Meta has teamed up with EssilorLuxottica to reveal its next-generation Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses collection. Revealed at Meta Connect, the smart glasses boast improvements across the board compared to the first-gen glasses, along with added capabilities.
Meta says it took feedback from the community to determine the most loved features, like the cool form factor, convenience, and open-ear audio, and determine where the company could improve, like in media quality and comfort.
The idea behind the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses is that you can capture moments, and perform other actions, completely hands-free. This is now complemented by new custom designed speakers with extended bass, higher maximum volume, and improved directional audio that reduces audio leakage for improving calls, music, and podcasts, even when you’re in a noisy or windy environment. When recording video, there’s a new five-mic array that supports immersive audio recording.
Capture images and videos, meanwhile, using the new ultra-wide 12MP camera, which affords 1,080p videos up to 60 seconds in length. You can even directly share photos to friends and family from your glasses with a simple “send a photo” voice command.
Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are powered by the new Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 Gen1 platform, which enables higher quality photo and video processing and even faster compute. The glasses come with a redesigned and sleek charging case, which holds up to eight additional charges (for a total of 36 hours of use) while being slimmer and even smaller.
Style-wise, the glasses come in the Wayfarer style as well as a new Headliner design for a more retro look, both of which are available in Matte Black and Shiny Black. There are also three new transparent frame colours in Jeans, Rebel Black, and Caramel. With over 150 different custom frame and lens combinations on the Ray-Ban Remix platform, you can mix and match to make the glasses your own on ray-ban.com. They are also prescription-lens compatible.
The weight of the glasses has also been reduced and the profile slimmed down in every direction, making them lighter and more comfortable. The glasses are now water-resistant (IPX4) as well; while the touchpad has been improved. Meta also added interaction earcons so the glasses respond much faster and more reliably to your commands.
You can now livestream from the glasses to Facebook or Instagram, and see the comments in your preview, or tap and hold on the side of your glasses to hear them out loud to engage with your community as you’re living in the moment.
Meta AI has also been integrated with the glasses, the company’s new advanced conversational assistant. It has been optimized it for a hands-free, on-the-go experience. By saying “Hey Meta,” you can engage with Meta AI to spark creativity, get information, and control features, just by using your voice. Meta AI features will be available in the U.S. in beta only at launch.
Starting at US$299 and available for pre-orders now, the smart glasses will officially be in stores on October 17.