By now, you’re probably familiar with Meta’s Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses, which allow you to record videos, play music, and communicate with the voice assistant completely hands-free. While it has proven useful for plenty of folks, the lack of a screen definitely hinders it from finding an even wider range of applications. That changes with the new Meta Ray-Ban Display.
That’s right, Meta is finally putting a screen in their smart glasses, allowing the system to finally provide visual responses instead of having to answer any queries through the built-in open-ear speakers . They even offer a clever way to interact with the display using gestures, making this a potentially important change to further push the category forward.
The Meta Ray-Ban Display has a noticeably thicker frame compared to the standard Meta Ray-Bans, which is the primary way you should be able to tell them apart. The big change, of course, is a new full-color display that’s built into the right lens, allowing Meta AI to provide visual responses and cues, depending on what you’re doing. Aside from interacting with the AI, the display is also used for messaging and video calling, previewing photos, turn-by-turn navigation, live captions, translations, and visuals for any music playing on the speakers.
The display comes with 600 x 600 resolution and works much like a HUD, only appearing when there’s a need for visual interaction with the system. While you can interact with the system via voice commands, the screen is designed to be controlled using a new peripheral called Meta Neural band that lets you use subtle hand movements to navigate the system’s UI. Basically, you can swipe, tap, and do all sorts of gestures. According to the outfit, you can even type using it, although we’re not sure exactly how that will work (probably easier to just dictate things than type them).
The Meta Ray-Ban Display has A 12MP camera that you can use to capture photos and videos on a whim. It an shoot 1440p footage at 30 fps, by the way, complete with 3X digital zoom. Even better, it uses the built-in screen as a viewfinder, so you can frame your shots properly instead of simply making estimates like you would with the original versions of these smart glasses. It also gets built-in open-ear speakers along each temple, as well as a six-mic array, which should ensure the system hears you loud and clear, whether you’re making phone calls or issuing voice commands.
It has an integrated 248mAh battery, which is rated for around six hours of mixed usage, although it comes with a charging case that holds an extra 24 hours’ worth of charge, so you can fill it up periodically throughout the day. Other details include IPX4 water resistance, 32GB of onboard storage (good for 500 photos), Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity, and transition lenses that can go from clear to gray when you use it outdoors. And yes, it’s available with single-vision prescription lenses between -4 to +4.
