Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses review: The future is here — but it needs a better battery

Cameras, microphones, headphones and an AI assistant... Your face is about to get a major upgrade.

Is it the future yet? It's starting to look that way, at least if you judge by Ray-Ban's Meta AI glasses. These fairly ordinary-looking spectacles pack a wealth of technology: cameras, microphones, headphones and an AI assistant that sounds like actress Kristen Bell. (Seriously. Intentionally. It can also be made to sound like Awkwafina, John Cena, Dame Judi Dench or Keegan-Michael Key. I am not making any of this up.) The result is something fairly remarkable: glasses that can not only capture and identify what you see, but also replace earbuds for music, phone calls and more.

This isn't a new idea, but the Ray-Ban Meta is by far the best execution of it I've ever seen — and one of the most affordable at $299. However, while I'm sold on the idea of smart glasses, there's still work to be done — mostly in the areas of design and battery life. So, should you consider putting a pair on your face? Here's my Ray-Ban Meta review.

Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses | Rick Broida/Yahoo

VERDICT:

I'm convinced: Smart glasses are the future. Meta's latest effort gets nearly everything right, especially the camera and speakers — but it's severely hampered by its battery.

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Ray-Ban Meta glasses: How to get them

First things first: The Ray-Ban Meta glasses start at $299, but that's for clear, non-prescription lenses. I tested the Wayfarer style (a classic for anyone familiar with Ray-Ban sunglasses); there's also a Skyler option for those seeking a different look. You can opt for Transition lenses (the kind that automatically darken when you're outdoors) for an additional $80, but keep in mind there's still the matter of your prescription — if you have one.

If you do, you can order the glasses directly from Amazon, then take them to a LensCrafters or Sunglass Hut store to get prescription lenses added. You also have the option of ordering directly from Ray-Ban, supplying your prescription details, and choosing any lens options you might want.

As you might expect, the more options you add, the higher the total price. I wear progressives; those plus Transitions and a few other add-ons would have put my total bill at around $1,000. Thankfully, Ray-Ban does accept most insurance. And you might be able to find more affordable lens options at one of the partner stores.

I'll just note that the last time I bought new regular frames and progressive lenses (with all the bells and whistles) from an optical center, the price tag before insurance was approaching $800. Frames alone can easily cost $200-$300 (ripoff though that may be), so $299 for the Ray-Ban Metas strikes me as a pretty decent deal — especially considering what they're capable of.

Ray-Ban Meta glasses: How they look (try to ignore the model)

Ready for my close-up. (Wait, that's too close!) The Ray-Ban Metas aren't that different from the chunky black frames I normally wear, but they're definitely a little heavier. (Rick Broida/Yahoo)

To look at the Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer is to see a familiar-looking frame, one with a barely noticeable camera embedded in one corner and thicker-than-average arms (aka temples). The latter are arguably the only giveaway you're wearing smart glasses; unless someone looks closely, they might never know.

That said, I find the design a little chunky overall, the thick black plastic a little bolder than I prefer. But that's just me; others have told me the frames look stylish, or at least similar to what a lot of people are wearing these days (myself included). And these were a review sample; I'd definitely have chosen a different color given the option.

I did struggle a bit with the weight: at 2 ounces, they're definitely heavier than my everyday glasses, which weigh just 1.2 ounces. (Note that Meta's specs indicate 1.7 ounces; my scale says otherwise, but that could be the result of my fairly thick progressive lenses.) Although I wouldn't describe them as uncomfortable, I definitely noticed them more.

Speaking of noticing things, privacy is often a concern with camera-equipped smart glasses — specifically, the privacy of others unaware you might be snapping photos or recording video. To remedy this, the glasses have a small white front-facing LED in the right corner, opposite the left-corner camera. When you take a picture or start a video, the LED lights up.

Ray-Ban Meta glasses: We need to talk about the battery

This isn't just a carrying case for the Ray-Ban Metas -- it's a power supply as well, able to fully recharge the glasses up to eight times. But it's also the only way to recharge them.

Obviously, this is a battery-powered product, and Meta took an interesting approach to charging: There's no dock or power cord, but rather a traditional-looking leather case. Just drop the glasses in, and an embedded LED ring lights up orange to indicate charging. (It shows green when done.)

I have mixed feelings about this. The case is stylish, but also bulky and inconvenient; it's literally the only charging option, so you have to keep it close at hand. At minimum, Meta should offer a simple USB-C charging cord (one that connects directly to the glasses) you can use for travel, and I'd also like to see some kind of dock for desk or nightstand use.

This might be less of an issue if the glasses had better battery life. Unfortunately, depending on your usage, they're going to require recharging in just four hours — possibly less. For example, during the course of 90 minutes, I recorded a one-minute video, listened to about 30 minutes of audio, answered some text messages, and had a few chats with Meta AI. Then I checked the battery level in the Meta AI app: 60%.

