I spent 24 hours with Snapchat's new Spectacles — these were my 5 biggest problems with the glasses

As Snapchat's new camera-equipped glasses travel to more cities around the US, more of us are able to get our hands on them.

The glasses — called Spectacles — can be a lot of fun. They're easy to pair with your phone, record fish-eye video of what you're seeing, and look a whole lot better on your face than Google Glass ever did.

Plus, they're one of the most in-demand tech products of the year, so using them feels as though you've joined an exclusive club.

But the first foray into hardware for Snap — Snapchat's parent company — isn't perfect. In fact, there are some problems with the glasses that made using them something of an annoyance or even downright difficult.

Here are some of the biggest problems that came up when I tested them:

SEE ALSO: Here's how to pair Snapchat Spectacles with your phone

1. The lens is easily obstructed

Lens obstruction was the biggest issue for me when testing the glasses. I have long hair, and it quickly claimed a starring role in most of my videos.

While that may seem like an easy problem to fix — just tie up long hair before using the glasses — it's not that simple. Anyone with bangs or hair that isn't completely away from their face will likely experience several instances of it blocking the lens, since the glasses sit fairly high on your forehead. And on a windy day, strands of my hair kept flying in front of the lens even when it was pulled back in a ponytail.

Making matters worse, there's no way to tell if the lens is obstructed until you're viewing the video later. There's a reason the women in Snapchat's promotional photos for lens have sleek, slicked-back hair.

2. There's no real-time video playback

With basically any other camera, you can watch the video as you're recording it, ensuring that you're capturing what you intend to. But with Spectacles, it's a guess.

Because the lens has a fish-eye effect, it was hard to tell what would be in the frame and what would get cut off. While it might somewhat defeat the purpose of the Spectacles, I would have loved if I could watch my videos in real time on my phone screen.

3. The camera doesn't perform well in low light

If you planned to use your Spectacles at nighttime, good luck. The camera doesn't perform well in low light.

Snap didn't release the specs of the glasses, so the quality of the lens isn't clear. But in trying them in different lighting levels, both inside and outside, I wasn't impressed with their abilities. It's never fully dark walking around New York City, so the glasses performed OK outside.

Recording indoors, however, was another story. The glasses could barely make out anything in front of me when I had two lights on, and once I turned the lights off and relied on window light, my video was just a black screen.