Meta Ray-Ban (Gen 2) Smart Glasses Review – 6 Months Later
AI Slop, privacy issues, and misuse of these glasses threaten to bring down Meta’s top product.
By Josh Teder
The Meta Ray-Ban Gen 2s are the follow-up to the extremely popular Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, which I reviewed back in 2024. But since then, I found my usage pattern with these glasses has changed somewhat. And while yes, there are a few improvements that Meta made with the newer version, there are also now, oddly, quite a few more downsides.
The Biggest Highlight: It Doesn’t Look Like a Gadget
The biggest highlight is something that might sound obvious, but honestly isn’t. It’s in the form factor of something that already exists: sunglasses and glasses. You don’t have to strap something new onto your head, like a Vision Pro, which I’ve reviewed, or the Quest headsets, which I’ve also reviewed. These are just Ray-Bans with speakers for listening to music and podcasts, and a camera for recording video and taking photos, which is especially nice in situations where you’re active or anything else where you want that first-person viewpoint, and you want to capture video.
Speaking of which, yes, video is still locked to a 3:4 ratio, which is incredibly frustrating. Meta really wants you to use these glasses to make content that you’ll post on Facebook, Instagram, or Threads, which are primarily phone-based platforms. So I get why they’d think these are just for capturing social media videos. But if you’re like me and you shoot a lot of your video in the horizontal aspect ratio, because our eyes look like this, not like this, you’ll wish that you had that option.
New with video on the Gen 2s, you get 3K resolution at 30 frames per second. The sensor is still 12 megapixels on the new glasses, but they’re using roughly 6.5 megapixels to hit that 3K resolution, with the remaining pixels on the sensor being used for digital stabilization. In my experience, that stabilization has actually looked pretty good. Overall, photos and videos look good for something coming out of a pair of glasses. They probably won’t blow you away, especially if you blow them up to a larger display, but I do like that they don’t look overprocessed the way that some smartphone images can.
Battery Life: The Real Reason to Upgrade
Battery life is probably the biggest upgrade the Gen 2s have over the Gen 1, and probably the biggest reason to upgrade if you find yourself using the Gen 1 a lot for photos and videos. On the Gen 2, you get 8 hours of use compared to four, and the new case provides 48 hours of charge compared to 32 on the Gen 1.
“I’ve worn these for hours outside and have yet to run into their battery limit, like I did with my trip to Cape Lookout a few years ago with the Gen 1 Ray-Bans.”
There is still a recording limit for video. It’s now 5 minutes on the Gen 2, up from three on the Gen 1 (though still at 3 for 3K mode). Now, with the Gen 1, you could technically get around that limit by using the Instagram Live feature and going into practice mode, which would allow you to download footage without people actually seeing your live stream. But 6 months later, there’s no live streaming capability that has been brought to the Gen 2, so that workaround wouldn’t work with these.
Features I’ve Actually Used (and a Few I Haven’t)
Outside of music, photos and videos, I haven’t really used anything else on them, oh, except for the tap-and-hold gesture. I do really like that feature. Right now I have it set to trigger an Apple Music Station. This works with Spotify as well, but it doesn’t work with YouTube Music when paired to an iPhone, for example.
I also haven’t used them much for taking phone calls or interacting with Meta products. But if you use WhatsApp for all of your messaging, I could definitely see how these would be more useful.
But what about Meta AI? Why haven’t I found that very useful? Well, in the situations where I have tried it out, frankly, I just wasn’t very impressed with it. For example, I’ve often tried it for tree identification and asked it what I was looking at, and it’ll still sometimes just be like, “You’re looking at a tree with green leaves.” It might perform better with more recognizable landmarks, but in my experience, I just haven’t found myself trusting it enough to give me accurate information the way I trust other AI assistants, like Gemini.
Staying on Gemini for a second, though, it has a pretty big advantage over Meta AI, and that’s the fact that Google owns it. So it already has all of the data from various Google apps that I use, and it has a much easier time understanding my personal context, which makes the responses that I get more relevant. So it is likely that if Gemini was on a pair of glasses, yes, I would use that AI assistant way more than I found myself using Meta AI.
With Meta AI, there is also a translation feature, but that’s not really something I’ve been able to test out over the long term, and the reports I’ve seen on this feature have been a bit mixed so far. There are more connections available through the Meta AI app, things like Google Calendar for your schedule or Strava and Apple Health, so while Meta’s AI can’t reach into all of your different apps, it can at least read fitness and calendar data.
Privacy Issues: More Than Just a Minor Concern
Now let’s talk downsides, and there are actually a lot more than I anticipated when I first started writing this review, because of how many privacy issues have recently come up around these glasses that I think if you’re considering getting them, you should absolutely be aware of.
First is the investigation by Swedish newspapers that found human contractors in Kenya were reviewing footage taken by the glasses and labeling it to train Meta AI. These contractors were reportedly seeing highly private human moments as well as sensitive information like credit card numbers. As far as I can tell, when you choose to share your data with Meta to help improve the Meta Ray-Bans product, and you agree to upload your photos and videos to Meta’s server for processing, when you trigger the Meta AI, video and photos are apparently being captured and then sent to Meta for review. The issue here is that Meta just did not make it obvious to users that this was happening, which is a bad design.
