The best man was rehearsing his toast on his phone, eyes dropping to the screen every few seconds, then rising back to the room. Between those two glances sat a visible break — exactly the moment a teleprompter app never quite manages to erase, no matter how well it's coded.
Short answer: A phone teleprompter app is essentially free and often enough for a single appearance. The Even G2 costs noticeably more, but it solves the actual problem: the script sits in your field of view instead of on a device you have to hold or prop up, so you keep eye contact and come across as speaking freely. The premium mostly pays off for people who present regularly, not for the one speech you give this year.
What the app really costs — not just in francs
A teleprompter app is almost always cheap or free to buy. The cost people discuss less often is the practical one: a phone or tablet has to sit somewhere — on a lectern, a tripod, within camera range but out of frame. Anyone without that setup ends up holding the device or resting it on a table, and the eyes visibly drop. In front of a live audience, that break is visible; on video, it's often audible too, because the voice loses a touch of energy for a second. The app itself isn't doing anything wrong — the real problem is where the display sits: beside your line of sight, not in it.
What the glasses actually solve — and what they don't
The Even G2 is camera-free display glasses that pair to a phone over Bluetooth; the teleprompter is one of its built-in features. A script is prepared in the companion app and loaded onto the glasses; from there, the text sits in your field of view while you keep looking straight at the audience or the camera. That's the real gain over an app: nothing to hold, no visible glance downward, no screen that gives away the fact you're reading.
To be fair, here's what the glasses don't do. The display shows plain, monochrome text — no rich formatting, no colour highlighting the way some apps offer. The script still has to be loaded in advance through the app; once it's on the glasses, it keeps working even if the phone briefly drops out of Bluetooth range, because what's already loaded simply stays put. Fit matters too: because the text needs to sit precisely in your field of view, Even recommends professional adjustment of the nose pads and temples rather than bending the frame yourself.
The actual math: price against value
An app costs close to nothing. The G2 costs noticeably more — and for that you're not just buying a teleprompter, you're buying a device that also mirrors notifications, takes notes, translates, and shows navigation cues. Anyone buying the glasses purely for the teleprompter is paying for features they may never touch. Anyone already considering AI glasses who also presents often effectively gets the teleprompter as a bonus on top of everything else.
Spread the premium across a year's worth of appearances and the picture looks different than the sticker price alone suggests: with several presentations a month, it's amortised across many uses; with one appearance a year, it isn't. On battery, there's one manufacturer figure worth knowing: 192 mAh, roughly two days of typical use per the Even Support Center, with about seven full recharges from the case on the go. A conference day with the display running continuously will likely draw more than "typical use" — if you're presenting more than once in a day, bring the case.
Who the premium makes sense for
The premium pays off most for people whose work depends on eye contact: keynote speakers who take the stage several times a month, trainers and lecturers with recurring presentations, video creators who talk to camera on a regular schedule, and sales or communications professionals who run pitches routinely. For them, the difference between "looking at a device" and "coming across as speaking freely" isn't a nuance — it's a recurring, noticeable advantage at every single appearance.
Who should just stick with the app
For a one-off speech — a wedding toast, a graduation address, a single class presentation — the premium is hard to justify. A free app, a basic stand, and two or three run-throughs get you nearly the same result for a fraction of the cost, and nobody should buy hardware for a hundred seconds in the spotlight. Anyone who speaks in public only rarely should start with the app first — for many people, that stays true indefinitely.
Buy, skip, or test first?
Buy if you present, film, or speak regularly and would already benefit from the rest of what AI glasses do. Skip if you have one appearance coming up and then a long quiet stretch — the app clearly wins on value there. Test first either way: bring your own script and your own speaking pace to the showroom in Zürich and see whether reading from your field of view feels natural for you. For more on the feature itself, see the teleprompter glasses page; full specs for every model sit in the AI glasses database.
Disclosure: AI-Eyewear is the authorised Swiss reseller of Even Realities. We're just as direct about when the cheap app is the better choice as we are about the glasses' advantages.