The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses Are a Surprising Success – and Could Lead to a Meta Hardware Shake-Up
During a recent Instagram video in which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg compared the Meta Quest 3 to the Apple Vision Pro – unsurprisingly many of him said the Quest 3 is better, although he has a point – he briefly mentioned the Ray -Ban Meta Smart glasses, and the specs are going well.
Announced at the same time as the Meta Quest 3, the smart glasses are a combination of Ray-Ban sunglasses, a camera and open-ear headphones – with the big standout feature being their Meta AI capabilities via the impressive Look and Ask tool. still only in beta.
In our Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses review we did not look too positively at the specifications. Their design is practically perfect, but the camera and audio quality left a lot to be desired, and while the AI looks neat, it’s frustrating that the most exciting features are only usable by a select few who are part of the beta.
But despite some lukewarm reviews, Zuckerberg said the glasses are doing “much better than I even hoped.”
An upcoming hardware shakeup?
This striking performance has seemingly taken Zuckerberg and Meta by surprise, but if the glasses are indeed as popular as he claims, we think they could cause some shifts in Meta’s hardware strategy.
For existing Ray-Ban Smart Glasses owners, this hopefully means that Meta will be incentivized to keep new features and updates, such as the version 2.0 software it released about a week ago at the time of writing, continuing for a while – to its small army of smart glasses keep owners happy with their purchase.
If they hadn’t sold so well, the glasses might have joined the unfortunately unpopular Meta Quest Pro. It’s still getting updates as it’s part of the wider Quest platform, but it’s clear that other hardware like the Quest 3 and (to a lesser extent) Quest 2 are the kids’ favourites. Despite the additional hardware options, the Quest Pro does not receive more than the occasional additional software upgrade.
In terms of future hardware, it seems much more likely that a third collaboration between Ray-Ban and Meta will be in the works – and we might launch this one sooner rather than later to capitalize on the success of the current iteration.
Additionally, we may see some of the smart glasses’ popular features – like the AI – make their way to other Meta Hardware like the Quest 3 (or perhaps Quest Pro 2 or Quest 4, both of which have yet to be announced). The AI would be especially useful for Quest as it continues to try to establish itself as the better VR platform now that Apple has entered the ring.
We’ll have to wait and see what exactly the future holds, but we wouldn’t be surprised if smart glasses become as important (if not more so) to Meta as the Quest headsets.