Glassesadjacent vuzix.com ↗ | No price published | Announced, not available |
Cheapest way to run your own code: The Vuzix Z100 is the only model the Ultralite SDK targets, and Vuzix no longer sells it — its last published price was the $499 launch figure from 20 Nov 2024. The cheapest Vuzix hardware you can actually buy and run code on is the M400 at $1,499.99 USD, but it is a standalone Android head-mounted computer on a different SDK family, so Ultralite code will not move to it.
What the listings leave out
Vuzix Z100 (Ultralite-class monocular HUD smart glasses)
- One hardware configuration — a single-eye right-side monocular 640×480 monochrome microLED waveguide with no camera, microphone or speaker.
- Vuzix has published no end-of-life or discontinuation statement for the Z100. The delisting is directly observable on the storefront, but the vendor has not stated its intent, so the model should be read as delisted without an end-of-life notice rather than as discontinued.
- There is no way to establish from vendor primary sources whether resellers or partners still hold sellable stock.
- The $499 figure is a November 2024 launch price from the GA press release, not a current sticker price; no current price exists to quote.
- The two Z100 accessories still listed in the storefront — Prescription Inserts at $149.99 USD and the USB-A to Magnetic Charging Cable, 3' at $29.99 USD, both marked available — do not disclose whether they reflect continued support intent or residual inventory. The Z100 glasses SKU itself is absent: the full storefront feed /collections/all/products.json?limit=250 returns no Z100 glasses product, the product URL cited in Vuzix's own GA release (/products/z100-smart-glasses) now serves the smart-glasses index page, and its .js product endpoint returns 404.
Vuzix M400
- Two kit variants at the same $1,499.99 USD price — "M400 Xtreme" and "M400 Extended Wear" — both marked available in the storefront product JSON, with a "Add to cart" purchase control; a Remote Assist Kit - M400 bundle is listed separately at $1,699.99 USD.
- Vuzix does not disclose what physically differs between the "Xtreme" and "Extended Wear" kits at the same price, so they are counted as variants rather than separate models.
- Country availability is referenced by link on the listing rather than enumerated.
- The Android version is given only as "Up to Android 13", leaving the shipping build unspecified.
Vuzix LX1
- A single configuration ("Default Title" variant), marked available with an "Add to cart" purchase control, alongside a separately listed Remote Assist Kit - LX1 at $2,099.99 USD and four ecosystem accessories (Bump Cap $49.99, Long-Shift Power Bank $119.99, Charger Kit $199.99, Hat Mount $14.99 USD).
- The rendered LX1 product page surfaces a "Sold out" string in its markup, while the collection listing, the product JSON (top-level available:true) and the visible purchase control all indicate it is orderable. Availability is taken from the JSON and the model treated as buyable now, with the page string read as a Shopify template artifact.
- Display resolution is published only as "High Resolution Right or Left Color", with no pixel count.
- No SDK or developer documentation is linked from the product listing itself.
Vuzix AI Smart Glasses
- One previewed configuration with no SKU, described by Vuzix as "Binocular full-color waveguide optics with a lightweight design intended for all-day wear" using "Incognito™ waveguide technology", with "Integrated camera, premium audio, and full-color binocular waveguide display"; it is absent from the storefront catalogue, and no configurations, colours or finishes are published.
- Vuzix's wording is exactly "Currently in development", with no date, price, or ship window attached.
- The device class is unresolved: binocular optics with a camera and audio matches neither the display-only Ultralite class nor the M-series monocular head-mounted displays.
- It is unclear whether this becomes a Vuzix-branded product or solely an OEM reference platform; the OEM-team call to action points to the latter.
- No SDK, preorder, waitlist, or registration-of-interest mechanism has been published.
Access
The official toolkit is the Vuzix Ultralite SDK, split by platform.
| Android | ultralite-sdk-android — Java/Kotlin, added via JitPack as com.vuzix:ultralite-sdk-android, v1.9 / Mar 2025, requires Android 12+ and the Vuzix Connect app installed |
| Apple | UltraliteSDK-releases-iOS — Swift, covering iOS, watchOS and macOS |
| Maturity | GA/stable — versioned releases, Javadoc, sample apps |
| Who can build | Open — the SDK is public on GitHub/JitPack with no invite, dev-mode toggle, or partner gate |
| Cost | Free |
| License | Not open source — use is governed by the proprietary "VUZIX SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT KIT LICENSE AND CONFIDENTIALITY AGREEMENT" |
| Docs | support.vuzix.com plus the package Javadoc |
| Not this SDK | The Speech, Barcode and Connectivity SDKs target the Android M400/M4000/Blade/Shield/LX1 HMDs (they run on the glasses), not the Z100, and are out of scope for this page |
App model
Phone-companion, natively — and there are two independent ways to do it.
