Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses review: Ideal AI wearable, but sun's still too bright

Hindustan Times

5 days ago

Belatedly would be an understatement. Meta and Ray-Ban took their own sweet time to launch the smart artificial intelligence (AI) glasses in the country. The competitive landscape at this point is perplexingly barren, and I am quite certain the decision-makers at both these companies wouldn't have imagined it to be such plain sailing—even after a significant passage of time. Nevertheless, the collective of the best-known sunglasses manufacturer and a tech company that is only too keen to invest heavily into refining AI can only really go one way: towards success. Ray-Ban and Meta launch AI-powered smart glasses in India with camera, voice assistant, and social media features; prices start at
₹ 29,900 (Vishal Mathur / HT Photo)
The difficulty in getting AI glasses right—though it may seem easy with a mix of hardware, a camera, voice, and an AI responding to queries—is real. Not to say the ecosystem has been stagnant, because there have been efforts (such as Brilliant Labs' and XREAL smart glasses), but none have managed the scale that Ray-Ban and Meta have, following Ray-Ban Stories from 2021. In an India context too, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses story took its own sweet time. Not exactly light on the pocket either, with prices starting at ₹29,900 and going up to ₹35,700 depending on the variant you select (transitions yes or no is an important part of that decision).
The Meta AI glasses, as they're also often called, can essentially do a few things very well for a typical user. If one or more of these features are right up your alley, you may find this expenditure worth the tech adoption.
Also Read: Meta AI's experimental smart glasses: Advanced sensors let them see, hear, and even sense how you feel
First is the ability to take photos and videos, with the 12-megapixel cameras combining to give you visuals that, at first glance in terms of quality and colours, don't look like they aren't from a smartphone—the only hint being the ultra-wide perspective, which may actually work well for quite a few photography scenarios. The camera quality of the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, considering this is theoretically first generation, is significantly better than expected. And that includes low-light photos. Overall, you'll be impressed by the detailing, colour richness, and brightness of photos, and for videos, the smoothness of frames.
The only limitation you may notice in some photos is the inability to really frame a shot or zoom in. The latter is manageable with editing later. The framing is also a bit of a hit and miss initially, but soon enough, you'll get a fair idea of the point-of-view field of vision, and it becomes less of a gamble. The Ray-Ban Meta cameras, for some reason, make it seem as if you were standing further back from a subject when taking a shot than you actually were. If instant photography is the primary reason you'd splurge on the Ray-Ban Meta, this may not be the complete set. But for video, with a maximum limit of 3 minutes per recording, it's more than ideal for capturing a 360-degree view of a scenic landscape or a highlight from an event.
Alo Read: Ray-Ban Meta glasses launched in India: Check features, price, and availability
You can broadcast live video directly to Facebook (if your friends still hang around there, that is) or Instagram, sharing your perspective in real-time with friends and followers. After all, the Ray-Ban Meta is meant to plug into the social aspect—and it does, with the 3:4 aspect ratio. That said, it's perplexing that despite a very apparent social media focus, these glasses can connect well with WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook, and Instagram—but not Threads yet. For Facebook and Instagram, it can post to your story, while the WhatsApp connection is useful for replying to messages using Meta AI and voice.
And that neatly leads me to the point about the personal AI assistant. Beyond 'Hey Meta, take a photo' and 'Hey Meta, record a video,' you'll find a proper assistant who can answer your questions, identify objects you're looking at, pull information on landmarks or places in your field of view, or translate text from a different language. For travellers and those who are outdoors often, this feature set simply works. Voice commands seem to work fairly well, even with ambient noise like wind. Meta AI is smarter than you may expect, and for most real-world queries, I'd say it's at par with Google Gemini or OpenAI's ChatGPT—if not better.
You may be wondering about battery life, and that's where things inevitably get interesting. The charging case, which is essentially the carry case, is more useful than ever. A three-minute video recording drains about 5% battery, while music streaming for 5 minutes takes away close to 3%. Wear it normally and click a few photos of your meal, and you'll use about 10% per hour for the convenience of Meta AI in earshot.
Also Read: Meta Ray-Ban AI smart glasses launching in India soon: Details
The main question, saved for last—how well do they do the primary job of blocking the harsh afternoon sun in the middle of summer? The reality is, they aren't about that at all. In fact, my regular Ray-Bans and Oakleys (which also cost less) do a much better job. The Ray-Ban Meta transition lens doesn't dim ambient light as much as some of you may prefer. In that respect, it becomes clear that while leaving a few cards on the table with its core transition lens capability, the Ray-Ban Meta is ideally focused on a wider sense of purpose—a camera, an AI wearable, and a voice-based message response mechanism, for you to wear every day.
Whether it is worth that much monetary outlay is a question I cannot answer for you.
(Vishal Mathur is technology editor for Hindustan Times. When not making sense of technology, he often searches for an elusive analog space in a digital world.)