Meta and Ray-Ban owner EssilorLuxottica have extended their partnership The collaboration between the two dates back to 2019 and has extended into the next decade. The duo has been collaborating since 2019 and has produced two generations of Ray-Ban Meta glasses. The agreement between Meta and EssilorLuxottica should lead to more “multi-generational smart glasses”.
The first version launched in late 2021, just before Meta became facebook, and was known as Ray-Ban Stories. We weren’t entirely sold on them, though they had some good points. The $300 sunglasses looked like slightly bulkier Ray-Bans and thankfully didn’t have the facebook logo, and they offered decent audio quality through their small speakers at medium volume. The camera was so-so and worked better in brighter light. But privacy is really where we had an issue with data sharing and audio transcriptions turned on by default.
We liked the Ray-Ban Meta 2023 smart glasses the best, giving them an 85 in our review. The new model's perks include slimmer frames, hands-free photo messaging, and instagram Live streaming capabilities (with an improved 12MP ultra-wide camera). It also offers better microphones and sound quality, even at higher volumes. Plus, the charging case looks just like a classic Ray-Ban case.
Smart glasses originally came with an ai assistant, but Meta has introduced multimodal ai. The toolset allows the assistant to see and understand the world in real time, processing photos, videos, text, and audio. You can ask it to identify things you’re looking at, like the breed of a dog, the name and information of landmarks, and a road sign in a different language. Plus, there are new frame designs to choose from, starting at $300.
It is worth noting that in July, media reports EssilorLuxottica CEO Francesco Milleri indicated that Meta could acquire a five percent stake in the company. Whether this will happen is still unclear, as no purchase is mentioned in the extended partnership statement.
