The arms on the Ray-Ban Stories glasses are slightly wider than a normal pair, but they don’t look geeky. (They also don’t have a waveguide, or a microprojector for display optics, since they’re not powering AR overlays). Packed into the arms are a power button, a capture button, a three-microphone array, two tiny speakers, and a touch panel.
But the voice controls worked just fine during the few occasions when nobody could hear my shame. While I didn’t expect much when it comes to audio playback, the Stories surprised me with sound ray ban new wayfarer that was good enough for listening to light tunes or podcasts. I could see them being particularly useful while jogging or biking outdoors, where you want to maintain situational awareness.
On the front of the specs are two 5-megapixel cameras, as well as a barely-there LED indicator light that lets people know the wearer is recording. Ray-Ban Stories are the first product in a multiyear partnership between Facebook and the European eyewear conglomerate EssilorLuxottica, Ray-Ban’s parent company. While they’re limited in what they can do, Ray-Ban Stories are the most normal-looking, accessible pair of smart glasses to hit the market so far. Both companies also see them as a step toward more advanced augmented reality glasses that overlay graphics onto the real world.
To date, Facebook hasn’t had a portable consumer hardware device in the market that works with a mobile phone and back-end software, and it’s clear the company is new at this. It lists only five “responsibility” rules for people who purchase the glasses. Believing that people will actually comply with these rules is either naïve or very optimistic. With Ray-Ban Stories, we can’t always know who is recording, when or where they are doing it, or what will happen to the data they collect. A small light indicates that the glasses are recording, but that isn’t visible from far away.
However, speakers on both sides of the frame can play sound from your phone over Bluetooth, allowing you to take a call or listen to a podcast without pulling your phone out. A touchpad built into the side of the frame lets you change the volume or play and pause what you’re hearing. The Ray-Ban Stories in the iconic Wayfarer style — those chunky ’50s-era frames that still look fashionable today — weigh just five grams more than the standard version.
There’s a quiet “shutter” sound when the person wearing the glasses takes a photo, but it’s hard for others to hear. Even if they do hear it, not knowing what someone intends to do with a recording clubmaster could cause anyone who is privacy-conscious to worry. Now you can leverage the strength of the iconic Ray-Ban brand to seamlessly upgrade patients in both single vision and progressive lenses.
Facebook, meanwhile, has been working on these Ray-Bans since at least 2019, and it almost certainly will take a swing at AR glasses in the future. But in terms of both commercial availability and advanced features, the new Facebook Ray-Bans are years behind Snap’s glasses. It’s the “effortless” part that will raise eyebrows behind the plastic frames. Facebook has made a pair of smart glasses—even if they’re not true AR glasses—that people might actually want to wear. With this product, Facebook is claiming the face as real estate for its own technology.
Andrew Bosworth, the Facebook executive who heads up Reality Labs, said the glasses were “designed to help people live in the moment and stay connected to the people they are with and the people they wish they were with. [Ray-Ban] has been nothing short of stellar in this partnership and through their commitment to excellence we were able to deliver on both style and substance in a way that will redefine the expectations of smart glasses. The glasses have a physical switch on the inside to turn off the capture features, while they will also flash an LED light on the front so people know they are being recorded or in a photo.