Then I felt the tug again this spring and realized she may have been right. Yet none had struck my eye in the early years of this decade, pardon the pun, until I got an email about a Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer with Bluetooth, "AI", and a camera built in. It seemed so modern that I took a chance on a pair of Matte Black Clear-to-Graphite-Green Transition lenses.
That modernity may be a problem. You may not want to look like Joe Dirt stuck in technological time 15 years from now.
The Good
The case is beautiful. It's big, it's sturdy. It oozes quality.
Charging them is a breeze, there is no trouble at all 'seating' the pins. I don't know how long it took to recharge the battery in the case or in the glasses, which is a good thing. I don't have to think about it because I didn't have to think about it.
The Bluetooth sound is fantastic. It's also discreet so I don't look like Lando Calrissian's friggin' assistant when I am listening to music, the way headphones or ear buds do. I sometimes have issues with ear bud volume due to perhaps old age but more likely a lot of ear infections as a kid, military service, a lifetime of hunting. These work without putting anything in your ears but your ear drums will blow out like you're at a 1985 Motörhead concert before it's loud enough to annoy those around you. I never even get close to needing the halfway point with these while AirPods can easily show me in the red zone.
They look cool. According to a data point of one. I wore them into a local diner I have frequented since it opened and asked the waitress I have known for 20 years how they looked on me. She replied, "I'm going to be honest, if I saw you on the street and didn't already know your personality, I'd think that's an attractive guy."
I chose to ignore "didn't already know your personality" and take the half-compliment.
To be happy with these glasses, you may need to ignore some things also.
The Bad
Part of its reason to exist is not relevant. You will want to use Meta to poorly answer questions a lot less than their marketing department would like you to believe. "AI" is not AI. If you read here, you know that it is instead an LLM, a fancy version of autocorrect. If you are in the Museum of Modern Art, you will be around other people and therefore a lot less likely to ask, "Hey Meta, what the hell am I looking at?" out loud. If you will instead Google it on your phone, why have smart glasses?
Having to say "Hey Meta" or "Okay Meta" is tedious. I get it, Meta needs to push their brand into our brain pans but I don't like saying "Hey" to start anything and lots of intelligent people don't like such casual populism any more than I do. Amazon Echo doesn't make me say "Hey Amazon", I can (and do) just say "Computer" and it knows people don't start sentences with that in ordinary lingua franca and tells me what the temperature outside is.
That is an easy fix and if these get popular enough people will want customization so the company contracted to do this stuff will do it, but if you want to buy something now and that will bother you, it will really bother you.
It will take pictures, but you can't easily do anything with them.
I can't control the framing of photos without the gallery on my phone and I'm not going to share anything I can't preview. For that, they force you to use a Wi-Fi connection. Wi-Fi is generally flaky and sometimes insecure unless you're at home. So I don't want to use it outside my house. It's also 2025. Bluetooth Works. People have data. Let me transfer photos even if I don't have Wi-Fi. The glasses are already slow exporting to the phone. Let me use what works best rather than forcing me into a process that limits my flow. I am not some demanding super-user, if this bugs me, it will bug a lot of older people with money to burn on your glasses. If I don't want to use data I can go to my phone and open the app and enable Wi-Fi.
You will be doing that 'open app' thing a lot.
It needs the Meta AI app open and running to do anything except take a photo
If you are not near your phone, you can only take a photo but most people spending money on these glasses have their phone with them so that's a quibble. But it also requires the Meta AI app running to do something basic like transferring your photo to the phone. Coupled with needing Wi-Fi when you'd like this to feel part of your flow is a real disconnect. If I tell Kristen Bell to transfer my photos, transfer my photos, I don't need her to tell me I need to open the app on my phone first, then tell me I need to wait for a Wi-Fi connection.
No one in my tribe hearing me explain why I can't do something basic is going to make them want their own pair. They may instead ask if I got paid to use them.
And I did not.
I instead paid.
The neutral
The selection of voices is small. It's reasonable to assume they'll add more if this is not just another Google Glass dud. They have a few non-generic voices for your "AI" and I chose Kristen Bell because she's awesome and that way I can at least have Veronica Mars telling me that Meta AI can't do something basic I ask it to do but is "learning every day."
They're heavy. Since you may not be able to use them for more than two hours without charging them it might not be an issue. If you use VR goggles for more than 20 minutes at a time you will be okay with the weight.
About the life of that battery...
The battery algorithm needs some help.
Their marketing positions the glasses as part of your life. It won't be. I get that I won't be able to use powered glasses for 8 hours but if everyone else can figure out optimizing the limits of the 30-year-old battery technology we still have, a behemoth like Facebook can pay for software written elegantly enough these last for more than two hours.
The Verdict
Unlike every other pair of sunglasses I have purchased, these are not going to be timeless. I wore my 1980s Aviators to my niece's Naval officer commissioning and a whole lot of new officers were wearing new ones. Mine still looked cool and so did theirs. Will you be able to buy a USB-C charger decades from now? Sure. You can still buy a Zip drive if you want to download that recording of the last time the Dallas Cowboys were in the Super Bowl, but if a Zip drive is nor part of your current life, these may not be either.
Historically, companies don't upgrade products as much as roll out new versions so what you are buying today is likely all you will have. So it comes down to how important the money and the space they take up in your bedroom are to you.
New Wayfarers can be had for $200 at Sunglass Hut or wherever else sells sunglasses. These are $300 because they have transition lenses, they go from clear to semi-dark. If you buy the lower cost 'sunglasses only' version you are only using them outside. Are you going to be outside and really need to take a photo without your phone? Probably not. If you buy these glasses as an early adopter, you have your phone, which means the money and longevity may not matter as much as having new gear.
You are almost certain to be unable to use them even a few years from now so if you like having the new stuff, spend the $300 and enjoy. If you want something to use longer than you'd use your phone, go for regular analog glasses and wear earbuds and use Google on your phone.
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