Pickle 1 Wants to Be Your ‘Soul Computer’ for $799: Here’s How

For US users, you can pre-order Pickle 1 AR glasses today.

Woman wears silver Pickle 1 AR glasses with AI memory capabilities. Image: Pickle

The race to build a "real-life Jarvis" just got a new and frankly unexpected contender. A California-based startup named Pickle has just introduced its new Pickle 1 AR glasses, explicitly branding the device as your personal "Soul Computer."

Today, the Pickle startup announced a product that isn’t just another pair of smart glasses equipped with a camera and music player. Here, things change completely. These new glasses act differently: they see what you see, hear what you hear, and memorize things you can’t, for future use.

The new Pickle 1 glasses function as a proactive assistant that works continuously, meaning you don’t need to constantly reinitiate it yourself. Unlike Meta Ray-Ban glasses, which primarily use cameras and act as a music player with some social app access, they still lack a proactive assistant that stores your surroundings to assist you later. Therefore, the company calls this a "Soul Computer," which is explicitly based on their own Pickle OS.

How The "Soul Computer" Works

At its core, the device uses Pickle OS, an operating system designed for "Contextual Recall."

• Continuous Buffering: The glasses ostensibly record your surroundings (audio and visual) into a secure, hardware-isolated enclave.
• Natural Language Search: You can ask questions like, "Where did I leave my passport?" or "What was the name of the restaurant Dave mentioned yesterday?"
• Proactive AI: The AI assistant claims to anticipate needs. If you pick up your keys, it might automatically pull up traffic data to your usual destination.

Is Your "Soul Data" Safe?

Now, the question comes to mind: if it has access to our surrounding data, is it secure? Pickle claims that all "Soul Data" is processed on-device or in a "Privacy Cloud" that even the company cannot access.

The Pickle 1 also provides you with granular control over what the AR glasses see and store, such as “digital screens, documents and papers, faces, voice conversations, and more.” You can even “permanently delete your account and all memories with a single click.”

The Hardware: A Thermodynamics Mystery?

Silver Pickle 1 smart eyewear features sleek aluminum AI frame build. Image: Pickle

The design of the AR glasses features a curvy aesthetic that doesn't look like normal glasses at all. Pickle claims the device is fully standalone with 'dual batteries' integrated into the 68g frame.

However, this claim has left hardware experts baffled. For context, the Meta Ray-Ban glasses weigh around 50 grams and offer roughly 4 hours of battery life just for audio and cameras. So, how did Pickle add a Snapdragon processor, a 4K projector, and a 12-hour battery into 68 grams? That is not currently possible with standard lithium battery density.

For Pickle 1 to offer a 4K display and continuous AI processing for 12 hours without a heavy external battery pack, they would need to have invented an entirely new type of battery technology. Until we see a teardown, it is highly likely that the '12-hour' figure relies on aggressive power-saving modes or frequent recharges in the carrying case.

If Pickle has not solved a fundamental law of thermodynamics, it is likely that the "12 hours" refers to standby time, or the device relies heavily on offloading processing to your smartphone (which would drain your phone battery instead).

Pricing and Availability

The Pickle 1 is currently available for pre-order with a $200 refundable deposit. The full price is listed at $799.

• Pre-Order Status: Open Now (US users only).
• Expected Shipping: Q2 2026.

Verdict: Should You Pre-Order?

The Pickle 1 is easily the most ambitious AR announcement of 2026 so far. If the "Soul Computer" works as advertised, it could make smartphones obsolete. However, "claims" are not "products."

Is this finally the Iron Man glasses we wanted? The answer seems to be clearly no.

Until we see a live, independent stress test of the battery life and the latency of the AI response, we recommend treating this as a "watch closely" item rather than an immediate buy.