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Why the Ray-Ban Meta could be your best tech purchase of the year
Summary
The Ray-Ban Meta's current feature set is something straight out of the pages of science fiction books we read in childhood, and at an accessible price-point, this is a super exciting gadget in 2024
Every now and then, you’ll see me talking to myself, looking at something intently and then asking questions to no one in particular. I may be accused of some eccentricities, but this isn’t one of them. This is me talking to the Ray-Ban Meta smart-glasses, a doodad I picked up on a recent trip to the US and one I’ve grown inseparably accustomed to in the past few weeks.
To be clear, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses aren’t a revolutionary concept by themselves. Smart glasses first hit the mainstream (and notoriety) with the Google Glass way back in 2013, and there have many that have followed, from Snap to Bose and even Amazon. And while AR glasses haven’t quick picked up and VR headsets generally relegated only to travel and mostly collecting dust in a drawer at home, this second-generation product borne out the partnership between Meta and EssilorLuxottica has done something others just haven’t been able to: it’s actually managed to convince a large number of folks, over 700,000 at last count, to go out and buy one. I’m an early adopter of consumer tech, and I’m easily the tenth person in my circle to have picked one of these up.
They’re sunglasses that look like…sunglasses
Let’s start with why. Unlike a lot of previous products which tried to fashion a minicomputer on your face a la the Borg, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses look and feel like regular Ray-Ban sunglasses first, and not a gadget. Even if they’re out of battery, the Wayfarers I picked up continue to serve an actual purpose, the very same purpose Wayfarers have been serving since James Dean and JFK made them popular—protecting your eyes outdoors, while maintaining that classic cool look. The Meta version looks almost exactly the same as the regular Wayfarers, and they’re only a few grams heavier. Other than the Wayfarer, they come in time-tested Ray-Ban frame shapes—Skyler and Headliner.
Whichever design you choose, Meta has been smart about capitalizing on familiar designs for its smart glasses—the Ray-Ban Meta benefits from being viewed as sunglasses first, smart glasses second. Heck, even the charging case looks exactly like a regular sunglasses case, if you can ignore the type-C port on the bottom and the status light on the front.
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Pro tip: unless you need to change the lens to prescription versions (which you easily can), pick up the Ray-Ban Metas with the transition lenses, which retail for about $50 more than the version with regular darkened sunglass lens. Transition lenses—the sort that darken when its bright and clear when it’s not—will allow you to wear these indoors or when it’s cloudy outside, and just the ability to wear them longer throughout your day is key to using the ‘smart’ part of these glasses a lot more.
Smarter than your regular Ray-Bans
About that smart bit. Peer closely at either corner, where the rivets are usually found, and you’ll spot the built-in camera and the blinking LED that activates anytime the camera is in use, along with a small capture button on the right temple/arm. What you won’t spot until you wear them are the gesture control bar on the right arm, the hidden microphones and the surprisingly good speakers, the latter for piping music or responses to your voice requests back to you. The speakers are fairly discreet at low volumes but bump up the volume and folks standing close by will be able to hear your calls or taste in music, much as they would if you had your phone volume too high. Bonus: since they’re not plugged into your ears, they’re super convenient and comfortable over long durations and allow you to still maintain environmental awareness, plus you don’t have to pick up a pair of headphones if you’re heading out for a walk.
Capture the Moment
Of course, the headlining feature is the 12-megapixel ultrawide camera— other than taking 12-megapixel stills, you can record 1440x1920-pixel resolution videos at 30 frames per second. While the image quality reminds you of phone cameras from a few years ago—good enough for social media and hands-free memories—the video quality depends heavily on how busy the scene is, as the glasses heavily compress the video. Even so, the output was downright impressive given how tiny the sensor is, and stabilization and low-light performance were far better than one expected.
If you have an offspring—human, feline or canine—that clams up when it sees a phone being pulled out for a photo, this is the perfect solution. It’s also great for all those hands-free situations when you’d rather not be holding up a phone/camera—cooking, scenic drives and the like—the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses capture the moment while letting you stay in the moment. Meta has also designed the smart glasses to work with all of its social apps, so you can live-stream your camera video within WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram.
The camera isn’t perfect, far from it. It shoots only in vertical aspect ratio and takes a little getting used to while framing your shots since there’s no viewfinder. Streaming only works on Meta platforms, so you can’t use it on FaceTime video calls, for instance. Taking shots is rather easy with the button or a voice command, but there’s a delay in taking pictures, to the point where you have to steady your head until you hear the artificial shutter click…or risk a blurry shot.
And then, there’s the elephant in the room—having a camera this subtle and inconspicuous allows for ample opportunities for taking images altogether too discreetly. With cameras on phones everywhere, we’re aware nothing in public is ever private—it’s just that we’re not ingrained with the idea that a pair of glasses could be taking a photo/video, even if there’s a blinking LED light that signals videos or stills are being taken. Meta has built in controls to avoid abuse—if the LED is obscured, the video/photo won’t be taken, but the LED is easy to miss on a bright day and those who intend to misuse this tech…will do so. Just remember, there was a reason the term ‘glasshole’ was coined for people who used their Google Glass smart glasses to take creep-shots.
Just…don’t.
AI on your Face
In 2024, smart isn’t just about ‘connected’, it’s all about… you guessed it, AI. You can use the voice assistant to take photos and videos, listen to respond to WhatsApp messages, and even compose a poem or tell a joke, should you feel that bored. The standout feature is its ability to understand multi-modal inputs – see something through the glasses and ask Meta AI for more information. This is what the Humane AI Pin or the Rabbit R1 promised to deliver, but the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses do so without a fuss. You can look at a sign in a foreign language and ask it to translate or look at a flower and have the AI identify which flower it is. Or even just look at a scene and ask “Hey Meta, what am I looking at?" and have it describe the scene rather accurately. Or even set visual reminders like remembering where you’ve parked your car, read QR codes and send the link to your phone or help look at a menu and ask for suggestions on what to order.
It will not identify people (phew!) and it can’t handle more complex tasks that might involve other apps on your phone, such as working in cohort with Google Maps for turn by turn directions. Even so, just the ability to ask questions of the AI assistant as they struck me while driving was a big win for me. Its current feature set is something straight out of the pages of science fiction books in my youth, so excuse me for enjoying my new purchase a little too much. And that they will get better over time, with real time speech translation slated to launch soon…all in a form factor you’re already used to carrying along with you everywhere you go!
Room for Improvement
The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are a lot of tech packed into very little space, so the first casualty for heavy users will be the battery. It’s rated for “up to four hours", but if you intend to vlog your day, be ready to throw them back into the case every now and then to juice them up for up to eight more charges on the go. In regular everyday use where you slip them on and summon them every now and then, you’ll barely ever hear the low battery warning.
There’s also the fact that these smart glasses haven’t been officially launched in India, although you can pick them up from a number of online retailers for a substantial markup over the base $299 price point. Your mileage may vary, though—the AI features haven’t been rolled out globally (including India) as yet, so activating my pair while in the US may have done the trick.
Verdict
Meta has nailed the execution on the Ray-Ban collaboration, and best of all, while they’re not cheap, they’re not that expensive when compared to a regular pair of Wayfarers. Until the Orion AR glasses come along, the Ray-Ban Metas feel like a happy middle, a very usable AI wearable that doesn’t keep reminding you of its presence. You slip it on just as you would any other pair of sunglasses and use it whenever the need arises. This is the perfect “I didn’t know I needed this" kind of device and after using them thoroughly and discovering just how deep the rabbit hole is, I can’t recommend these enough.
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