At $300 Meta and Ray-Ban Glasses are Cool and Affordable Wearable Tech
That’s great news for Meta’s metaverse!
A viral TikTok trend is making wearable tech kinda cool. Videos of popular users wearing the new Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses (usually while lip-syncing K-pop songs) are amassing millions of views.
What’s so special about the Meta glasses? The $300 tech looks almost identical to a normal pair of Ray-Bans—aside from the small cameras in the upper corners of the frames that flash when taking a high-quality photo or pulse when recording. The glasses also respond to voice commands to text or call someone.
But Meta is banking on them to do much more in the future. The company announced last week that the specs will soon be able to use Meta AI to translate languages in real time for wearers, come up with funny photo captions, and help pick out clothes.
Big picture: If they work as intended, these features could finally push wearable AR and VR technology into the mainstream after years of failed attempts (remember Google Glass?. But if the TikTok trend is just a brief fad and the eyewear doesn’t take off, Meta’s risky multibillion-dollar pivot to the metaverse will be that much closer to failure. VR headset and AR glasses sales in the US have already dropped 40% in the last year, according to Circana data reviewed by CNBC.—MM
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