Wait… Smart Glasses are Suddenly Good?

Summary

MKBHD reviews the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, the consumer-ready evolution of Meta’s Orion prototype showcased just 10 months earlier. The glasses feature a monocular full-color display (42 pixels per degree, 5,000 nits brightness) in the right lens that acts as a heads-up display, controlled via a neural wristband using surface EMG technology. Priced at $800, these represent a massive leap from the $10,000 prototype to a finished product with features including turn-by-turn navigation, live speech captioning/translation, video calls, messaging, and camera viewfinder. While impressed by the rapid technological advancement, Marques notes concerns about Meta’s walled garden ecosystem (first-party apps only, no app store at launch) and privacy implications, while predicting upcoming competition from Samsung and Google.

Highlights

”Writing whole sentences with no errors”

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“I was writing whole sentences first try, quickly, with no errors. It was nuts.” — Marques Brownlee, 3:20

”The rate of improvement is insane”

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“The rate of improvement is insane.” — Marques Brownlee, 2:10

”They weigh 69 grams - nice”

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“And they weigh 69 grams. Nice.” — Marques Brownlee, 3:40

”Meta selling at a loss to get them in people’s hands”

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“I wouldn’t be surprised if Meta is actually losing money in an effort to just get them out and get ‘em into people’s hands.” — Marques Brownlee, 6:58

”The keynote was so brutal”

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“The keynote was so brutal, mainly because so many of the live demos that they tried went about as poorly as they possibly could have.” — Marques Brownlee, 8:38

Key Points

• 0:25 - Meta evolved from Orion prototype to finished Meta Ray-Ban Display in just 10 months
• 1:02 - Monocular display in right eye only, positioned lower and to the right of center vision
• 1:27 - Display specs: 42 pixels per degree, up to 5,000 nits brightness for outdoor use
• 1:40 - Control via neural wristband using surface EMG technology to read electrical impulses
• 2:23 - Light leak from display is nearly completely eliminated compared to Orion
• 2:56 - Neural band controls significantly improved; text input by drawing letters now works reliably
• 3:40 - Weight is 69 grams - noticeable but not uncomfortable
• 4:13 - Charging case is genius design - holds glasses or folds flat
• 5:00 - Key question: What does adding a display actually get you over standard Meta Ray-Bans?
• 5:12 - Benefit 1: Visual UI instead of audio-only interaction
• 5:26 - Benefit 2: Camera viewfinder for framing shots and reviewing photos/videos
• 5:37 - Benefit 3: Messaging and video calls with POV feed to other person
• 5:53 - Benefit 4: Turn-by-turn navigation with rotating map matching your direction
• 6:15 - Benefit 5: Live speech captioning using beamforming microphones, with translation
• 6:45 - Price is $800 - expensive but lower than expected; Meta may be selling at a loss
• 7:05 - Biggest downside: It’s Meta - privacy concerns about data collection
• 7:24 - All apps are first-party only (Meta Maps, not Google Maps; WhatsApp, not other messengers)
• 7:51 - Only third-party exception: Spotify partnership for music
• 7:56 - No app store at launch, but allegedly coming
• 8:22 - Competition expected from Samsung and Google within months
• 8:28 - Currently the best smart glasses with a screen available
• 8:38 - Meta’s keynote presentation was a disaster with many failed live demos
• 10:20 - Rapid advancement sparks thoughts about post-smartphone world

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Surprising Quotes

“I was writing whole sentences first try, quickly, with no errors. It was nuts.”

• 3:20 on the neural band text input

“The rate of improvement is insane.”

• 2:10

“And they weigh 69 grams. Nice.”

• 3:40

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Meta is actually losing money in an effort to just get them out and get ‘em into people’s hands.”

• 6:58

“The keynote was so brutal, mainly because so many of the live demos that they tried went about as poorly as they possibly could have.”

• 8:38

“The irony of the whole thing is that you spend years making technology, and then the Wi-Fi on the stage fails.”

• 9:41

“Or you’re talking to someone who’s maybe wearing some glasses like this and every once in a while they look down and to the right a little bit while they’re talking to you and it’s subtle, but you don’t know if they’re actually paying attention to you or not.”