The battery level continued to drop even after I took off the glasses, folded them up, and set them on my desk. Despite being in "standby" mode, the battery level dropped overnight to 14% from 51%. Thus, unless they're actually recharging inside their case, they're consuming power — even if you're not wearing them.

Needless to say, these can't be your all-day glasses, or at least your all-day smart glasses. Of course, they'll continue to help you see, even with a dead battery, but imagine heading off to work in the morning and losing access to your headphones, cameras, and AI assistant, all before lunch.

If there's any upside here, it's that the Ray-Bans can recharge to nearly 50% after just 20 minutes in the charging case (which itself promises eight full charges), but what do you do in the meantime? (One option: Carry your regular glasses in the case and wear them while these are charging.)

This is the major problem with the product, and it's a big one — which is unfortunate because it's pretty great in most other respects. Worth noting: I'm also in the process of testing the Solos AirGo V glasses, which use ChatGPT in place of Meta AI but are fairly similar otherwise. They can last up to 10 hours while playing music — so I'm confused as to why the Ray-Bans have such poor battery life.

(Note: Right before I published this review, Meta announced a new pair of smart glasses from a new partner: Oakley. Rated battery life: 8 hours. That adds to what I consider inexcusable power performance from the Ray-Bans.)

Ray-Ban Meta glasses: What they can do and how well they do it

As noted earlier, I consider these glasses to be half wearable camera and half headphone, with an AI assistant baked in for good measure. Let's talk about some of the specs associated with those features, then dive into the specifics.

Key specs:

• 12-megapixel camera

• 32GB of onboard storage

• Open-ear headphones

• 5 microphones

• Bluetooth 5.2

• Wi-Fi 6

• IPX4 water resistance

• Touch controls

(In case it's not already clear, these have no display to speak of; they're not AR or VR glasses like the Apple Vision Pro or Meta Quest 3.)

The camera

The glasses come with a 12-megapixel camera built into the frame. On the opposite side: a small white LED that illuminates when you snap a photo or record video. (Rick Broida/Yahoo)

Imagine snapping photos or videos while on vacation or at a special event, without having to pull out your phone — without even having to lift a finger. You can activate the glasses' camera via a simple voice command: "Hey, Meta, take a photo." There's also a button on top of the right temple; a single click grabs a snapshot, a longer press starts video recording.

That's a pretty powerful benefit, though there are a few limitations. First: no selfies. Second: While the camera captures whatever is in your field of view, there's no actual preview to know exactly what you're getting. No zoom, either. And videos are limited to three minutes, max, something to note if you're trying to capture, say, a kid's performance in the school play.

In my testing, I found that the glasses worked really well for the kind of "reveal" videos popular on Instagram and TikTok, like when you start out looking at the ground and then slowly pan up to show a waterfall or some other natural wonder. But for anything longer, where you want to stay focused on a fixed subject, it's not great having your whole head as the "viewfinder," because your natural inclination is to look around from time to time — resulting in jarring footage.

That's something to keep in mind if you plan to use the livestream feature, which works via the Facebook or Instagram app. I tested the glasses with the latter, despite having never livestreamed anything before, and got up and running with just a few easy taps. But once again, the resulting footage was shaky and, to my thinking, hard to watch, because I move my head a lot more than I do my phone. It's much easier to get stable video with the latter.

Take note, too, that while the camera's image quality is pretty good overall — suitable for viewing on your phone and sharing on social media — it lacks the sharpness you'd expect from a 12-megapixel sensor.

You can preview photos and videos in the Meta app, but to actually offload them from the glasses for sharing or full-resolution viewing, you need to connect the latter to your Wi-Fi network — a fairly quick process, but still an extra step. There's also the option to automatically import media when the glasses are charging, which is useful.

There's another big benefit to the glasses' camera, and that's being able to instantly identify what you're seeing. I'll come back to that in the AI section, below.

The headphones

See that little slit in the bottom of the glasses' temple? That's the speaker. It has no business sounding decent, let alone really good, but it does. (Rick Broida/Yahoo)

The Ray-Ban Meta's headphones are kind of miraculous — two tiny down-firing speakers built into the temple arms right where they start to curve over your ear. That's pretty far from your listening holes, yet these things sound amazingly good. Maybe not quite on par with the best open-ear headphones, but close — I was perfectly happy with the quality of music I heard while walking the dog, gardening and so on.

(As noted above, the Solos AirGo V — despite having vastly superior battery life — sounds like tinny AM radio in comparison.)

There's a bit of resulting "bleed" here, meaning others might be able to hear what you're hearing, but they have to be standing fairly close. Ultimately, I was amazed to discover that eyeglasses could sound nearly as good as headphones — and all the disappointed about the battery life. I'd love to be able to wear these all day, without needing earbuds or the like for podcasts, Zoom calls, and so on.

