Hands-on with the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses

When it comes to the new $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, it’s the device’s accompanying fuzzy, gray wristband that truly dazzles.

I was able to try out Meta’s next-generation smart glasses that the social media company announced Wednesday at its annual Connect event. These are the first glasses that Meta sells to consumers with a built-in display, marking an important step for the company as it works toward CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of having headsets and glasses overtake smartphones as people’s preferred form of computing.

The display on the new glasses, though, is still quite simplistic. Last year at Connect, Meta unveiled its Orion glasses, which are a prototype capable of overlaying complex 3D visuals onto the physical world. Those glasses were thick, required a computing puck and were built for demo purposes only.

The Meta Ray-Ban Display, however, is going on sale to the public, starting in the U.S. on Sept. 30.

Though the new glasses include just a small digital display in their right lens, that screen enables unique visual functions, like reading messages, seeing photo previews and reading live captions while having a conversation with someone.

Controlling the device requires putting on its EMG sensor wristband that detects the electrical signals generated by a person’s body so they can control the glasses via hand gestures. Putting it on was just like strapping on a watch, except for the small, electric jolt I felt when it activated. It wasn’t as much of a shock as you feel taking clothes out of the dryer, but it was noticeable.

Donning the new glasses was less shocking, until I had them on and saw the little display emerge, just below my right cheek. The display is like a miniaturized smartphone screen but translucent so as to not obscure real-world objects.

Despite being a high-resolution display, the icons weren’t always clear when contrasted with my real-world field of view, causing the letters to appear a bit murky. These visuals aren’t meant to wrap around your head in crystal-clear fidelity, but are there for you to perform simple actions, like activating the glasses’ camera and glancing at the songs on Spotify. It’s more utility than entertainment.

I had the most fun trying to perform hand gestures to navigate the display and open apps. By clenching my fist and swiping my thumb on the surface of my pointer finger, I was able to scroll through the apps like I was using a touchpad.

It took me several attempts at first to open the camera app through pinching my index finger and thumb together, and when the app wouldn’t activate I would find myself pinching twice, mimicking the double clicking of a mouse on a computer. But whereas using a mouse is second nature to me, I learned I have subpar pinching skills that lack the correct cadence and timing required to consistently open the app.

It was a bit strange and amusing to see people in front of me while I continuously pinched my fingers to interact with the screen. I felt like I was reenacting an infamous comedy scene from the TV show “The Kids in The Hall” in which a misanthrope watches people from afar while pinching his fingers and saying, “I’m crushing your head, I’m crushing your head!”

With the camera app finally opened, the display showed what I was looking at in front of me, giving me a preview of how my photos and videos would turn out. It was like having my own personal picture-in-picture feature like you would on a TV.

I found myself experiencing some cognitive dissonance at times as my eyes were constantly figuring out what to focus on due to the display always sitting just outside the center of my field of view. If you’ve ever taken a vision test that involves identifying when you see squiggly lines appearing in your periphery, you have a sense of what I was feeling.

Besides pinching, the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses can also be controlled using the Meta AI voice assistant, just as users can with the device’s predecessors.

When I took a photo of some of the paintings decorating the demo room’s halls, I was told by support staff to ask Meta AI to explain to me what I was looking at. Presumably, Meta AI would have told me I was looking at various paintings from the Bauhaus art movement, but the digital assistant never activated correctly before I was escorted to another part of the demo.

I could see the Meta Ray-Ban Display’s live captions feature being helpful in noisy situations, as it successfully picked up the voice of the demo’s tour guide while dance music from the Connect event blared in the background. When he said “Let’s all head to the next room,” I saw his words appear in the display like closed-captions on a TV show.

But ultimately, I was most drawn to the wristband, particularly when I listened to some music with the glasses via Spotify. By rotating my thumb and index finger as if I was turning an invisible stereo knob,
I was able to adjust the volume, an expectedly delightful experience.

It was this neural wristband that really drilled into my brain how much cutting-edge technology has been crammed into the new Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses. And while the device’s high price may turn off consumers, the glasses are novel enough to potentially attract developers seeking more computing platforms to build apps for.

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