CES 2026: Move over, AI smart glasses! Razer has a new AI wearable: Headphones.

If you don’t wear glasses often, why would you ever wear smart glasses with AI? That’s the question we were asked by Razer at CES 2026 this year – and a good point!

That’s why Razer is working on a new wearable that the company unveiled at CES this week Project Motokoa headset with AI.

The Prototype Motoko is still in the prototype stage, without any planned release date or price point in mind right now. Razer gave Mashable a closer look at Project Motoko during a private demo at CES, and some of you may be hoping Razer is quick with that release after hearing about our experience.

A headset that sees the world around you

With Project Motoko, Razer has put a full-fledged AI assistant into the headphones. The headset is powered by Snapdragon and has two eye-level cameras built into the device for context awareness.

To show what these Project Motoko capabilities mean, Razer provided a fictional location where we were traveling in Japan and released a restaurant menu that was written in Japanese. The Project Motoko headset was able to read the menu thanks to its cameras, and translate the menu into audio inside the set of headphones. We were then able to ask Project Motoko questions about the menu such as what flavors were available or if we could afford a certain menu item based on the amount of money we had on us. Project Motoko answered our questions and even suggested another menu item when they let us know that our favorite item was out of our budget.

In one example during the demo, Project Motoko was able to see a physical representation of the Rosetta Stone and provided relevant information about it.

As explained by Razer, Project Motoko is not tied to any specific AI model and can be used with the user’s preferred large language model (LLM).

AI headphones vs smart glasses

Razer thinks there are plenty of bonuses to having an AI assistant in your headphones rather than your smart glasses. The demo showed another: An AI assistant talking to the user inside a set of headphones. With smart glasses, it’s much easier for people to listen to what your AI assistant is telling you.

However, as a headset, Project Motoko lacks one central feature that smart glasses can provide: A display. Yes, that seems obvious but it’s also important to point it out. But, when you consider that not all smart glasses offer an in-lens reflection feature, it might not be a dealbreaker.

Razer’s motivation here is clearly that the company believes that more customers are likely to wear headphones throughout the day than a pair of glasses or a watch. Also, users looking for AI wearables want things that feel like the products they already use. And, in our hands with the Project Motoko, it just sounds like a normal pair of headphones. Looks like Razer is on to something here.

Go to the Mashable CES 2026 hub for the latest news and live updates from the biggest tech game, where Mashable reporters report live.