• 11:00

Full Transcript

0:00 (intriguing music)

0:03 All right, so I’m in the middle of reviewing these new iPhones, which are pretty interesting, but you know, they’re new iPhones so they’re iterative. And then Meta of course decides to also have an event and things just don’t stop. So I put that down for a second. I fly back out to California, and what Meta has to show me is actually shockingly advanced.

0:25 Because just 10 months ago, I saw this, I made a whole video about it. These are Meta’s Orion which were super cool and overlaid software. But they can never sell these things because the materials and they’re a bit too cumbersome, and they have a whole separate stick with a computer in it that’s nearby, and they overheat, and the battery lasts like an hour. It was a cool proof of concept of a bleeding-edge technology but not a real product.

0:55 Now here we are 10 months later, and they’re handing me a finished product with a price tag and a release date. And it’s these, the Meta Ray-Ban Display, clever name, I know, but it’s essentially an updated version of the Meta Ray-Bans, and it’s massively better.

1:14 Now the main difference with these is these are a monocular display, meaning it’s only showing up in one eye, the right eye, and it’s fixed slightly lower and to the right of the center, but it’s still full color, plenty sharp, 42 pixels per degree to be exact, and more than bright enough. I tried these things outdoors, gets up to 5,000 nits.

1:35 So it’s like a real-life little HUD in the corner of your vision that you can turn on or off at any time, and you still control everything through a neural band on your wrist that uses surface EMG technology to read the electrical impulses going through your arm as you make different gestures that you pretty quickly memorize and can draw discreetly and quietly with pretty good accuracy. You can scroll up, scroll down, select, you can go forward and backward, and even turn up and down volume by pinching in the air.

2:07 And as I’m getting to try these, I just keep thinking, “The rate of improvement is insane.” For example, the light leak you might remember from Orion was very evident. Like you could see clearly when someone was looking at something when they were activated.

2:24 Now when I pull something up on the display in these, it’s basically invisible. The light leak is nearly completely gone. Now of course this is a monocular display, but it’s pretty impressive that from most angles there is virtually no way to see that I’m looking at something on the screen in these glasses. Even with the perfect angles, when the light hits just right, all you can really tell is that these do have a waveguide in them and I seem to be looking somewhere and not directly at you, and that’s it.

2:55 And for the neural band, the controls have gotten even better. So back when I tried it 10 months ago, it was pretty good. But you know, the idea of doing text input by just drawing letters was just an idea. Now it’s an actual feature, and it’s maybe the most reliable, quickest method of text input that I’ve tried with these. It’s absolutely insane. I was writing whole sentences first try, quickly, with no errors. It was nuts.

3:25 There’s also no separate computer like there was with the prototype. Everything is self-contained, which are admittedly, you know, a little less sleek, but you can still tell with these if I walk by wearing them. And they weigh 69 grams. Nice. So just as a non-glasses wearer, they are a little bit heavy, like they’re just heavy enough to not forget that I’m wearing them, but they’re not super uncomfortable.

3:52 And of course you cannot underestimate how much aesthetics matter if you’re gonna be wearing these on your face every day. Like there needs to be some style there. And I think they look better in person than they do on camera. And there’s also two colors, and they actually come with different lens options, black or sand as well.

4:13 Oh, and the charging case. The charging case is also pure genius. It can either hold the glasses inside or you take them out and it folds down flat in like two seconds and still has enough room for the neural band. This did not get enough attention for how awesome it was, because it came in the middle of a keynote that was kind of an absolute disaster in so many other ways. But I’m impressed with the charging case.

4:37 Now here’s the thing, these Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses have been out for like four years now and they have been a hit actually. They let you talk to Meta’s AI and send messages with your voice and listen to music. But I’m fairly confident that the number-one use of these by far is to use the built-in cameras to record POV videos.

5:00 So the real question is “All right, Marques, what does adding a display actually get you?” And I was thinking the same thing. I’m glad you asked, because there’s a lot.

5:12 So number one, first and foremost, you can obviously see the UI instead of just relying on audio. So if you wanna do something in the UI with the gestures and never take out your phone, that’s advantage number one.

5:26 Number two is you can actually see the viewfinder of the camera now, so you can be very sure of what you’re framing, and you can review pictures and videos after you’ve taken them. That’s also pretty useful.

5:37 Number three, messaging and video calls on your glasses are pretty sick. So if you’re in a video call, you can see the person you’re talking to and the person on the other end just sees a feed from your glasses, just straight POV.

