Ray Ban’s Meta Glasses — Gimmick or Great?

Key Takeaways

• Meta has released their new smart glasses in partnership with Ray-Ban, known as the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses
• They include a camera, speakers and a microphone, allowing users to make calls, voice command and livestream to Meta platforms
• Meta appears determined to find a way to make smart glasses work, having now spent billions on their virtual reality headsets in addition to the new smart glasses

Tech companies have been trying to make smart glasses happen for years now. Google’s now discontinued Glass were really the first to enter mainstream when the prototype was released back in 2011, but they never took off outside of the tech nerd hub of Silicon Valley.

By all reports, they weren’t even that popular there either.

The tech world has come a long way since then, with smart glass development in recent years focused heavily on virtual reality. Headsets like the Meta Quest have been billed as the gateway to online worlds such as the ‘metaverse’ but they’ve struggled to really find mainstream adoption.

Mark Zuckerberg himself has faced huge amounts of pressure over his investment in tech, which he has finally decided to reign in as part of his ‘Year of Efficiency’ drive. In the meantime, Apple has announced their first ever headset, the Apple Vision Pro, which will be an augmented reality headset rather than a virtual reality one.

All that is to say, smart glasses are proving to be a tough nut to crack, and yet Silicon Valley appears determined to continue to try.

The latest development in the space has seen Meta pair up with traditional fashion glasses manufacturer Ray-Ban to create a pair of quasi smart glasses that doesn’t look quite as ridiculous.

What do the new Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses do?

These are not looking to replace a full-on virtual reality headset. The idea with the Ray-Ban smart glasses is to package some of the tech and gadgetry that we already carry around in our pockets, into our glasses instead.

The first set of inclusions are speakers and microphones. No need to pull out your airpods to take a call or listen to music, if you’re wearing these new shades you’ll have it built in. Does that mean we’re going to see users making like the Kardashians and wearing these inside or on a dark cloudy day? If they want to hear their music properly or use them to make calls, probably.

There’s also a built in camera which allows you to take 12mp photos and 1080p video, with the ability to stream directly to Meta’s platforms such as Instagram.

Are Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses a gimmick?

Probably. This isn’t Meta’s first joint venture with Ray-Ban, having released the Stories glasses in 2021. According to the Wall Street Journal, 90% of users who purchased those don’t use them anymore. Sounds like a pretty textbook gimmick.

Meta has been keen to highlight potential use cases, such as being able to film when using both of your hands such as ‘cooking or playing the drums’. We don’t mean to state the obvious, but both of those activities don’t tend to involve a lot of sun.

The bottom line

This announcement isn’t likely to move the needle from an investing perspective, and our bet would be that the take up on this new gadget is going to be pretty minimal. With that said, investors should keep in mind that there are many steps along the way to creating a blockbuster product.

Before we had the iPhone, we had to have the iPod and Mac. This may be a total flop that leads to nowhere, or it might be a stepping stone that helps Meta become the company that finally creates a pair of smart glasses we all actually want to wear.