Even people who spent money on Meta's Ray-Ban “Stories” smart glasses don't want to use them. That's according to a report this week from the Wall Street Journal ( WSJ ), which cites internal data and claims to detail frustrations that have led to hundreds of thousands of Stories gathering dust.
Meta (then called Facebook) launched Ray-Ban Stories in 2021. The company's first mass-market smart glasses include a Snapdragon chip, two 5MP front-facing cameras for taking photos or videos, and speakers for listening to audio. The Ray-Ban brand comes from the eyewear partnership with Ray-Ban's parent company EssilorLuxottica (which also makes Oakleys and claims numerous luxury brands, including Burberry, Prada, Swarovski and Tiffany & Co.).
However, according to a February company document, the WSJ says it has seen less than 10 percent of Ray-Ban Stories ever purchased being actively used. The publication reported that Meta sold 300,000 Ray-Ban Stories, but there are only 27,000 monthly active users of the product.
So why do people dislike using their glasses? The WSJ report didn't go into detail, but pointed to issues with the smartglasses' voice commands, audio, connectivity and "some of the hardware features, including battery life."
These complaints align with some product reviews. For example, PCMag said the Stories' speakers lacked bass, while Forbes reported that it's nearly impossible to hear phone calls over the glasses unless you're in an "isolated environment."
The smart glasses 2023
Meta's smart glasses are no longer called "Ray-Ban Stories." Now they are called smart glasses. Technically, the new Meta model just announced is called Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, and the company will happily correct you whenever you call them something else, but these are just smart glasses.
The new glasses, which Meta just announced at the Connect launch event and which are available for pre-order now and will be available on October 17th from 299$, have two main purposes. The first is to replace your headphones: the smart glasses have a similar personal audio system to the likes of Amazon's Echo Frames and the Bose Tempo series, which play music but try to make sure only you can hear it.
With the new generation of glasses, Meta has also upgraded the microphone system in a big way: the specs have five microphones, including one on the bridge of the nose, which will make both your calls and voice commands much clearer. (The Ray-Ban Stories only had one microphone, and it somehow fell apart in strong or windy conditions.)
The other job of the glasses is as a camera. The smart glasses have small camera lenses on each right temple, just like the Stories — but those cameras shoot 12-megapixel photos and 1080p video, both big upgrades from the previous generation. You can store about 500 photos and 100 30-second videos (that's the maximum length the glasses allow) before you fill up the 32GB of internal storage, and everything syncs through the Meta View app. The app also lets you quickly share anything you record across Meta's many, many sharing platforms.
In addition to taking photos and videos on the camera, you can also start a live stream on Facebook or Instagram with just a few taps on the stem of the glasses. When recording, a white light around the lens flashes to indicate that you are recording.
The addition of live streaming exacerbates many of the product's already serious privacy issues. It's also one of Meta's attempts to answer the big question that surrounds all smart glasses: what are you supposed to do with them? Meta reportedly struggled to keep users interested in wearing its stories, with more than 90 percent of buyers eventually abandoning their devices.
Last time, Meta's big field was messages. This time around, the smart glasses are pushing themselves more as a creator tool, so you can cook or play drums or do any two-handed activities while still recording. A report earlier this year said the glasses would even allow viewers to talk to you , but Meta didn't mention that ability.
The smart glasses aren't the screen-and-everything smart glasses Meta has planned for later this decade, but they seem to have a better chance of actually staying on users' faces this year, both because of the improved look and because they just give you more to do with your glasses. It's hard to know whether the "sound system in your glasses" or the "camera in your face" will be a success, but a surprising number of tech companies are betting that at least one of them can take off. And if all it turns out to be is a beautiful pair of shades? This is a very good result.
The only thing that is certain is that technology is advancing and smart glasses at a fairly affordable price are the future. It remains to be seen whether these will fail, once again.
*Cover photo: Reuters