Is This the Future We Really Want?

My first reaction when I put on Meta’s $800 Ray-Ban Display was excitement. As frivolous as it may seem to have yet another screen in your life, there’s something that happens when you basically glue a display to your eyeball. You transform from a person with glasses to, like, a spy, or a cyborg—a cyborg spy! Yeah, that’s it. Ghost in the Shell fans will get it.

When I initially donned these smart glasses at Meta Connect, I smiled because this was what I felt had been missing from my previous Ray-Ban smart glasses experience. A big, bright, full-color screen—the one thing people always wanted to know about when I showed them my deflatingly screenless Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses.

That little dose of magic is even further heightened by Meta’s Neural Band, a small wristband that, when slipped over your hand, reads the electrical signals in your arm, allowing you to navigate the Meta Ray-Ban Display with a series of finger pinches and thumb swipes.

The only other experience I can liken this combo to is the first time I used Apple’s Vision Pro, which creates a similar kind of magic, sans wrist-worn wearable. In the Vision Pro and Meta’s Ray-Ban Display, you’re using technology the same way a wizard casts a spell, waving your hand to make the computer do the things computers do, which, if you’ve watched as much sci-fi and fantasy as I have, is pretty f*cking rad.

Weirdly, I’m reminded of my grandma (my nonna, actually; sorry for being Italian), when I first showed her how to use a computer mouse on my family’s PC when I was a kid. You move this little plastic thing on a desk, and it moves something on a screen! Groundbreaking! It seemed silly to me at the time, but now, as I get older… I get it. Inputs and screens are exciting, no matter how jaded we get with the experience of using them.

So, there it is. Excitement; that was my first reaction to the Meta Ray-Ban Display. My first reaction. It’s not, however, my last.

A see change

If you’re like most people, the first thing you’re probably dying to know about the Meta Ray-Ban Display is how they actually look when they’re on your face.

The titular display part of the Meta Ray-Ban Display is a 90Hz (30Hz minimum) 600 x 600-pixel full-color screen with a 20-degree field of view in the bottom-right corner of the right lens. The good news about having a screen in that area specifically is that it doesn’t obstruct your vision when you’re walking around and doing stuff. The bad part? Well, every time you look at it, you’re looking down and away as though you’re worried a snake might slither in and lunge at you. It’s not what I would call a natural resting face (let’s call it resting Meta face), but let’s be honest, there is nothing natural about walking around with a screen strapped to your eyeball.

The screen inside the Meta Ray-Ban Display is also very bright, with a max brightness of 5,000 nits. This might not seem like a stat you want to pay attention to, but believe me, in a pair of smart glasses, it’s critical. I’ve used less bright screens in other pairs, and they’re hard to see outside. And if you’re spending $800 (before tax) on a pair of smart glasses, you’d better be able to use them while you’re walking around in the real world.

In terms of style, you should know that all Meta Ray-Ban Display have transition lenses by default. That may seem like a bummer if transitions aren’t your thing, but it makes sense, since the screen needs to be effective indoors and out, and the only way to do that is by giving it contrast in direct sun. Conversely, it also provides see-through lenses indoors so you don’t go stepping on your cat or something. I find the screen to be very visible even in direct sun, probably because of the added contrast from the transition lenses. Also, you can buy these with prescription lenses, so that’s good news for those reading this from behind a pair of regular glasses.

But just because the Meta Ray-Ban Display are bright does not mean the screen is perfectly sharp. I find the screen to be sharp enough to satisfy the dream I had in my head of what a pair of display smart glasses from Meta would look like, but others might be less enthused. I also noticed that some people might see the screen differently than I do. One colleague in my office described the screen as “shaky,” though I wouldn’t describe it that way at all. Others said they struggled to see it or that it was disorienting.

One thing I definitely found disorienting is that the lenses in the Meta Ray-Ban Display are actually mirrored. This, I assume, is part of the construction of the “geometric waveguides,” which is what the display tech inside the smart glasses is called. Geometric waveguides are special because they use mirrors to cut down on visual artifacts by reflecting light instead of splitting it like diffractive waveguides in other smart glasses. It also makes it so the screen is hard to see from the other side, which, by the way, is true. People probably aren’t going to know your screen is on unless you’re in a dark area and the brightness is turned up.

The benefits of using a geometric waveguide are clear, but it can also be distracting at times, since you can see behind you if you look to the right, or even sometimes when you’re looking straight ahead. I do feel like my visibility actually decreases when I’m wearing the Meta Ray-Ban Display, probably more than when I wear other smart glasses with a screen in them.

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