Over the years, Meta has received plenty of flak for launching smart glasses equipped with cameras. Despite that, the company has gone on to develop more models, expand its scope of partnerships, and even bring in celebrities like Kylie Jenner, while the internet has decided to label them as creepy and something that violates an average person’s privacy in wholesale fashion. At its Connect conference today, Meta made a course correction.
The latest from the company is the Meta Ray-Ban Display, a new lineup of smart glasses that entirely ditch the camera, shed some weight, and come in plenty of classic styles that will appeal to even a regular person. Meta says these are its “lightest, slimmest AI glasses yet,” paired with practical perks such as “professionally adjustable temple tips, adjustable or swappable nose pads, and overextension hinges.”
The Ray-Ban Meta Audio lasts 12 hours on a single charge, while the charging case adds another 48 hours’ worth of usage juice. Beyond the non-creepy shift, these Meta smart glasses lean heavily into the style department. Modeled after the iconic Ray-Ban Clubmaster and Burbank styles, these are available in 23 color and lens combinations, with scope for using prescription lenses.
The asking price is $349, which is rather steep for audio glasses. For comparison, the in-house Meta Glasses, which come equipped with a camera, cost only $249 in the US market. Pre-orders have already gone live for the Ray-Ban Meta Audio Glasses, and they will hit the shelves on October 13.
Interestingly, the number never brought up privacy as a contextual pivot while launching these glasses. “Audio has been our most popular feature since day one, because our glasses give you high-quality sound without closing you off from the world around you,” says the company in its official blog post, though the company’s recent moves suggest that it is increasingly awar of the privacy-violating potential of its camera-equipped smart glasses.
