It has become quite the uphill battle for Mark Zuckerburg to keep the Metaverse relevant in the post-AI technocalypse in the world. The latest edition of Metaverse’s story is the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, the company’s entry to the throne long left vacant by Google Glass. There have been other heirs to the throne over time, and Amazon’s, Epson’s, Razer’s, and Focals’ by North’s have all failed to remain in the market eye for very long.
Buying the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses sets a prospective customer back by $299 and offers different styles of frames and lenses for those who don’t want the investment to detract from their looks. Ray-Ban offers anyone interested the chance to buy into the Metaverse in 150 different style variations consisting of two frame styles, seven colours, and multiple lens options to incorporate colour, transitions, and prescription into the end product.
From a technical perspective, Ray-Bans is a quality product in itself and incorporates the Metaverse gimmick faultlessly. Many publications that test out the product before giving their verdict praise the audio, photo, and video quality most of all: the camera is a 12MP camera, offering a photo resolution of 3024 x 4032 pixels. Video quality is benchmarked at 1080p at a whopping 30 frames per second. The glasses have five different mics instead of one with greater speaker qualities. This ensures that users sound good and hear well on their very important business calls. The speaker can deliver louder sounds with more bass and less audio leakage for the best music-listening experience.
The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses have also however been criticised for several underperforming elements in the final product. For example, some have said that the voice assistant featured in the glasses is still a little slow and clumsy in responding to user requests. The battery life is an upgrade from the previous iteration of the collection and most significantly of all, the glass still doesn’t really include an actual AI component into the product properly.
On the other hand, it is now easier than ever to import new photos to the glasses and vice versa than it has ever been. Another concerning element is just how much the glasses allow the user to get away with while using them in public. With the glasses on for example, users can make phone calls in public without an onlooker ever realizing that the person in front of them is maintaining contact with someone they should not. This becomes an issue for example when a user enters into a restricted area and communicates sensitive information to someone they should not. The glasses also allow the wearer to take photos and videos without anyone ever being aware of it. This makes the world suddenly a whole lot more dangerous compared to before.
Delving deeper into the product specifications, Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses come with a slim charging case that charges via USB-C. The case also has an indicator light that shows green when the glasses are fully charged. The glasses are also quick charging, which is good since the glasses can run quickly out of juice if the cameras are used extensively throughout the day. The case, however, carries a large charge for the glasses, which eliminates the need to carry a power bank for the glasses everywhere you go as it can efficiently charge the glasses several times throughout the day.
One feature, however, that almost no one will enjoy, is the fact that the Glasses don’t cater to non-Meta social media apps natively, making using them just a little more difficult. As mentioned, the product’s AI features still need an extensive rebuild and are thus limited to responding to the most basic ‘Hey Meta’ queries and commands a little sluggishly. It appears as if the Meta Smart Glasses are looking to go in the way of how Google Lens works these days instead of augmenting reality, at least right now. Doing so will only require bigger batteries, processors, more memory space, and even more improved image recognition capabilities.
It doesn’t do to dismiss the Meta Smart Glasses’ AI capabilities completely, however. The Glasses connect directly to Meta AI, which is Meta’s answer to the immensely popular ChatGPT. This is what allows the Glasses to respond to voice commands. It also performs party tricks like looking up facts and settling disputes.
As of now, Meta is quite actively promoting Ray Ban Meta Smart Glasses to the consumer public. Zuckerberg himself appeared in an Instagram video to proudly show the world how he used the glasses in real time to learn how to braid his daughter’s hair. It appears that the innovator is not intimidated by Google’s very public failure with commercialising ‘smart glasses’ a few years prior. Speaking at the firm’s Menlo Park headquarters as part of Connect 2023, a technology and product showcase event, he explained his reasoning :
“ … I think that the AI part of this is going to be just as important in smartglasses being widely adopted as any of the augmented reality features”.
Cynics of course would argue that Zuckerberg is just reaching for ways to link in the failed reality augmenting aspect of the Metaverse to other product ideas to drive consumer interest in his virtual reality.
The glasses aren’t the sole Meta product that caters to creating a richer sensory experience for its users. Meta also unveiled its Meta Quest virtual reality headset last month. This product likely offers more space for augmented reality as it allows for more ‘passthrough’ to the real world, allowing the headset to layer virtual objects and new information to be layered on top of the visuals. Meta remains extremely price-competitive with both the Smart Glasses prices and the virtual reality headset: the Smart Glass only costs two hundred and ninety-nine dollars or euros and the Meta Quest 3 costs $500 compared to Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro virtual reality headset.
(Theruni Liyanage)