How Ray-Ban Meta sunglasses have ‘influencer’ written all over them

Image Credits: Darrell Etherington

This is a review-in-progress. More soon!

Somewhere between the Ray-Ban Meta and Meta Quest 3 sits an ideal mixed-reality headset. It’s slim, light, offers hand tracking and passthrough and livestreams video when the moment calls for it. It’s designed to be worn inconspicuously outdoors, until the time comes for content capture.

The Meta Quest Ray-Ban is a fantasy at the moment — albeit one that points in the direction of where its makers think this is all headed. Presently, the Ray-Ban Meta and Meta Quest 3 are very different devices, with little in the way of overlap, beyond being head-worn products with built-in sensors.

The Meta Quest 3 is a mixed-reality headset designed to be worn exclusively indoors. It’s light, perhaps, compared to other headsets of its ilk, but wearing the thing while walking around outside frankly sounds a bit miserable. That’s precisely the use case the Ray-Ban Meta was designed for: freedom of movement outside the house that’s designed to go (mostly) unnoticed.

Just prior to writing this, I slipped a pair on, before the JFK airport mobility cart drove my sciatica-ridden ass to the gate. I would say the pair was inconspicuous but for the fact that I was wearing a pair of sunglasses indoors. Well, that and the extremely necessary recording lighting that flashes on so you can’t creep shoot folks without their knowledge.

We got our first glimpse of the Ray-Ban Meta at a briefing just ahead of the recent Connect conference. I was genuinely impressed by the industrial design the join team came up with. Most folks would hard-pressed to distinguish the charger from a standard Ray-Ban classic eyeglass case. It’s a little thicker than some, sure. A bit heavier. More rigid. But the team was able to make surprisingly few concessions.

There are a lot of clever touches here. In the place of a snap is a ring. Open the case and it glows green when fully charged and orange when not. The orange starts blinking when the battery is low. Space has been maximized inside. The battery sits directly beneath the glasses’ folded temples. In front of this is a dock with two charging pins that lie flush with a pair of contact pads hidden on the underside of the glasses’ bridge, held in place with magnets and a small tab.

The USB-C port is located on the outside bottom of the case, allowing it to sit on its back while being charged. Directly above this on the case’s rear is the Bluetooth pairing button. The case is slimmer than the last gen and can be carried in a pocket comfortably.

Meta says the glasses get “up to” four hours on a charge, while the case gets a total of eight charging cycles, for a grand total of 36 hours. As the company notes, “Battery life varies by use, configuration, settings and many other factors.” That’s the case with all tech, of course, but I did notice that video is a power drainer.The companies really leaned into the style side of things here (not a bad decision when designing tech meant to be worn on the body). There are two main designs for the glasses. There’s the classic Wayfarer (which is probably what you think of when you think of sunglasses) and the new Headliner (not dissimilar from Wayfarer, but significantly more rounded on the top and bottom).

According to Meta, there are 150 design combos possible, when you factor in all of the different design options, including frame color, style and lenses (including sunglasses, clear, prescription, transitions and polarized).The temples are thicker than most sunglasses — to be expected, seeing as how they contain the speakers and other components (there’s a transparent option, if you want to see for yourself) — but again, the designers have done a good job keeping size down, all things considered. And again, while slightly heavier that a standard pair of Wayfarers (50.8 g vs. 44 g), you can wear them comfortably all day if you want to (or at least the less than four hours the battery lasts).

The companies really leaned into the style side of things here (not a bad decision when designing tech meant to be worn on the body). There are two main designs for the glasses. There’s the classic Wayfarer (which is probably what you think of when you think of sunglasses) and the new Headliner (not dissimilar from Wayfarer, but significantly more rounded on the top and bottom).

According to Meta, there are 150 design combos possible, when you factor in all of the different design options, including frame color, style and lenses (including sunglasses, clear, prescription, transitions and polarized).

The temples are thicker than most sunglasses — to be expected, seeing as how they contain the speakers and other components (there’s a transparent option, if you want to see for yourself) — but again, the designers have done a good job keeping size down, all things considered. And again, while slightly heavier that a standard pair of Wayfarers (50.8 g vs. 44 g), you can wear them comfortably all day if you want to (or at least the less than four hours the battery lasts).

There’s a touchpad on the outside of the left temple. Swiping back and forth will adjust the volume (other features can be customized in-app). It also doubles as a control panel for live streaming, since you likely don’t want to futz with your phone or keep using the wake word. A tap can check Instagram or Facebook comments and viewers in real-time. The capture button sits next to the hinge on the left temple

There are on-board microphones as well, which listen for the “hey Meta” wake word. Voice certainly makes sense on a device like this. It can be used to take a picture, stop and start video and adjust volume (turns out voice is kind of an annoying way to do the latter). You can also ask the glasses for the time, weather and how much battery is left. You can also ask Alexa style-questions, and Meta AI will attempt to answer. That’s currently only available here in the U.S. through an open beta.

The price starts at $299 for standard lenses. Polarized run $329 and transitions $379. Prescription lenses are on a sliding scale. The price will almost certainly be a deterrent for many — and understandably so. Ultimately, you need to ask yourself how much value a face-worn camera will bring to your life. If you make a living livestreaming, it may make sense. It’s a lot to pay however, for sheer novelty.

It’s worth noting that future updates will bring more value to the device, including sign translation (through voice) and the ability to identify landmarks in front of you. One can see the future of head-worn computing laid out in front of your face — though it’s still going to be a while before we get there.