Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer smart glasses review: full of AI promise but sub-par camera performance

Although photographers might be excited that this pair of smart glasses can shoot photos and capture video clips, it generally does only a mediocre job capturing them, at best.

What’s more is that you don’t have the ability to change most of the camera settings. That means, when you’re shooting in anything other than bright-light situations, you’ll often get blurry and grainy shots, particularly in low light. (I’ll discuss this more in the performance section below.)

The Meta Ray-Ban Wayfarer does have some relatively decent features. For example, it’s able to play audio from your streaming music apps, like Spotify and Amazon Music, among others. You can also answer and interact with your phone calls and messages.

What I found most promising about these smart glasses is how it uses artificial intelligence, or AI, although it still needs a lot of work to be perfected . Once you’re connected to your phone and also have the Meta View app running, the glasses allow you to ask questions via its microphone, and then transfers that question to the phone, at which point it is sent to the Meta View mobile app.

However, it’s not perfect by a long shot, and often gets the answers wrong or just odd-ball answers. For instance, I opened up my photographic history books and asked Meta the names of some of the most well-known photographs of all time, and the photographers who created them. But I covered up the captions and surrounding text, first. In many cases, it failed to correctly guess the name of the photographer or image.

However, when uncovered the captions, it was able to read the text and name the famous images in my art history book, it often succeeded in getting me the correct answer, such as “Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California,” by Dorothea Lange, “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico,” by Ansel Adams, and “Place de l'Europe, Paris, 1932,” by Henri Cartier-Bresson. It’s the same with most works of art: It didn’t recognize Edward Hopper’s painting "Nighthawks,” when I covered up the captions, but recognized it when the captions weren’t covered. I should note that it could name the “Mona Lisa” by Leonardo da Vinci without seeing the caption!

Of course, I also found that how accurate the answers were could depend on how I asked a question. That meant I was continually rearranging my questions in different ways.

But what is very cool is that I could ask for additional information about the photographer or image. For instance, I opened the book, “The History of Photography” by Beaumont Newhall, to page 265, and asked the smart glasses, “What is the name of the photograph? And who is the photographer who shot it?”

The Meta View app answered, correctly, “The photograph is of Greta Garbo, and the photographer is Edward Steichen.” I then asked Meta, “Who is Edward Steichen?” (although I mispronounced the photographer’s name, and Meta corrected me: “The photographer's name is Edward Steichen, not Styken.”)

Meta then said, “Edward Steichen was a Luxembourg-American photographer, painter, and art gallery and museum curator. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century.” I then asked what photography exhibits did Edward Steichen curate?” The apps replied, “Edward Steichen was a prolific photographer and curator, and his work was featured in many exhibitions throughout his career. One of his most famous exhibitions is ‘The Family of Man,’ which he curated for the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1955.”

Mind you, the information isn’t news to me, or to probably many photographers, but I found it exciting that I could quickly find out about photographic information instantly. And if you apply that concept to photoshoots, or brainstorming for photography ideas, or questions about how to break into the professional photography world, to name just a few, you can see that this type of AI can offer a lot of new ideas and perhaps opportunities to grow as a photographer.

Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer: Specifications

Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer: Price

On most websites, including Amazon and Best Buy, you can buy the regular size Meta Ray-Ban Wayfarer smart glasses for about $300. However, you can also buy a larger version, which has wider frames, larger lenses, and longer arms, for a little more money, $329.

Most smart glasses don’t feature the ability to capture photos and video. However, OhO has a few pairs available that captures both photos and video, including the OhO Sunshine Camera Glasses that can be bought for as little as $50.

Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer: Design and handling

If you’re like me and you’ve been writing about cameras and technology a long time, it’s hard not to laugh a bit when I think about what smart glasses looked like about 12 years ago. Namely, I’m thinking about the groundbreaking, but rather geeky-looking Google Glass, which came out in 2012-2013. They had some cool technology, but just didn’t look all that cool.

But the Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer glasses I tested were very nicely designed, comfortable to wear, and when it came to the technology, it did a rather nice job disguising it. For instance, when shooting photos and video, the lens is housed inconspicuously in the corner of the frames just above your left eye. Still, it takes a little practice getting used to shooting with the glass.To shoot a photo, press the shutter button once (it’s on the right arm of the glasses). An LED housed in the right corner of your frames flashes to let people know you’ve taken a photo. When taking a video, you press and hold the capture button (and the LED glows to indicate you’re recording video). Simply press the capture button again to stop the video.

Another well-designed feature is its open-audio design, which doesn’t cover the ear in any way, allowing you still to interact with the world around you.

There are other ways you can interact with the world around you using these glasses, as well: For instance, if you see a sign that has a phone number, you can ask, “Hey Meta, call this number.” You can also send voice messages via various apps, like WhatsApp and Messenger. Additionally, you can control the glasses by swiping or tapping the touchpad, loaded on the right temple. For example, you can play, pause audio by tapping one, turn up the volume by swiping forward, and listen to the next track by tapping twice.

I also found it easy to charge and pair the glasses, which is done in the glasses case.

Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer: Performance

But as I indicated earlier, when it comes to capturing good quality photos and video, I was rather disappointed in the quality of both.

It captures photos and videos via a 12-megapixel camera that’s been placed in the upper corner of the glasses. The images are 3024 x 4032, but you have very little control over the shutter speed, aperture, ISO, as well as other settings. It’s the same with the video (which captures clips at 1440 x 1920 at 30 fps). I will say that I did think the electronic image stabilization did a good job of reducing camera shake and avoiding jittery video.

But the flaws far outweigh the good features. For example, I found the shutter button had significant shutter lag, which means that when I pressed down the shutter button, it didn’t instantly snap the photo. That doesn’t happen much at all with cameras these days, particularly mirrorless cameras or high-end point-and-shoots.

To test this perceived flaw, I set a music metronome in motion (at a moderate speed, 138 beats per minute) so that I could capture it when the sliding weight would cover up a particular word, “Andante,” on the surface of my metronome. When I used a very good mirrorless camera, I was pretty successful at capturing the precise moment the sliding weight covered the word, “Andante”. Even my iPhone did a decent job performing this task. But when I tried to do this with the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, it was all over the map. I was unable to get a sense of when the glasses were going to take the shot! And that’s a rather big issue!

But shutter lag is just one of a host of problems when it comes to image quality and performance. In low light, images are often marred by motion blur and significant noise. Even images shot in bright light sometimes produced weird artefacts. So, I believe most photographers will avoid using these for serious photo or video projects.

Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer: Sample images

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Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer: Verdict

Although this pair of glasses is quite pricey, the Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer smart glasses provide a glimpse into the future of how this category will grow, in terms of the complexity of its feature set. That was particularly clear in how it uses AI to answer your questions via the Meta View app. I found the fact that you have access to an encyclopedic AI-powered app to be quite intriguing for photographers and content creators who look at it in the right way.

However, most photographers and even general consumers will be disappointed with the camera and video features on the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses mostly because it doesn’t give you the ability to adjust those features. It is a bit fun, but the fun really doesn’t last. And while the smart glasses include electronic image stabilization that performs quite well, particularly with video, it still wasn’t able to keep me from shooting blurry photos, particularly at night.

Alternatives

Oho Camera Glasses
There aren’t that many pairs of smart glasses on the market that offer the ability to shoot videos and photos. However, OhO offers a few, including the Sunshine Camera Glasses which starting at under $70/£70 are substantially less expensive than the Ray-Bans – but are far less smart. The camera again is not brilliant – but useful for giving POV footage of your travels.

See our full guide to the best camera glasses