| Vuzix Ultralite SDK | MentraOS | |
|---|---|---|
| Where your code runs | On the phone/watch/Mac; the app pushes text, images and canvas draw-calls to the glasses over Bluetooth | A phone-local runtime: miniapps run inside the Mentra host app on the user's phone. MentraOS 3.0 (Google Play 2026-08-08, App Store 2026-08-15) finished the move off the cloud runtime, now archived as MentraOS Legacy with support ending October 2026. The Miniapp SDK is what Mentra documents today — a public beta on npm — with its public launch for display glasses including the Z100 slated for September 2026 |
| Language | Java/Kotlin, Swift | TypeScript (registerMiniapp((session) => ...), session.display.render([...])) |
| Who brokers the link | The Vuzix Connect app — on Android, Connect owns the Bluetooth link; on iOS the SDK manages Bluetooth directly | — |
| License | Proprietary | MIT-licensed, open-source — MentraOS, formerly AugmentOS, by Mentra |
| Lock-in | Vendor-locked to Vuzix | Explicitly cross-vendor. Mentra frames it as "Android for smart glasses," and the Z100 is only one supported device alongside Even Realities G1/G2 and Mentra's own hardware (e.g. Mentra Live), with NIMO listed as coming soon. A MentraOS app written against the Z100 therefore runs unchanged on other vendors' glasses — a materially different lock-in profile from the native Ultralite path |
The glasses are a thin remote display — no on-glasses runtime, no web/engine layer. Only one app controls the display at a time (requestControl() / isAvailable()), so an integration must arbitrate for control.
Fit with Extentos's phone-companion model: structurally excellent — the native Ultralite path is exactly a phone-app-drives-a-BT-display architecture. The caveats are that it is a different vendor and transport from Extentos's Meta/DAT target, and that the Z100 exposes only a display + tap (no camera/mic/audio), so the capture and audio primitives Extentos centers on have no hardware to bind to on this device.
Distribution
Because a Z100 app is just a phone app talking to a Bluetooth peripheral, distribution follows the ordinary mobile path.
| How you ship | Publish the Android or iOS app through Google Play / the App Store (or sideload/enterprise-distribute it) like any other app |
| Vuzix-side gate | None — there is no Vuzix-side app store, review gate, or release-channel invite for Z100 apps, and no on-glasses store |
| Public publishing | Fully open, and gated only by the phone platform's own store review |
| What the user installs | Your phone app plus Vuzix Connect, then they pair the glasses |
| Alternate path | Apps built on MentraOS install onto the user's phone — either a LAN/QR release build from the miniapp CLI, or a submission to the Mentra Miniapp Store through the Developer Console. That store (live since July 2025 for the cloud apps) is being rebuilt for local miniapps, is absent from the initial MentraOS 3.0 release, and returns later in 2026; it is also Mentra's stated monetization surface (developer subscriptions + app sales) |
| Preview→GA gating | n/a — the SDK is already GA and there is no staged-rollout program for the Z100 |
For contrast, the out-of-scope enterprise HMDs distribute Android APKs via the Vuzix App Store and MDM — that model does not apply to the Z100.
