Reviewing the Most Popular Smart Glasses on the Market

One day we may go from the iPhone to the eye-phone. It may not be mainstream just yet, but major tech companies like Apple, Snap, Meta, Microsoft, and more seem to think so. They’re all building some type of hands-free smart glasses designed to enhance the human experience.

For the past 12 months, I’ve owned a pair of Meta Raybans, one of the most commercially available and purchased smart glasses out there. As you might guess, they have all the function of normal Rayban sunglasses, but with smart technology layered over. They retail for about $250-300. The newest generation just launched this month, with an improved camera, a updated AI assistant, and the ability to livestream.

In honor of the second generation launch, here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly from the first iteration of our upcoming future.

At first glance, they look like normal sunglasses, and that's part of the point. This is stark contrast from Snap Spectacles, which look out of place on purpose. Outside of being UV-protected sunglasses, Meta Raybans have a few simple features, guided by a voice assistant, bluetooth, and a touch display along the right side of the glasses.

• Take photos and video with the camera - double tap or say "Meta take a photo"
• Listen to music, podcasts, and other audio with a built-in speaker
• Use the Voice Assistant to take calls or interact with the glasses

The good

• Design and touch functionality - one thing you don't want to do with smart glasses is have 20 buttons on the glasses. Meta Raybans only has one. For functions like pausing or resuming audio, capturing photos, or taking calls, it's either voice activated, hands free, or simple signal-based (i.e. Double tap, slide). All the buttons and tech blend into the actual glasses.

• Speaker - Meta Raybans nailed the speaker in many ways. It is the perfect level of audio that allows you to hear good-quality audio clearly without losing the surrounding sound of the world around you. It's like wearing airpods but better. For example listening on the beach without losing the sound of ocean or citibiking without losing the sound of the city around you. I love playing music or podcasts on them while walking or biking. I also think the most impressive part is that I can be standing two feet from someone and they won’t hear it playing. When the glasses get a Siri-like voice assistant, this will be a huge asset to the experience.
• Bluetooth Sync - connecting the glasses to my phone has never been difficult. It's especially easy to sync videos and photos. Once a video or photo is recorded, regardless of access to wifi, it will automatically sync to The View app, the official app for the glasses. You can then quickly view the content in the app on your phone.

• Recording raw photos or videos of people - right now the camera quality is not the greatest, but in some ways it brings an early 2000s America's Funniest Home Videos vibe. Filming my friends and family with the Raybans creates videos that feel very real and intimate.

The bad

• With glasses, everyone wants a pair that looks good on them. When I ordered the glasses I had no idea which one to order to fit my head. They ended up being small on my face, which was exactly what deterred me from originally buying them. I would love ways to try on or mold the glasses to my face shape so I can proudly wear them.

• Camera lens is below par - There’s a few problems I see here. 1) I think the camera lens need to be wider. When I try to film POVs (I.e. shooting a basketball), they don’t really cover my entire POV.2) I think right now it just feels like a video filmed on a low quality iPhone 6, but I think what’s missing is a distinct type of camera or image that makes people go “oh that’ a smart glass” video or photo In a similar way people can identify a Polaroid by the look. Don’t know if that’s like a horizontalized camera or a filter, but I would be willing to pay a higher price point for a cooler camera.3) They record in a square format and the quality is just outdated for today’s times. You can go into the app and edit the videos into Portrait or Landscape, but who wants to do that every time? Also I’ve noticed only the right lens records so when you’re filming you’re going to want to look to the left and down to center the shot. All my videos were off-centered and cut off a lot of what I was looking at. Why weren’t the lenses angled down and to the left more to compensate for this? I’m not an engineer, but that would have been smart! Stabilization is an issue too. Obviously you’re going to be recording with these when you’re walking or looking around and I found the playback in these instances to be a little jumpy. Here's a POV of me hitting a golf shot. Would like to see a wider lenses.

What's Next

That's about it. So in some ways, it's nothing more than a simple prototype right now. But I could see a few more features coming in the future, all similar to features available on the phone:

• Livestream POV: this is a confirmed feature for the newest iteration. You can now stream Instagram live from your glasses.
• Navigation intelligence: imagine walking around and getting directions on the fly
• AI Assistant: a slightly easier way to use Siri or search for answers that you'd use Google for or to create and send voice messages.
• Scan technology: smart glasses can easily scan your surroundings from your POV with its camera. Let's say you see a restaurant in the distance and the smart glasses scan it and share back a menu or a tl;dr on the place.
• AR functionalities: the long-term goal with a product like this is obviously to add AR supported visuals through the glasses.

We are still early in the days of eye-phones, but despite the poor camera lens, I think the Meta Raybans shows we are making some progress towards a hands-free future.

Hi I'm Neal! I created the Find Gen Z Series to give a Gen Z perspective on our rapidly changing world of social media, creator economy, AI, and more. If you liked what you read, subscribe below.

All opinions are of my own and not of my employer.