Mark Zuckerberg has long promised that the future of wearable AI rests on a pair of glasses. The Ray-Ban Meta Audio gave me the most convincing look at that future yet.
The Ray-Ban Meta Audio are its first AI glasses with open-ear audio only, ditching the camera capabilities that the device has become known for. While forgoing the camera system may sound like a step backwards, the change gives it much more of an upgrade than you may think.
Everything else about the experience is mostly the same as previous generations, including two open-ear speakers and a 6-mic array for crisp listening and phone call experiences, touch and voice controls, and the Meta AI assistant. However, since the glasses don't have to make room for cameras, they are lighter and much more compact, weighing about eight to nine grams less than the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 and clocking in as the lightest pair in Meta's smart glasses lineup. As far as wearability, they felt no different than the prescription glasses I wear every day.
Sacrificing the camera comes with several other perks, including a retail price $100 lower than the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 at $349, and a longer battery life, with Meta claiming 12 hours from one charge (and an additional 48 from the charging case). In my testing, I couldn't kill the battery after wearing them for an entire day, with the biggest use case being playing audio while working or on walks.
However, I found the biggest perk to be not having the cameras in the frames during social interactions. Meta has faced backlash as a result of people feeling uncomfortable with Meta Ray-Bans wearers potentially recording or photographing them without their consent. Without the cameras, I feel much more emboldened to walk around, shedding the subconscious fear that I am making people uneasy.
For an average user who isn't a content creator, I don't think the lack of cameras will face pushback as users lean into the audio and voice features of these glasses. The collaboration also nailed the frames, Burbank and Clubmaster, the former resembling previous generations of Meta glasses, and the latter having the more unique and retro style.
Our Deeper View
Compared to previous iterations, these glasses feel the most wearable in social situations and in terms of overall comfort and practicality. However, the reason I have shared Zuckerberg's viewpoint is that the future of AI wearables lies in smart glasses because they can give AI the context of the world around you from your exact point of view. By removing the cameras, that benefit vanishes. While there are still significant benefits to getting rid of the cameras, the best of both worlds would be cameras that serve as sensors to feed context to the glasses, such as the Brilliant Labs Halo Glasses, which don't capture content, but rather use the visual feed as cues. Of course, the privacy problem would still exist, as users would have to trust Meta with feeds of their everyday life, but given how much information users are willing to give Meta Muse, I suspect it would be less of an issue.