Capabilities, limits & AI
| Capability | Third-party access |
|---|---|
| Camera | None on the Z100 hardware, so no photo/video/frame API. |
| Microphone / audio capture | None on the glasses — voice features (e.g., the Connect app's live translation/transcription) run on the phone's mic, not the wearable. |
| Audio output / TTS | None — Vuzix's own Ultralite platform spec lists the Ultralite HUD (the Z100 configuration) as Camera: None, Audio: None, describing it as delivering heads-up information "without introducing audio or camera complexity"; the separate Ultralite Audio OEM platform is the variant that adds integrated stereo audio. |
| On-lens display/UI | yes, this is the whole device — a monochrome 640×480 waveguide you render to via UltraliteSDK with sendText(), sendIcon(), setLayout() (Layout enum), a direct-draw Canvas, ScrollingTextView, Anchor/TextAlignment/TextWrapMode, LVGLImage, Icon, and UltraliteColor (Javadoc). |
| Sensors/status | BatteryStatus and connection state via LiveData; tap-on-frame input is delivered through the EventListener interface. Motion (IMU) and location are not exposed to third parties in the documented SDK. |
| Input | Frame tap and the power button (EventListener.onTap / onPowerButtonPress) — no touchpad, controller, gesture camera, or neural band. |
| Reserved surfaces | None in the Meta sense — there is no first-party on-device assistant or reserved wake word on the Z100 itself; the Vuzix Connect app's translation/transcription is a first-party phone feature, not a locked platform surface. |
| AI & the assistant | There is no platform assistant on the glasses to open or restrict — the device is a dumb display. AI is therefore entirely bring-your-own on the phone side and fully open: point the display at any model/pipeline you like. MentraOS layers optional proactive AI, live captions and translation on top, again running off the phone/cloud. On-device (on-glasses) AI is not applicable — the Z100 runs no third-party code on-glasses and has no camera or microphone to feed a model. |
Roadmap
Shipped: Z100 GA 20 Nov 2024 ($499); Ultralite SDK reaching v1.9 (14 Mar 2025). 3 Feb 2025 — Vuzix and Mentra jointly announced AugmentOS/MentraOS with the Z100 as a launch device, adding an open-source, AI-centric dev platform on top of Vuzix's native SDK. That second dev system has since gone from announcement to a funded, GA platform: Mentra raised $8M (July 2025; backers include Android co-founder Rich Miner, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, and Toyota/Amazon venture arms), MentraOS has been open-source on GitHub since 2023 (originally as AugmentOS) and shipped MentraOS 3.0 — Google Play served 3.0.0 on 2026-08-08 and the App Store 3.0 on 2026-08-15, completing the migration from its cloud SDK to phone-local miniapps (the GitHub v3.0 tag is still flagged prerelease, with builds attached into late August 2026), and the Mentra app store has been live since July 2025, reportedly with a community of 4,000+ developers and, by Mentra's own count, over 1,000 apps built on the Cloud SDK (live captions, translation, proactive AI) — the strongest openness signal on this page.
Vuzix direction: the company is publicly steering toward an OEM waveguide + AI-glasses licensing strategy rather than a consumer-hardware treadmill — it has since shown the Ultralite Pro OEM waveguide reference platform and introduced the standalone-Android LX1 enterprise HMD (2025), neither of which is a Z100-class device or uses the Ultralite SDK. No shipping Z100 successor has been announced as of this writing, though Vuzix now previews an enterprise-framed "AI Smart Glasses" platform (binocular full-colour optics, camera and audio) as "currently in development", with no date, price, or SDK disclosed.
Publishing timeline: n/a — distribution is already open via standard phone app stores.
In the landscape
Vuzix is one platform in the third-party smart-glasses landscape. See how open it is relative to other platforms, how AI works across them, and the full platform comparison.
Related
The third-party smart-glasses landscape
Can you build third-party apps for smart glasses today? A platform-by-platform comparison — Meta, Snap Spectacles, Brilliant Labs, Rokid, RayNeo, Even Realities, Vuzix, Android XR, Apple and more: which have an official SDK, how apps are built and distributed, and whether you can publish publicly.
How open is smart-glasses development?
A mental model for the openness spectrum in smart-glasses development — SDK availability, license, build-time gating, and publishing gating — with today's platforms placed on it.
AI on smart glasses
How third-party AI works across smart-glasses platforms — which first-party assistants are reserved (Meta AI, Gemini, Ari), where you bring your own AI (phone-side, cloud, on-device), wake-word limits, and the voice-in → AI → voice-out surface that generalizes even where the assistant is closed.
How third-party smart-glasses apps are distributed
Smart glasses don't have one app store. The app-model taxonomy — companion mobile app vs. an app that runs on the glasses (native or web) — and why a single platform (Meta) offers two entirely separate developer systems: DAT and Ray-Ban Display Web Apps.
Meta smart glasses (Meta DAT)
Meta smart glasses developer guide: Wearables Device Access Toolkit (DAT 0.8.0) capabilities, supported models (Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta, Ray-Ban Display), 2026 distribution state, and how Extentos abstracts the toolkit.
Capabilities
The Extentos capability vocabulary — the vendor-agnostic SDK primitives (audio, camera, voice, assistant, display, hardware events) your handler subscribes to.
Even Realities
Even Realities for third-party developers — SDK access, app model, distribution, capabilities & AI, and where it sits in the 2026 smart-glasses landscape.
INMO
INMO for third-party developers — SDK access, app model, distribution, capabilities & AI, and where it sits in the 2026 smart-glasses landscape.