I tried Razer's Project Motoko AI headphones at CES 2026. Move over, smart glasses.

If you don't regularly wear glasses, why would you ever wear AI-powered smart glasses? That's the question posed to us by Razer at CES 2026 this year – and it's a good point!

This is why Razer has been working on a new wearable that the company unveiled at CES this week called Project Motoko, an AI-powered headset.

Project Motoko is very much in the prototype stage, without any scheduled release date or price point currently in mind. Razer gave Mashable an up-close look at the Project Motoko during a private demo at CES, and some of you might hope that Razer hurries along with that release after hearing about our experience.

Credit: Mashable

A headset that sees the world around you

With Project Motoko, Razer has essentially inserted a full-fledged AI assistant into a pair of headphones. The headset is powered by Snapdragon and features two dual eye-level cameras outfitted in the device for contextual awareness. 

To showcase what these capabilities for Project Motoko mean, Razer provided a fictional scenario where we were traveling in Japan and pulled out 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 to us via audio within the headphone set. We were then able to ask Project Motoko questions about the menu such as which flavors were available or if we could afford a certain menu item based on the amount of money we had available to us. Project Motoko answered our questions and even suggested an alternative menu item when informing us that our item of choice was out of our budget.

In another example during the demo, Project Motoko was able to recognize a physical replica of the Rosetta Stone and provide corresponding information about that.

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

AI headphones vs smart glasses

Razer thinks there are quite a number of bonuses to having an AI assistant in your headphones rather than your smart glasses. The demo showed off another one: The AI assistant is talking to the user within the headphone set. With smart glasses, it's much easier for people to eavesdrop on what your AI assistant is telling you.

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

Razer's inspiration here is clearly that the company believes that more potential customers wear headphones throughout their day than a pair of glasses or even a watch. Plus, users who want AI wearables want ones that feel like products they already utilize. And, in our hands-on with Project Motoko, it just felt like a regular pair of headphones. It seems like Razer is on to something here.

Head to the Mashable CES 2026 hub for the latest news and live updates from the biggest show in tech, where Mashable journalists are reporting live.