To make matters worse, there’s now also a real creep factor that has become associated with these glasses. There are multiple reports of people using Meta Ray-Ban glasses to record others without disclosing that they’re being recorded and then uploading that content and potentially making money off of it. And yes, this story gets slightly worse.
Normally, when these glasses are recording, they emit a white LED meant to signal to people nearby that they’re actually on and recording. However, it’s now been reported, specifically in a story by Wired (linked in the learn more section below), that some people are charging up to $120 to remove that LED so these glasses can operate in what some are calling stealth mode.
One of the alleged uses for this stealth mode is for men to film picking up unsuspecting women without their knowledge, leading some people to now refer to these glasses as “pervert glasses.” This situation has gotten so bad that someone even developed an Android app that anyone can download to see if nearby Meta Ray-Ban glasses are in their vicinity.
“Obviously, not all of this is Meta’s fault, just like it wasn’t completely Google’s fault when the Google Glass debacle happened. But there is a real chance that this backlash gets worse and more people start turning against these glasses, and that could have a negative impact on your ownership experience.”
Earlier this year, the New York Times reported on an internal memo leaked from Meta about a new feature for the Ray-Bans called Name Tag, which would allow you to identify random people you walk past on the street while wearing Meta’s glasses and ask Meta’s AI about the person you’re seeing. If Meta were to roll out this feature, my guess is it would trigger quite a large backlash.
The Meta AI App Is Still a Problem
The last downside for me with these glasses has been the Meta AI app. In between when I reviewed the Meta Ray-Ban Gen 1 and the Gen 2, Meta rebranded what was called the Meta View Companion app, where you access the glasses settings and download your photos and videos, into the Meta AI app. You can hit one wrong button in this app and end up in an unwanted AI slop TikTok.
Meta redesigned this app right after I finished my 6-month testing period, and the new redesign is a bit better. It’s easier to actually get to your glasses settings via the shortcut in the top right corner. But this is still very much an AI app first and a glasses companion app second, which I still don’t love. All they seem to care about right now is having users consume as much AI content as possible and creating as much content as possible for Meta to run ads against, because that’s their actual business model.
This actually makes total sense if you’ve seen their latest content about the Meta Ray-Ban displays. You can now flip through Instagram Reels on those glasses because they have a built-in display. But in a bizarre post announcing this feature, there’s a guy gushing about how it looks like he’s just wearing normal glasses, watching a cool sunset. In reality, he’s just mindlessly flicking through Reels, being “present while staying connected,” which is a crazy way to describe doom scrolling via glasses and watching Meta ads instead of taking in the nature around you and letting your mind go blank. Fun fact: that’s actually good for your brain, just not so good for Meta’s bottom line.
So, Should You Buy the Meta Ray-Ban Gen 2?
This question is a lot more complicated than I thought it would be when I first started reviewing this product.
If you want a pair of Ray-Bans with an integrated camera for taking photos and videos on your trips, when you’re doing sports, or when you’re just out and about and see something cool, yes, these are still great for that. I had forgotten how much I loved using the Gen 1s on my trip to Ireland and Iceland or to the beach, basically in situations where pulling out your phone wouldn’t be safe or as convenient.
Add that camera capability with the open-ear speakers, the increased battery life, a water resistance rating of IPX4 (which means they can handle splashes and rain but are not safe for submersion), plus the overall design with a status light, a recording light, and a touchpad that works great for controlling music, media, and the AI assistant, and it’s a great hardware design and package. Just don’t use rubbing alcohol to clean them like I stupidly did, which will absolutely ruin the finish on the frame.
But here’s the problem for Meta and why I think these glasses have a lot more downsides than before. Apple and Google are absolutely capable of making glasses that do all of those things. They just won’t have the Ray-Ban design, which, to be fair, does matter to some people. But Google and Apple’s glasses will likely have far deeper integrations with your phone operating system and far better assistants with Gemini and Siri powered by Gemini. That’s why Meta is likely scrambling to establish some type of moat with these glasses. Whether or not Meta’s AI efforts are the moat they need for this product to be successful, I’ll let you be the judge of that.
So, do I recommend them? Yes. But it’s now a tepid yes. The privacy issues, increasing creep factor in the culture around this product, plus Meta shoving AI slop down your throat via the companion app all make them harder to recommend compared to when I reviewed the Gen 1s. And while the Gen 2 are more expensive than when the Gen 1 launched, starting at $379 versus $299, if you’re looking for a pair of Ray-Bans with better battery life and an integrated camera, I think they’re still a good choice, especially if you can find them on sale. You can check current prices and compare both generations in our Gen 2 vs. Gen 1 post, with live prices across multiple retailers, including eBay, where you can typically find pretty good deals on used pairs.
These glasses now also come in a greater variety of styles than they did with the Gen 1s, and Meta has expanded the line to include Oakley glasses plus the Oakley Vanguard, which is specifically designed for sports.
