Meta Ray-Bans

Somehow there's something quite dystopian about a world population running around with camera sunglasses on, frantically documenting their own everyday lives, all in the almost hollow quest to create more content or make life more shareable on social media platforms. It's just there. It sounds like a natural next step towards a lazy, self-absorbed, and casual Wall-E dystopia, and it doesn't help that it's Meta that makes these camera glasses, does it?

Even solid content creators like MrMobile appear stressful and almost amoral as he runs around in a resort paid for by Meta and documents everything through these glasses. All memories become GIFs, all winks become snapshots for the scrapbook. You know that feeling when you watch a professional recording of a concert and it's almost completely bright because everyone is recording instead of just being there? Yeah, imagine that feeling - all the time.

It sounds like I'm rejecting the whole concept almost definitively, without judging Meta's Ray-Ban glasses on their own terms, and I kind of am. But it's also the case that over the last few years I've added EV Hour, or rather long, in-depth videos about electric cars, to my CV, and because of this expansion of my professional life, these Ray-Bans are the most useful tool I've ever added to my small assortment of functional filming gear.

So how do you approach a review like this? For my own part, Meta Ray-Bans are the most complete, polished and effective product I've reviewed in recent months, but at the same time I dread a world where everyone wears them. Can you see the conflict there?

First of all, the construction itself is sublime. There are a myriad of different styles, and like other Ray-Bans, you can actively swap the lens to change both look and functionality. Furthermore, like "smart glasses" were just a few years ago, the frames themselves are surprisingly thin, and unless you really squint, it's not immediately apparent that this is anything other than a pair of glasses. The fact we can pack all this technology into such a small physical package that it can actually sit on your face without any uncomfortable weight is impressive in itself.

What you get is a pair of glasses that house two ultra-wide cameras on either side, totalling 12 megapixels. They can shoot still images in 3024x4032 or record in 1080p. This can be turned into files you can easily upload to your smartphone via an accompanying app, or you can livestream directly from the glasses for up to 30 minutes. There are also directional speakers in the aforementioned "arms", which means you can listen to music or make phone calls virtually unnoticed by passers-by, and the call quality is oceans better than an average pair of in-ears thanks to five microphones.

There's 32GB of storage, which means over 100 videos in 30 seconds, there's WIFI 6 and they're IPX4 certified against rain. Oh yeah, there's also Bluetooth 5.2 on board and an included leather case that uses USB-C and offers a total of 36 hours of use on one charge.

So whether you like the whole premise or the lifestyle these glasses are designed to exist as an extension of, the specs are pretty wild, and when you put them on for the first time it's striking how seamless it all is.

However, there are pragmatic issues to address here. First of all, these glasses can only shoot videos in portrait mode, perhaps to make them easier to post on Instagram, but it's a shame that the user doesn't have the option to change the ratio to suit the content they want to shoot. This is actually a bigger dealbreaker than you might think, because Meta suddenly makes the usage scenarios far more limited than they need to be. In addition, the glasses are, at times, slightly limited to Meta's very specific ecosystem. Sending videos and images is essentially only for Messenger and WhatsApp users, and live streaming can only be done via Meta's platforms. It's a little frustrating to say the least.

There's an LED on the front that clearly indicates to others if you're recording, and there's a sensor that refuses to start recording if it's covered, so you can't record without telegraphing it. Also smart. Firmware updates are largely automatic, and although the "Hey Meta" AI part isn't as useful elsewhere as it is in the US (I couldn't get the function where the AI explains what I'm looking at to work), the glasses have made calls and started Spotify Tap without problems. Local voice control is seriously lacking here, as dictating a message is obviously impossible, but other than that it's a pretty cool user experience.