After Oakley announced its Meta-collaboration HSTN smart glasses earlier this year and stole all of Ray-Ban’s sunshine away from its own Meta smart glasses, I could only imagine the storied sunglasses brand stewing as the oohs and ahhs that had been its own began piling up instead for its fellow Luxottica-owned Oakley.
Then on September 17, Ray-Ban announced the Meta Ray-Ban Display, a far swankier pair of augmented reality smart glasses. They’re $800 and packed with swanky new features.
Oh yeah, and you can’t buy them online. At least not right now. You’ve gotta buy them in a real-life store. How’s that for irony? These augmented reality glasses require you to engage with pure, concentrated reality to acquire them.
a new reality for ar smart glasses
You may be asking why a pair of smart glasses comes with a “Meta Neural Band” to be worn on the wrist. According to Meta, “the band interprets your muscle activity so you can control your experiences in a more intuitive way.”
It’s needed for interacting with the glasses’ overlay of computerized graphics and controls. Hand gestures allow you to control the glasses while you’re wearing them.
Meta says you’ll be able to get up to six hours of battery life per charge, with another 24 hours worth of juice stored in the glasses’ case. The integrated 12MP camera comes equipped with a 3X zoom, with a 600-by-600 pixel color display built into the lens.
Six microphones and speakers integrated into the glasses’ arms allow the wearer to take calls, and the glasses can connect to other devices via Bluetooth.
They’re available in two colors: black and “sand,” a kind of silvery gray that looks like bare titanium. Both come with Transitions lenses, those lenses that automatically switch from clear to shaded when sunlight hits them.
You can’t buy the Meta Ray-Ban Display online, but beginning September 30 you can schedule a demo at a local store if there’s a participating Best Buy, LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, or Ray-Ban store near you.
Certain Verizon locations will also receive Ray-Ban Meta Displays at some point in the unspecified future.
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