expired Posted by phoinix | Staff • Nov 22, 2024
Nov 22, 2024 8:29 AM
Item 1 of 4
Item 1 of 4
expired Posted by phoinix | Staff • Nov 22, 2024
Nov 22, 2024 8:29 AM
$263.20: Ray-Ban | Meta Smart Glasses, Wayfarer at Amazon
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I'll probably wind up returning these, as the price point is just too high for the amount of functionality I'm getting out of them. The concept is pretty good, but the implementation is really quite poor. The "smart" aspects of these glasses include the ability to use an AI voice assistant, the bluetooth headset, and the integrated camera. The AI assistant is incredibly limited in what it can do -- it cannot open apps, it cannot send e-mails, it cannot read texts that are any longer than a few words, it cannot offer translations (audio or visual), it cannot identify objects you're looking at, it cannot offer directions. Basically, it can read short texts, respond to them, and transmit your ringtone to your face. Cool. I'm sure it has some more functionality, but all the things I've tried to do with it have been met with an, "I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that." And what it can do, I can do with a basic $25 bluetooth headset.
The bluetooth audio is kind of cool, and uses bone induction. I find it a little tickling when I use it for some music. Kind of a weird feeling. It's also audible to people around me, whereas my regular bluetooth earbuds are not. And, of course, if you take your shades off, you lose your audio. Still, it was nice to hike with a little music going without earbuds -- but I can't wear them to listen to music while waiting for an appointment inside (unless I wanna be the dude who wears shades inside, or pay an arm and a leg for transition lenses).
The camera had some potential to be a leading feature in the device, but it is severely limited. You are only going to get one "lens;" there's no zooming, there's no adjusting focus, etc. Spot a really cool bird you want to take a picture of? You're going to get everything that's in your field of view in that photo, and better hope it's at a position in the field to be in focus. The videos are limited to 60-seconds for some reason (even though the glasses can hold several such videos?). And you can only transmit between your phone and the glasses over WiFi, so if you take a bunch of a pictures, you're not going to get to see what you got until you're back on WiFi. Meh. I also found the camera timing to be pretty laggy -- obviously saying, "Hey Meta, take a picture" takes a few second, but even hitting the button, there's a delay between that and when the picture is taken -- that cool bird is now in a different tree.
Perhaps the most annoying aspect of the camera are the "anti creep" technology incorporated into it. It has an audible shutter sound when taking a picture, and an incredibly bright LED that glows whenever the camera is in use, including for video. Neither can be disabled. I can see the LED out of the corner of my eye, and it's incredibly distracting. Ironically, the audible sound is itself creepy. Take a picture with your glasses in a relatively quiet setting, and everyone turns wondering what the guy with the camera glasses is taking a pic of (and half of them assume it was them). The button to take a picture with the glasses is right at the point I tend to touch to when I adjust the glasses, too, so I have lots of pictures of nothing.
The LED video light is so distracting to anyone being recorded -- it's a little like having your flash on when you try to record video. My fiancee cutting her cake? "Can you turn that light in my face off?"
For recording things that aren't people, like my dog, or a bike ride, it can also be problematic. Trying to take a video of my dog playing, who always stops when a camera is aimed at her, she decided "glowy light on my human's face" must die. Hey, I get that there's a fear that people will use these things for nefarious purposes, but ... let's face it, if I wanted to do that -- and I don't -- there are cheaper and easier ways to do it (including the fact that cell phones are so ubiquitous today, they're ignored).
The charging of these things is just plain silly. You have to plug the case into a USB-C cord, charge the case, then put your glasses into the case to charge them. There's no way to directly charge your glasses. The case holds about three glasses charges (I got about 3-4 hours per charge on the glasses, which isn't much). So, if you don't have your case with you, you can't charge your glasses. The day I left the case at home, I had "nice shades" that did nothing by lunchtime. It's one more thing to lose, and the cases is fairly bulky, so not convenient to carry around. I also can't help but think that charging the battery in the case to charge the battery in the glasses is terribly inefficient.
Neat novelty toy, but I can't say they warrant the very high price tag.
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They're a fun novelty product. They're very limited in their capability. If you like the design of ray bans, that is another benefit.
On a separate topic, I have these with RX lenses having high astigmatism and they seem to just look fine even with thick lenses due to astigmatism. I got them from Target on a deal back in February this year and they came to about $300 with my RX lenses after insurance.
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