5:53 Then number four, maps, which I think are pretty killer. I’ve talked about it with Google Glass. If you go to navigate somewhere, you can open up the maps and then get turn-by-turn directions and a rotating map that adjusts to match the direction you’re facing, which to someone like me with a terrible sense of direction is amazing.

6:15 And then number five is subtitling basically anything you hear. It uses the beamforming microphones to specifically listen to whoever’s talking and then put that live text on the HUD of exactly what they’re saying. And it works pretty quickly. And if that speech is in another language, it should be able to translate it for you to understand what they’re saying. Again, so clutch.

6:40 And this is all being sold as a real product that you can buy this year with a real price tag that is $800, which yeah, it’s expensive, it’s the price of a whole phone, but it’s actually a bit lower than I maybe would’ve guessed before actually hearing that. I wouldn’t be surprised if Meta is actually losing money in an effort to just get them out and get ‘em into people’s hands.

7:05 But that also conveniently brings us to maybe the biggest downside, which is that it is Meta. And that’s not a disaster. I mean, obviously people already like the Meta Ray-Bans already, but it also does mean you still will have the privacy questions of exactly what data’s being collected and what they do with it.

7:23 And then the other thing is that every app that you can use on these is strictly first-party stuff. Like messaging with your friends? That’s WhatsApp or Messenger. Video calls on the glasses? That’s WhatsApp. Maps? That’s not Google Maps, it’s Meta Maps, which I can guarantee won’t have the best real-time traffic info or ratings like Google Maps has. And they’ll even let you post directly to Instagram because Meta owns Instagram.

7:51 The only exception I saw to this rule was the music playback was done through a partnership with Spotify. But as of right now, or at launch, there is no app store for these. It’s coming allegedly, but not yet.

8:02 But overall, though, I just can’t help but be super impressed with how quickly they have progressed. Like I said, less than a year ago was that crazy prototype with the separate computer and the $10,000 bill of sale. And now here we are, it’s just, it’s moving so quickly.

8:20 And I know we’re expecting other entries into the smart-glasses space probably within the next couple months, I think from Samsung and from Google and maybe some others. But as of right now, these are the best smart glasses with a screen that I’ve tried, hands down.

8:34 And you know, the sad thing is you wouldn’t really get that from the presentation at all. The keynote was so brutal, mainly because so many of the live demos that they tried went about as poorly as they possibly could have. I mean, I watched it live. If you get to watch that back, you’ll know what I’m talking about. And it’s unfortunate because the product is so cool, and I gotta give them props for trying to do real demos instead of faking everything, I guess.

9:00 But yeah, this isn’t gonna help sell it…

9:03 “What do I do first?”

9:05 [AI] “You’ve already prepared the ingredients, so now grate a pear to add to the sauce.”

9:13 “What do I do first?”

9:16 [AI] “You’ve already prepared the ingredients, so now grate the pear with the base sauce.”

9:22 “All right, I think the…”

9:25 [AI] “Pause WhatsApp video call.”

9:27 “There we go.” (notification chiming) “Well, let’s see what happened there.” (notification chiming) “I don’t know what happened.”

9:41 The irony of the whole thing is that you spend years making technology, and then the Wi-Fi on the stage fails.

9:49 So yeah, there’s a lot of people using this tech already. But I’m predicting that when these ship in a few weeks, that we’re gonna see a flood of all this new content of the cool stuff people are doing with them, from the live-captioning to the maps to the AI stuff. People are just gonna go crazy with content about it.

10:16 But yeah, seeing how fast this is all moving, actually for the first time in a while, it got me thinking about the transition to a post-smartphone world, which is obviously still super far away. These still need a smartphone to work.

10:32 But you know, imagine a world where you’re walking down the street and you see a cool scene and instead of taking your phone out and putting a computer between you and the moment, you just, you know, snap a picture and just appreciate it. Seems nice, right?

10:49 Then again, would you rather be talking to someone and see them check their phone or their smartwatch real quick, and it’s kind of rude? Or you’re talking to someone who’s maybe wearing some glasses like this and every once in a while they look down and to the right a little bit while they’re talking to you and it’s subtle, but you don’t know if they’re actually paying attention to you or not. Something to think about.

11:21 Anyway, thanks for watching. Catch you very soon in the next one. Peace.

11:26 (intriguing music)