Vuzix Drops Blade Price to $699, Adds Support for Netflix & Amazon Prime Video

After North cut the base price of its Focals smartglasses, Vuzix is now testing the waters of a lower price point for its Blade smartglasses.

As part of its "Dads and Grads Summer Spree" promotion, Vuzix is reducing the price of its consumer-grade smartglasses by 30% to $699, with free shipping for a limited time for US customers.

To further its appeal to consumers, Vuzix has also stocked its app store with three new streaming video apps: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and HBO Go. (Of the three, HBO Go does yet not appear in the store, but, then again, Prime Video users can subscribe to HBO through Amazon.)

In addition to the new video apps, Vuzix has updated the Vuzix Blade Companion app for iOS and Android to include a virtual trackpad, which enables users to control apps that require touchscreen input via mouse pointer on their Blade display.

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"The infrastructure to support the Vuzix Blade in scale has been achieved in terms of production capacity, device functionality, and usability across a multitude of applications," said Paul Travers, president and chief executive officer at Vuzix, in a statement. "The latest upgrade to the Vuzix Blade Companion app for iOS and Android opens the door for a wave of applications for enterprise and consumers that can now be supported by the Blade."

Vuzix also announced the availability of the ANSI Z87.1 safety glass-rated version of Blade for enterprise customers. However, this flavor of Blade is not on sale at a discount, it retails for $999.99

The additions of HBO Go, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video round out an app lineup that already includes Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Accuweather, Spotify, Pandora, and Yelp, among others.

Both the promotional pricing and added functionality come as North Focals, now selling at a base price of $599 for non-prescription frames and $799 for prescription frames, is doubling its roadshow sales efforts and continually expanding its own functionality.

As the only two mainstream consumer-geared smartglasses on the market at the moment, we can expect competition between the two companies to remain brisk.

Cover image via Vuzix