When Meta launched the second generation of its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses in late 2023, few predicted the success that lay ahead for the collaboration—perhaps not even Meta itself.
But now, with more than 2 million sales under its belt, Meta has been looking for a way to widen its partnership with eyewear giant and Ray-Ban owner EssilorLuxottica and keep up the momentum. The answer it seems was staring them in the face: a collaboration with the company’s second largest brand, Oakley.
“We launched our second generation of the Ray-Ban Meta glasses at [Meta] Connect a year and a half ago, and they’ve taken off faster than we expected,” Alex Himel, VP of wearables at Meta, tells WIRED. “But they were never meant to be the one and only thing we did with EssilorLuxottica.”
“We’ve found people leaning into different active use cases with [Ray-Ban Meta]. And so Oakley, which is a brand that has represented both performance and technical innovation, felt like the most natural next step for our collaboration.”
Like Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta will be a full smart glasses range, with a number of styles to choose from as the line expands. However, it’s the popular Oakley HSTN frames (pronounced HOW-stuhn) that are the first to get the Meta makeover, with all of the same Meta AI functionality as Ray-Ban Metas, but with improved features aimed at a performance market.
This includes a 50 percent longer battery life, with a fully charged pair of Oakley Meta HSTN lasting up to eight hours of typical use compared with four hours on the Ray-Ban Meta. The Oakley Meta’s charging case also gets a boost, with up to 48 hours of charging time on the go, versus 36 hours in the Ray-Ban Meta.
That’s perhaps all the more surprising when you hear that the Oakley Meta also have a higher resolution camera, allowing you to share video in 3K video, up from full HD in the Ray-Ban Metas. This is a down to a new physical battery plus software improvements, Himel says, but can Ray-Ban Meta owners expect similar improvements in the future?
