If it weren’t for that brilliant Cosmic Blue finish and nearly all-day battery life, I might feel sorry for the Meta AI Ray-Ban Gen 2 smart glasses (a.k.a Meta Ray-Ban Gen 2) launching in the shadow of Meta Ray-Ban Display. But this is like comparing apples to oranges. The Meta Ray-Ban Displays are really a smartphone for your face, while Gen 2 glasses are a smart evolutionary leap that improves the smart glasses in most of the necessary spaces.
I got to spend a little bit of time with the new frames and, yes, even got to choose my color. I selected Cosmic Blue (this and Cosmic Orange iPhone 17 Pro give me dualing Asteroid Movie vibes) because it’s one of three, limited-edition “seasonal colors” that include the blue, “headliner Music Violet”, and “Skyler shines Asteroid Grape”. This is in addition to like 27 new color options for the Meta smart glasses.
The Meta Ray-Ban Gen 2 arrives in packaging virtually unchanged from the last edition. Even the leather charge case looks the same. Inside, I found my dark-blue frames, charged and ready to go. Well, sort of, I needed a software update first. The frames work with the Meta AI app, and while they can do some on-board processing due to the on-board Qualcomm AR CPUs, a lot of the work still happens in the app.
New camera tricks
Aside from the color, the Gen 2 frames look very much like my last pair. Meta saved most of the upgrades for internal components like the batteries and cameras.
On the photographic side, we still have the 12MP ultrawide camera, but now it can shoot up to 3K video, a nice doubling of resolution for all those creators who want to show you the details of the blueberry buckle recipe. The Meta Ray-Ban Gen 2 frames will not shoot 3K by default. You have to dig into the settings to change it.
Perhaps the biggest component change comes by way of the batteries which, thanks in part to a more battery-sipping camera, will last 8 hours of mixed use on a charge. Better yet, they charge to 50% in 20 minutes inside the case. It takes 75 minutes for a full charge. After 4 or so hours of use, I had 47% of battery left.
There are still five microphones that, in my brief experience, can hear and respond to a whisper. The open-ear stereo speakers are pretty good, though they still can’t compare to Bluetooth earbuds with ANC.
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Meta AI gets almost continuous improvements. I think that the latency from query to action or answer is lower than ever. I have yet to try the new Live Translation feature or Conversation Focus, which uses the microphones to help you hear the person in front of you more clearly. For translation, Meta plans to add German and Portuguese later this year.
I wore the Meta Ray-Ban Gen 2 for most of the day, taking photos and videos with a push of the button or my voice and asking Meta about the world in front of me. It’s a nice AI companion. I appreciate their polarized lenses, but without a prescription, the world looked pretty blurry (I occasionally tried to wear them on top of my real glasses).
By the way, they’re still $379 / AU$689 with 32GB of on-board storage. Will you be buying or upgrading to Gen 2? If so, what color? Let me know in the comments.
