Meta today announced it’s releasing Meta Glasses, the company’s first slate of smart glasses that don’t feature any EssilorLuxottica styles or branding.
The News
While Meta is still working with long-time eyewear partner EssilorLuxottica, the company is releasing three new Meta Glasses styles that aren’t packing any Ray-Ban or Oakley branding:
- Meta Adventurer — A clean rectangle shape for a timeless, versatile look. Available in Standard and Large.
- Meta Fury — A bold frame that makes a bold statement.
- Meta Glasses by Kylie — A unique slim oval frame inspired by Kylie Jenner’s personal style.
Meta Glasses appear to be packing the same specs as its second-gen glasses (Ray-Ban, Oakley), including 12MP camera with 3K resolution, over eight hours of battery life, open-ear speakers, six microphones, and support for multiple lens types, including prescription, shaded, polarized, and Transition lenses.
The new line features a range of shapes, colors, and materials, including Classic Black, Classic Tortoise, Racing Green, Linen, Merlot, Mahogany, and Sandstone, with sun, Transitions, polarized, and clear lens options developed by EssilorLuxottica—making for a total of 26 styles.
Notably, both Adventurer and Fury start at $300, while the Kylie Jenner frames start at $400. For reference, Ray-Ban Meta (Second Gen) start at $380, and Oakley Meta at $400. You can find them starting today at Meta.com, Lenscrafters, Sunglass Hut, Best Buy, Amazon, and additional select retailers.
My Take
Meta and EssilorLuxottica have produced multiple smart glasses generations over the years, ranging from their inaugural Facebook Stories released in 2021 to their most recent pair, Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, which include a single full-color display.
And it seems like a match made in heaven: EssilorLuxottica holds the IP of some of the most iconic and cool frames, and Meta, well—they can make great XR hardware. That said, including today’s Meta Glasses news, it feels like both companies are increasingly diverging from that tight partnership, which is planned to last until 2030.
Just last week EssilorLuxottica announced it was striking its own optics deal with Applied Materials, which is an important piece of forward planning. The Franco-Italian eyewear giant appears to paving the way for its own stack of AR and smart glasses optics separate from Meta.
Whatever the case, Meta appears to be cutting the fat, as it focuses on getting its smart glasses on every head, which it really can’t do in the near-term as the storage and RAM crisis has essentially inflated the price of everything in tech.
It will be interesting to see whether consumers gravitate toward the more generic Meta Glasses over Ray-Ban/Oakley. One thing is for certain though: Google is coming for Meta with the release of a fleet of Android XR equivalents, coming this year from Warby Parker, Gentle Monster, Gucci parent company Kering, and Samsung.
