Google Glass tech offers vision of the future

The wearable internet-connected gadget, not expected to hit the market until 2014, will retail for under $1,500.

The glasses will handle most of the same tasks as smartphones, but respond to voice commands 

A new promo video for its internet-connected glasses technology known as Google Glass has given potential early adopters a chance to buy the as yet unreleased product.

The video, posted on Wednesday, touted the wearable technology as one of the biggest advancements in personal computing in many years.

In the video, people wore the glasses while skydiving, riding a rollercoaster, skiing, and swinging on a trapeze, but Tom Royal, editor of the London-based magazine Popular Science UK, cautioned that the product will require a great deal of investment and infrastructure.

"It's going to require a huge investment around the world to make these things work" anytime and anywhere as the video purports, Royal told Al Jazeera.

Though he says the glasses come in "a clever looking, quite attractive package", Royal, like other analysts, said consumers should temper their expectations.

"The danger of hyping something this much is that clearly the technology is far behind where the hype is right now," Rocky Agrawal of reDesign Mobile, said, adding, "there's a real danger of setting the expectations bar too high".

The glasses will handle most of the same tasks as smartphones, but respond to voice commands instead of fingers touching a screen.

The glasses include a tiny display screen attached to a rim above the right eye and run on Google's Android operating system for mobile devices.

Google has said the mass-market version of Google Glass will cost less than $1,500 - the price paid by an exclusive number of computer programmers last June - but more than a smart phone.

The California-based company does not plan to start selling "Google Glass" in the mass market until 2014.