The Meta Ray-Ban Glasses
The Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses have been out for a while now, and I finally picked up a pair. I needed new glasses anyhow, and I tend to like bold frames, so I figured I’d give them a shot.
If you’re not familiar with them, they’re standard glasses/sunglasses, but with a lot of tech built in. They have a camera on the front, a variety of microphones, and small speakers above each ear. There are other glasses coming later this year that project content (like notifications or directions) onto the displays, but these don’t have that tech yet.
Camera
The camera is the star of the show. You can take photos as well as videos up to three minutes long. The quality isn’t great, but it’s quite good considering the form factor.
It’s surprised me how much I’ve used it already. Your phone takes better quality photos and videos, for sure, but being able to take them with a quick tap is awesome. I’m finding a lot of situation where hands-free video to capture a moment (toasting, playing with the dog, swinging a golf club, etc) is ideal.
AI
They glasses also have a lot of AI baked in, but that’s the least exciting thing for me (at least for now). There are three main things it can do:
Respond to questions that you ask, similar to Siri or ChatGPT.
Ask it “what am I looking at” and it’ll use the camera to capture a photo and then explain what it sees. This could be somewhat useful at times.
It can do real-time language translation. That feature hasn’t rolled out to mine yet, but we’re going to Italy this summer and I could see it being very useful!
Audio
A surprising benefit I’ve found is the audio. The little speakers are directional and just above your ears, so it sounds clear but others around can’t really hear much (it’s similar to hearing a little bit from someone wearing headphones).
There are two things that I like here:
It lets me know when I get a text message. I don’t text a lot, and so I often miss them, so this helps with that.
You can tap to continue playing whatever bluetooth audio you had going. For example, I often listen to podcasts in the car through the car sound system. When I turn off the car and get out, that audio stops but I can just tap my glasses to keep the podcast going in my ear. It’s amazingly helpful.
Granted, ear buds can do the same thing (and ear buds are better in many ways), but similar to the camera the benefit here is that they’re always ready — just tap and listen.
Phone calls are similar; if I get a call, they’re instantly in my ears and I don’t have to hold up the phone or fumble with ear buds. It’s fantastic.
Battery
I knew going in that the battery was problematic. Batteries are bulky, and they’ve made these as slim as they could, so it’s a tough balance of weight versus battery life.
If I turn off the “Hey Meta” listening feature (and instead tap to summon the Meta AI), that saves quite a bit of battery. Doing it that way gets me about 10 hours of battery life, which includes a bit of use with phone calls, podcasts, and some photos and videos.
The glasses charge in their case, and seem to gain around 2-3% for every minute of charging, so they get back up to speed quite quickly. When I left work a few days ago they were at 19% and I knew I’d want them in the evening, so I popped them in the case for 15 minutes and they were just over 50%.
Case?
The glasses charge in their case, but this obviously means that you need to take them off to charge them. I keep a cheap pair of glasses in the case so I’m not blind while charging, and it works well enough, but it’s still a minor hassle.
It reminds of the struggles that people have charging their Apple Magic Mouse, where you have to stop using it completely while it charges. I’ve seen other smart glasses coming out soon that allow you to recharge by wearing a neck strap, which seems like a much better solution. We’ll see if Meta changes things for the next version of these glasses.
Cost
The cost is surprisingly low for the frames, but as with many glasses the real cost comes from the lenses. The frames start at just $299, which is comparable to other high-quality (and not smart) frames.
I got mine with progressive lenses as well as transitions, so the total cost moved up a bit higher. Compared to other glasses, though, the total really wasn’t much higher than it otherwise would have been.
So far I’m quite happy with them! This tech will be changing quickly, and the next version will almost certainly have some kind of display on the frames so that you can see notifications and other items. Until those come out, these are proving to be a great purchase.
Note: Meta has said that currently the Meta A.I. Translation capeability is not available in the European Union. It is waiting for approval from the European Union.