The glasses have arguably the best touch controls I've ever used: You can drag your finger along the outside of the right temple to raise or lower volume, tap to pause/play, double-tap to skip to the next track, and so on. Each interaction is met with a little "tick" sound, so you know it's registering. And because the touch area is very wide, spanning a good stretch of the arm, you're not likely to miss hitting it — which I've found to be the case with most open-hear headphones (and their comparatively tiny touch areas).

I did encounter one small issue when watching videos: the audio was a bit out of sync. This was fairly noticeable in TikTok, less prominent in Netflix, but definitely there. It's not uncommon — I've seen this with some earbuds and headphones as well — but there's usually a software toggle (such as "game mode") to help compensate. At this writing, there's no such option in the Meta AI app.

The AI

Meta AI performs many of the same voice-activated tricks as Alexa or Siri. It can raise or lower audio volume, place calls, send and read messages, tell you the date and time, deliver a weather report, identify the song you're hearing over the loudspeaker (a la Shazam), and so on.

By default, it gives you fairly terse responses to any general-information inquiries, which I think is smart; if you say, "Hey, Meta, tell me about the Battle of Trafalgar," you don't necessarily want a 10-minute rundown. And after the initial response, you can say, "Tell me more" (no "Hey, Meta" required), to get additional information.

I did experience a few AI glitches. For example, when I said, "Hey, Meta, help me with my glasses" (per the AI's own suggestion), the response was, "To get help with your glasses, say 'Hey, Meta, help me with my glasses.'" I got stuck in this comedic loop indefinitely.

That kind of thing tends to get worked out over time, with software updates, but my more immediate request is for better integration with existing ecosystems (namely, my phone). I tested my glasses with an iPhone 16e; although you can ask Meta to set a reminder, it doesn't integrate with the iOS Reminders app; it relies on its own internal software. Similarly, it's limited in what notifications it can share: Anything I already have scheduled in Reminders won't get announced through the glasses.

You can't add calendar entries, either; no "Hey, Meta, schedule a meeting with Bob at 10 a.m. tomorrow." And this isn't just an iOS limitation; it's true on Android as well. Overall, there's fairly little integration with apps.

So if this is just a sort of Alexa/Google/Siri wanna-be AI, what's the point? The camera. You can ask Meta to describe what you're seeing, give you a summary of the book you're holding, recommend recipes when you peer inside your fridge, translate text from a different language, and much more.

For blind and partially sighted users, there's incredible value in being told what's in front of you, be it an object you're holding in your hand or the overall scene in general. (Again, this is where battery life rears its ugly head; anyone who starts to rely on this for real-world assistance could run into trouble if the glasses run out of juice.)

On the whole, Meta AI works fairly well, limitations notwithstanding. While the five available celebrity voices are a rather odd mix (and all AI-simulated, which itself is kind of crazy), I really dug having Keegan-Michael Key as my assistant. There are also three "company players" if you'd rather stick with a non-famous voice.

Language translation

Because this is a fairly high-profile feature, I wanted to give it some extra attention. To start, I used photo-recognition language translation ("Hey, Meta, translate what I'm seeing") on a page written in French; it did an impressive job reading it to me in English. However, it's an all-or-nothing performance; you can't force the glasses to focus on, say, a particular area of a menu; it would attempt to translate the entire thing, which would likely be confusing (and time-consuming) to hear. So this is more useful for a street sign or poster, something with relatively few words.

Speaking of translation, there's also a new live-translation feature that arrived just as I was finishing my testing. When someone speaks to you in a different language, it's translated in real-time. Well, almost: While listening to a few YouTube videos in French, the translation lagged behind what was being said, often to the point where it seemed like the glasses couldn't keep up. Or there would be a pause of several seconds while the person continued speaking, and then I'd get a quick dump of translation, which made it difficult to concentrate on what I was hearing versus what I was seeing.

Thus, I'm not sure I'd use this to try for actual conversation (though you could do that if the other person was also wearing Meta glasses); it seems better for short bursts, like someone giving you directions or answering a simple question.

At this writing, there are four languages available — English, French, Italian, and Spanish — and to use any of them, you must first download a language pack within the Meta AI app. In return for that bit of advanced planning, you get to use live translation offline (meaning you don't need to be connected to the internet).

Ray-Ban Meta glasses: Should you buy them?

The Meta Ray-Ban AI glasses showed me the future. With their classic Wayfarer design, impressive camera, surprisingly good open-ear audio, and affordable price tag, they made the case for smart spectacles you'd want to wear full-time.

Now we just need a battery that makes that possible. I don't want to have to keep that bulky case with me at all times, and don't want to have to dock the glasses in there every 3-4 hours. The point of all this is that if you're already wearing glasses anyway, wouldn't it be great if they could play music and record video, and answer questions? Yes! But when they can't do those things all day, you add a hassle factor that I suspect will frustrate most users.

Thus, I think Meta needs to at least double the battery life before these Ray-Bans can be considered for full-time use. I'm also hopeful the next version of this product will be a bit lighter (a challenge given the ask for a bigger battery). But mark me down as someone who's very eager to see these things happen.

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