Meta’s smart glasses are on sale today for $299

Smart glasses are like public transportation, according to Peter Bristol, Meta’s vice president of industrial design. “People will use it when it’s enough.”

To reach the “good enough” level, Meta does his best to smart glasses more accessible, more customizable and more comfortable to wear.

On Tuesday, the company revealed three new pairs of smart glasses: Adventurer, Fury and Starfire. Pricing starts at just $299, and while that matches Meta’s initial price first generation smart glassesthe price is significantly cheaper than the Ray-Ban Gen 2 Meta glasses launched last year. How could he get such a low price? Well, instead of Ray-Ban or Oakley brand to attract customers, these are simply called Meta Glasses.

This is an important step for Meta as it attempts to establish its own brand as the de facto name in smart glasses. Plus, the lack of a luxury name tag means a more accessible price.

Meta still partners with eyewear mega-conglomerate EssilorLuxottica to manufacture and distribute the new Meta glasses. This means you can still purchase a pair from an eyewear store like LensCrafters, with or without a prescription (they support a power range of -12 to +2.25). They go on sale today.

The three Meta Glasses frames have different shapes and unique styles. The Meta Adventurer has a classic rectangular shape and is available in standard and large sizes; the Meta Fury is similar but less boxy. Both models feature 26 customizations for buyers to choose from, such as tinted lenses and various frame colors like Racing Green or Sandstone. But it’s the Meta Starfire that will surely turn heads.

Designed in collaboration with Kylie Jenner, the Starfire edition looks like the new ad Gentle Monster Glasses powered by Google launching later this year. (They also look like Prada sunglasses.) There’s a little gem on the lens for a little sparkle, the nose pad is metal to prevent makeup absorption, and the Meta AI voice assistant will have an AI-generated version of Jenner’s voice, complete with other custom sounds unique to this model. The case even includes a note from Jenner and has a built-in mirror.

Meta says it did three things to make these Meta glasses more comfortable to wear. First up, adjustable nose pads. You can tilt the nose pad slightly in three directions (adjusting them by one millimeter), so that it fits better on the bridge of your nose. The temple tips are also adjustable with a central wire, meaning you can angle them slightly inwards or outwards depending on your face shape. Then there are over-extension hinges, which mean the temples of the glasses flare slightly when you put them on your head, making it easier for people with larger heads to find a good fit.

Size, weight, comfort and design are crucial elements for smart glasses. Just look at the new Snap AR specs announced last week. Comically huge and bulky, Snap has sparked anger with its expensive and imposing glasses, even though they are more powerful and capable than Meta’s glasses. The disastrous launch saw the company shares fall.

Regarding Snap’s specifications, Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer, says it’s good for customers to have competition, and it’s good for Meta for customers to try these types of products. “It’s a huge effort,” Bosworth says. “When someone makes different choices about weight and comfort, we can learn from them and see how people respond to them. I’ve said too much.”

The rest of the hardware is largely the same as the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 glasses, with the ability to capture 12-megapixel photos and 3K video. There’s a set of five microphones to pick up your voice commands, speakers in the arms so you can listen to music or podcasts, and touch controls for music playback. (I want to note that my demo unit regularly had trouble hearing my “Hey Meta” command to wake up the assistant, even though I was in a noisy environment.)

Like the Gen 2, they last about 8 hours on a single charge, although the included case can add another 40 hours of juice. Meta also sells a new Meta Glasses Charging Standa simple holder for glasses that sits on a desk or bedside table and frees you from the need to rely on the case. The mount is compatible with Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta HSTN and Meta Glasses models.

A press of the arm button takes a photo and a long press records a video. There’s an LED that indicates when you’re recording or taking a photo, although on previous models people found ways to turn off or block the light for nefarious purposes. Asked about privacy concerns with smart glasses’ cameras and people bypassing the LED, Bosworth says Meta Glasses use the same tamper detection technology found in Ray-Ban Gen 2 glasses, which can block access to the camera if it detects that someone has tampered with it. However, he stressed that it is a “game of cat and mouse with bad actors” and that the company is doing everything it can, generationally, to introduce stronger privacy protections.

These Meta Glasses run the latest version of the company’s operating system. Muse Spark multimodal modelalthough this has already rolled out to existing devices via a software update in some markets. Meta claims that this version lets you talk to Meta AI more naturally, with smarter responses and more supported translation languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Hindi, and Korean. A new feature called “Dynamic Photo” will also capture multiple images and recommend the best photo. Detailed instructions will also be available soon for glasses without a screen, so you can hear exactly when you need to turn left.

Speaking of which, Bosworth says Meta has heard feedback that some people don’t care about the camera capabilities of its smart glasses and would prefer audio-only glasses. “There is definitely market demand for this product.” Bosworth then said, “one thing at a time.”

Earlier this month, Code discovered by WIRED in the public Meta AI app, suggesting that Meta was preparing to launch a facial recognition feature in its consumer smart glasses, a technology that could have been trained by a company which builds surveillance tools for the American military and police services. After the WIRED report, Meta removed the codeand none of these technologies are present in the new Meta Glasses. Ankit Brahmbhatt, senior director of product management for AI glasses at Meta, told WIRED that there are “no plans for facial recognition” because that’s not the focus of what the company is building here.

Meta’s goal with these glasses is to put them on more faces. “It’s not just about whether the clothes fit well (fit and comfort are extremely essential to doing well), but it’s also your personal brand,” says Bristol. “This is a really important decision if we want people to wear them as their everyday driving glasses.” If more people start wearing these meta glasses, that means more people are using meta AI.

Both Bristol and Bosworth lamented that with many current AI tools, you have to provide context manually, whether by providing an image, a document, or a search query. With smart glasses, the AI ​​assistant sees what you see, and that’s one less burden on your part. “It’s not that the device isn’t smart enough – that’s sometimes a problem – it’s the amount of work I have to do to get it up and running,” says Bosworth.

But making smart glasses more comfortable is only one step. Many people still worry about the invasion of privacy made possible by wearable cameras that can discreetly record the user’s surroundings. Bosworth thinks such anxieties are akin to what happened when smartphones first put high-quality cameras in our pockets.

“There has to be a certain social normalization,” he says. “Glasses are very popular… that doesn’t mean we don’t worry about each individual case. »

The new Meta Glasses arrive at a turbulent period for the company’s relationship with its employees. Bosworth himself sent a internal memo to employees last week promising better communication, stability and workplace perks to improve morale, which is at an all-time low.