Ray-Ban Stories review: Facebook's first smart glasses look so normal, but feel so familiar
Walking down my quiet suburban street, I'm looking up at the sky. Recording the sky. Around my ears, I hear ABBA's new song, I Still Have Faith In You . It's a melancholic end to the summer. I'm taking my new smart glasses for a walk. Facebook's Ray-Ban Stories sunglasses feel almost normal at times. And, of course, utterly abnormal. And also very familiar. I've used products like this, off and on, for years. Welcome to Facebook's first smart glasses.
After promising smart glasses for years, Facebook's first glasses are disappointingly familiar. These aren't AR glasses at all. They don't have displays in them. Instead, they're a blend of technologies that have already been in other glasses: they have cameras in them, and microphones, and speakers. They're headphones and camera-glasses in one, and that's about it. That's what I expected based on Mark Zuckerberg's recent expectation-setting comments this year, but I'm still surprised these don't push the envelope a bit more.
The partnership with the massive glasses manufacturer EssilorLuxottica, and the design, are the interesting parts. Ray-Ban Stories is an odd name for the $300 glasses, which are available now at Ray-Ban stores and will be arriving at retailers such as LensCrafters next week. But the glasses don't mention Facebook in the branding very much. Also, they're a clear attempt to take the torch from Snapchat's similarly featured camera-enabled Spectacles , as well as audio-enabled glasses such as the Bose Frames and Amazon Echo Frames . Really, they're a fusion of the two ideas. And at the moment, they're not much more than that, even if Facebook promises to go much further in future products.
