Say Goodbye To Ray-Ban As Meta Launches Cheaper Standalone Smart Glasses

Following a fruitful partnership with Ray-Ban on Meta's first consumer-ready smart glasses, the tech giant announced it's now launching its own cheaper Meta Glasses without the sunglasses maker. According to a blog post, Meta is partnering with EssilorLuxottica, a Franco-Italian company, to launch new glasses starting at $299. This new product features everything users expect from Meta Glasses, including AI features, audio support for phone calls and music, and cameras.

Available in three frame styles, Meta offers the new Meta Adventurer, Meta Fury, and Meta Glasses by Kylie (Jenner). Adventurer features a rectangular shape and is available in Standard and Large sizes, while Fury features a slightly larger frame, which Meta calls a "bold frame that makes a bold statement;" and Kylie Jenner's version has a slim oval frame. In total, customers can get 26 styles at launch by combining different colors and lens options for this new offering across Meta's store, Best Buy, Amazon, and more, in several countries and regions. Still, it's important to note that customers can buy Meta Glasses in partnership with Ray-Ban and Oakley, as the company continues to support these partnerships.

Meta's new glasses add a Meta AI button so users can use the AI assistant or launch a specific feature. For its AI, Meta promotes its new Muse Spark model, which brings a general knowledge of sports scores, local restaurant picks, and visual intelligence-like features to help you understand and analyze the environment around you. As this new model becomes available, the company also says live translation is now available in 14 new languages, including Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.

Meta also continues to promote other great features available in previous models, such as open-ear speakers that are perfect for listening to music, podcasts, and audiobooks. With a multi-mic array, Meta is not only focusing on delivering a good call experience but also on enabling voice control to send WhatsApp messages and talk to Meta's AI.

Users can also continue to capture and share photos and videos hands-free, and take advantage of over 8 hours of battery life, with up to 40 hours of extra juice thanks to a foldable charging case. Besides that, Meta says it continues to focus on other people's privacy, as every time customers start taking a photo or recording a video, the camera's ring light shows it's on. Still, recent reports have highlighted how easy it is to bypass Meta's privacy features and record people without their knowledge.