Our outraged editor tests Meta's Ray-Ban glasses and finds them more than adequate
Everything worked a bit better than expected, but an alert waiter was quick to call us out
Although few people have tried them, everyone has an opinion about the new Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, sort of like AI. Now of course, Meta — home to Facebook, Instagram and other scam-ridden apps — isn’t exactly a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize and there’s widespread concern about the privacy implications of glasses equipped with AI and video cameras.
So, wanting to leave no potential consumer outrage unexamined, I acquired a pair of the dread specs and put them on for their initial run as we went out to dinner at a local seafood joint a few nights ago. I was a little self-conscious but convinced myself the glasses were reasonably inconspicuous and would not get me denounced and banished from polite company.
“Oh look,” said the waiter archly as we were being seated, “Mr. Zuckerberg is joining us for dinner this evening.” So much for anonymity.
Things went along fairly well from that point, until the check was presented. It was quite hard to read in the darkened restaurant and I had to ask a companion to read the total and sign the tab. The waiter said nothing but smirked snidely as I proved unable to read a simple restaurant tab with Mr. Zuckerberg’s new glasses.
Zuckerberg can be blamed for many things but my vision is not one of them. The test-run glasses have just plain lenses — no prescription for close-up reading. New lenses have been ordered and are no doubt being ground somewhere.
They do several things quite well
Since that initial outing, I have familiarized myself with the Metas and must say they’re pretty cool. I have successfully made and received phone calls, sent and received text messages, listened to music and asked “Meta,” Meta’s version of Siri, for the time.
No, privacy phobics, there’s no facial recognition on this model and if you try to surreptitiously record someone, a rather bright light comes on just above your eyes, which is a pretty good tip-off.
Although it can’t identify Aunt Edna just yet, for those who — like me — sometimes misplace their reading glasses, you can ask Meta to save a bit of text and read it to you. She does it, a little grudgingly but quite adequately.
If you’re a bit weak on distance vision, you can ask Meta to describe what’s in front of you. There is also a step-by-step function that vision-impaired people tell me is incredibly useful. There are numerous other benefits these glasses provide to the blind and nearly blind, as described in an article a few weeks ago.
Take off your ears!
One thing that surprised me about these goggles was the sound quality from the tiny speakers in the earpiece. It’s pretty good — especially considering that nothing goes into or over your ear, unlike some headphones I can think of. Meta just makes your headbone vibrate and the inner ear responds appropriately. Or something like that.
The audio quality is quite good and since your ear isn’t covered up, you can still hear an electric SUV whispering up behind you and the neighbor’s dog snarling behind a flimsy fence.
Phone calls, which I pretty much hate, are a lot less intrusive and there’s one less gadget to juggle to make or take a call. The microphone, like its earpiece siblings, is excellent. The sound quality is very crisp and lifelike; background noise is blocked effectively.
It’s worth noting that, the uptight waiter notwithstanding, these specs look pretty good, in a Clark Kent sort of way. Nerdy but not too technoid like those horrible Google Glass things that nobody bought. They are, after all, Ray-Ban, my longtime favorite sunglass brand. The frames are sturdy, grip your head tightly and resist slipping and sliding.
Depending on what you do about lenses, the price of going Meta is somewhere north of $400, which is about par for higher quality eyeware. All the AI software is practically a giveaway if you look at it that way.
There are certainly serious privacy implications that need to be worked out but as a longtime scribe dedicated to finding out what people didn’t want me to find out, I’m not too eager to put a lot of restrictions on what consumers are allowed to photograph.
Remember all those videos of ICE beating up protestors? You can thank the First Amendment for those and for many other true facts that have made America pretty great. I don’t want Mr. Zuckerberg or Mr. Trump’s FCC deciding whether such images are permissible.