The 2-year-old Meta Ray-Bans, which currently top my list of the best smart glasses, have been a pretty great everyday pair of smart glasses for me, except for when the battery runs out. Which happens often.
But that may not be happening as much anymore with Meta Ray-Bans Gen 2, which Meta announced on Wednesday. They’re available immediately for $379, which is $80 more than the originals, but they promise twice the battery life and improved images from the built-in camera.
Meta’s got some AI upgrades coming too, including a few extra live translation languages and a new assistive audio mode called Conversation Focus that can filter out background noise when talking to someone.
I’ve seen them in person and have been setting up my own pair to review. They look just the same as before, but I hope for fewer moments when I need to suddenly recharge my glasses in the middle of the day.
The new Meta Ray-Bans will soon be joined by two other, spendier smart specs announced here at Meta Connect. There’s a new pair of Oakley Vanguard wraparound sports glasses (Oct. 21, $499) and a futuristic model called Ray-Ban Display Glasses (Sept. 30, $799) that include a display built into the lenses and a neural wristband.
Battery and camera boosts
The new Ray-Ban line is similar in frame design and weight but has an 8-hour battery life instead of 4 (according to Meta) and a camera that can shoot in a higher-resolution 3K video resolution. These glasses will also get two new slow-mo and hyperlapse video shooting modes, coming to the Oakley sports models as well, which I saw in brief hands-on demos at Meta’s campus. They’re welcome extras, although these Ray-Bans will still shoot photos and videos in a rather limiting vertical wide-angle format.
The charge case promises 48 hours of battery now, and there’s also a fast-charge mode that can bring the glasses to 50% battery life in 20 minutes. If that works as well as it sounds, it might mean I could just live a day without spare glasses. As long as I take a little power nap during the recharge.
Conversation focus: another assistive upgrade
Meta’s newest on-the-fly audio processing trick could be a huge help in a way that reminds me of what Apple’s AirPods can do. A conversation focus mode can remove ambient noise and recognize the audio source of whoever you’re facing, making conversations easier to hear. I haven’t tried this out yet, but it could open up new possibilities for Meta’s smart glasses as an assistive tool. It’s not clear what the battery life drain would be when keeping this mode on, though.
Live translation will work with six languages
Meta’s Ray-Bans can already do live translation much like Apple’s AirPods, and they’re adding Portuguese and German support soon. But I wish there were more languages I could translate to. The others are English, French, Italian and Spanish. It’s a very Eurocentric feature.
Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 and 3 handle a similar set of languages: English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish, but Apple’s adding Italian, Chinese (simplified), Japanese and Korean by the end of the year. Google, meanwhile, can do live translation in 70 languages via the Google Translate phone app.
Is this the time to get a pair?
If you were holding off on getting a pair of smart glasses because the battery doesn’t last, this could be the moment to hop on. But I’d suggest hanging on for CNET’s full review so I can test Meta’s claims.
Other companies are going to be making smart glasses soon, too, including Google’s expected Warby Parker and Gentle Monster collaborations coming next year. If you want a big tech company managing an AI-driven product on your face, you’ll soon have more choices.
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