Meta’s Ray-Bans are back with a new generation, and this time they’re finally giving people the one thing they really want—a screen. At Meta’s annual Connect developer conference, the company officially took the wraps off its Meta Ray-Ban Display, which are, as the name suggests, its first pair of AI-infused smart glasses to come with a full-color in-lens display.
The smart glasses, which still bear the same Ray-Ban branding, will cost $799 and are available for preorder today. As you might expect, they can do quite a few things that their predecessor can’t, including message notifications, turn-by-turn navigation, and telling you when queries to Meta AI are processing. There are several app integrations, including WhatsApp and Instagram, allowing you to watch reels and make video calls natively in the glasses. One major upgrade on the message notifications front is that the Meta Ray-Ban Display will not be limited to only WhatsApp, meaning it will be able to show notifications on both iOS and Android devices.
That’s not the only major shift in this generation. Meta says its first-ever display has a 600 x 600 resolution and 20-degree field of view. The display is monocular, which means it’s only in one lens—at the bottom right-ish corner—and has a refresh rate of 90Hz. Brightness goes up to 5,000 nits and as low as 30 nits, which makes them usable outdoors in full light. One of the coolest parts of the display is that Meta claims that there’s less than 2% light leakage, which means that you can’t see when someone has their display activated.
Speaking of light leakage, all of Meta’s Ray-Ban Display smart glasses will come with transition lenses. On one hand, that feels like a weird choice, but it also makes sense since this is a gadget you’re going to want to use indoors as well as out, and for $800, you should be able to use them for as long as you like without having to take them off. “As long as you like,” in this case, will be no more than 6 hours, according to Meta, which is a lot longer than I was expecting. That solid battery life is thanks in part to what Meta is calling “ultra-narrow steelcan batteries.” I wish I knew exactly what that meant, but for now, I can only look forward to getting more of a deep dive in the future.
Glasses are only half the appeal of Meta’s Ray-Ban Display, though. The other half is its sEMG wristband that you use to control the UI in the glasses.
The Meta Neural Band, as Meta is calling it, is arguably the most innovative part of its new Ray-Ban package, since no other product like it exists on a commercial scale. Outside of being a first, it also offers a potential solution to a problem that no other maker of smart glasses has quite solved—that problem being, how the hell do you actually use smart glasses? While most smart glasses (Meta’s first-gen Ray-Bans included) have a voice assistant for shouting commands like “take a picture” and a fairly simple touch-sensitive bar for physical inputs (i.e., pause/play), neither is ideal in every situation.
The fact is, adding a screen complicates smart glasses—the more you can do, the more you’ll need to convey to your glasses, and in order to do that, you need an input system as nuanced as the eyewear itself. Not only that, but if you want to use your smart glasses discreetly (or in a normal fashion at all, really), shouting into a crowded subway car is less than ideal. With the Neural Band, however, you can navigate the UI discreetly by pinching, swiping, and tapping through various menus in the smart glasses. My favorite gesture is a pinch to zoom for taking photos and videos. It’s Vision Pro-esque, but all done without cameras. In case you’re wondering, yes, the neural band is included in that $800 cost.
I got a chance to use Meta’s Ray-Bans and its new Neural Band, and you can read my full impressions here.
Like previous iterations of Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, this year’s edition will also come equipped with cameras and speakers. Camera-wise, Meta is going with a 12-megapixel ultra-wide sensor that can also capture 1080p at 30fps in a 1,440 x 1,920 resolution. There’s also a 3x digital zoom.
The camera is used for the computer vision in the glasses, aka Meta AI, as well. Despite being a fan of Meta’s Ray-Bans (they’re the only device I ever want to take calls with), Meta AI has been a weak spot for me. While the voice assistant works well most of the time for basic stuff like taking pictures/videos, playing Spotify, and asking what your battery life is, the heavier AI lifting is hit-or-miss at best. Whether Meta’s new smart glasses fix that remains to be seen since I haven’t had a chance to use them, but I’m hoping for an upgrade here.
But even if AI is still finicky and the cameras and audio are about the same, these smart glasses still have a freaking screen. That’s a big step forward, even if functionality is limited for now. When people ask me about my first-gen Ray-Bans, the first thing they want to know is whether they have a display in them, and they’re inevitably very disappointed when I have to let them down. Now, I’ll actually have something to show them, and if Meta’s wristband works, I’ll even have something to show them that only Meta can provide.
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