Great news for folks who enjoy the convenience of being able to listen to music or podcasts on their Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, but don’t want to get frog-marched out of the gym locker room:
Meta is launching a new audio-only version of its smart glasses that ditch the cameras.
These glasses, which come in two styles — Burbank and Clubmaster — will start at $349. They ship October 13.
The audio-only versions still have the AI features. You can ask Meta’s AI for things like a restaurant recommendation while you’re walking around. You can also talk in real time with Meta’s new AI agent, Muse, through the glasses.
From my own testing of earlier Meta glasses, I can say that the audio features were one of my favorite aspects. Unlike earbuds or headphones, you weren’t cut off from hearing your surroundings. This was great for specific contexts, like biking or walking outside, where I wanted to be able to hear traffic or other sounds for safety reasons.
You can also make hands-free phone calls, or listen and respond to text messages. The potential downside here is that, compared to taking a phone call on an AirPod, no one can see you’ve got anything in your ear, so it’ll really seem like you’re just talking to yourself in public. But that’s your burden to bear.
Ditching the camera has two big advantages. The first is the form factor: Without cameras, the frames can be lighter and therefore more comfortable (43 grams compared to 51 grams for the Gen 2 Wayfarer camera version). The audio-only glasses are also more stylish looking, with that classic flair in the corner of the Ray-Ban model where the camera would go. From the front, they look like regular Ray-Bans.
The second advantage is well, you’re not wearing a device capable of filming people — which is what spawned the “pervert glasses” backlash to Meta’s AI glasses. People understandably feel uncomfortable about the idea of being filmed without their awareness. Even though yes, people can film you on a phone, and yes, there is an LED indicator light, there’s no doubt that the Meta glasses are much more subtle than filming with a phone, and many people don’t notice that they’re being filmed at all.
Part of the bad perception of the Meta glasses has come from the kinds of videos that have gotten popular on social media filmed with the glasses. Pickup artists talking to women on the street and prank video makers harassing Walmart or other retail employees while wearing glasses became the two dominant types of content. This summer, Instagram announced it would crack down on the pickup artists, and started removing videos and sometimes even whole accounts of people who posted those videos (though as I previously reported, the enforcement has been somewhat spotty).
Businesses have responded to the backlash, too. Nightclubs, restaurants, and other places have started banning people from wearing Meta glasses inside. Events like the Rhode Island Comic-Con and the DEFCON security conference have also made rules banning Meta glasses.
It’ll be interesting to see if the camera-free version of Meta’s AI glasses sell as well as their more expensive — and more capable — counterparts with cameras.
Glasses with a built-in speaker are nifty — and these might appeal to people who otherwise would never want to buy smartglasses with a camera.
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