HONEST REVIEW RayBan META Wayfarer SMART GLASSES

these are the Rayban meta WF fares and they're the latest smart glasses from meta and honestly compared to the last ones these are incredible Bo all the way back in 2021 Rayban and meta released their first version of their smart glasses the Rayban stories and I actually did a full review on those glasses back then and I'll be honest they weren't the best Not only was the video and picture quality not great and also cropped to a square for whatever reason the sound quality kind of sucked the battery life kind of sucked and also they didn't come in that many styles and for a pair of smart glasses that you're supposed to wear on your face you want them to look good and it's not that they didn't look good at least on some people's faces it's just they didn't have enough options for everybody and now in 2023 Rayban and meta are back at it again I keep hearing the sound in my ear whenever I put these on and they're releasing the brand new rayan meta wfirs and not only are they releasing wfirs but they're also releasing some more Styles and a lot more colors plus now you can get standard lenses transition lenses or even polarized lenses if you want which is a pretty big Improvement and I've been rocking these for like the last week since they first came out and I've got to say I'm impressed now to be fair my expectations weren't that high because of the last Rayband stories but these are significantly better in almost every way so first off let's talk about wearability because if you're putting something on your face you want it to look good because it's on your face and even though these Rayband meta wairs are definitely thicker than standard wairs they actually look pretty similar on your face obviously there are some noticeable differences like cameras instead of those little like bead things that are usually there but overall generally a similar look and actually in college I worked at Sunglass Hut which is owned by luxotica the company that also owns rayb bands and so I have some decent experience with sunglasses in general and I've got got to say that these feel great on face and they look good and I'll be honest I was fully expecting to return these after the review because I didn't think I was going to like them but after the week of having them I might keep them so like I mentioned before they come in two new Styles the Wayfair which is the classic rayb band look and the headliner which is also a pretty classic look and I definitely think that these two new smart glasses styles are much more wearable than the previous versions and like I mentioned before as well they also come in a bunch of different colors you've got this matte black you've got a glossy black you've also got the jeans color which is actually a semi-translucent blue where you can see through to the tech inside side that's a very cool color and I actually kind of dig it as far as fit they do feel pretty much the same as standard wave fairs they are slightly heavier but not noticeably heavier and the actual fit of them on my face feels great there's no like looseness I'm not dropping them at all or anything like that usually with regular sunglasses you can kind of Bend this back part a little bit to kind of fit around your face a little bit better if it doesn't in this case I don't know if you can do that because there is some tech inside the glasses if I had the translucent ones I would know for sure but I don't so I'm not 100% sure if you can bend these I wouldn't be surprised if you could a little bit but making a noise making a vibration but the good news for me is that they fit so I'm not going to have to adjust them and I genuinely think that for most people this will also fit their face she's always yelling at her kids but obviously the frames are not the only thing that matters when it comes to glasses the lenses in a lot of cases are the most important part and the good news is for these smart glasses you do have a couple different options the first is obviously standard sunglasses you can get polarized or non-polarized again I used to work at lexotica at Sunglass Hut and we'd always recommend polarized because genuinely it does actually really help with glare so I always go polarized whenever I grab sunglasses however it can make it kind of weird whenever you're holding your phone with a screen protector you get some of that rainbow effect but honestly you get used to it now obviously polarized sunglasses are more expensive than standard sunglasses but not by much usually $ 20 to $50 depending on the frame or the lens in addition to that you can also get prescription lenses however the prescription lenses only range between Min - 6 and plus4 so if you have eyes that are outside of that range you're kind of screwed you might have to wear contacts or get your own custom lenses made unfortunately my eyes are worse than a than a minus 6 which is pretty awful so for me it's all about the sunglasses variant of this pair of smart glasses because that's all I can really wear with these I guess I could get one that doesn't have any prescription but then I'm just wearing glasses to wear smart glasses so I don't know how I feel about that personally as a glasses wearer and not only that but you can also get transition lenses which obviously are going to be more expensive than standard prescription lenses but it is kind of a cool thing to have the option to do but now let's get to the actual smart features of this pair of smart glasses so the feature that I actually use the most on these glasses and it's a feature that I didn't expect to use the most is actually the fact that these are Bluetooth headphones now according to meta the sound is 50% louder than it was in the previous Rayband Stories the bass is apparently better as well and so is the sound quality so from reading the press release I had very high expectations and I will say that my experience with these has been mixed first off when you're wearing these and you're listening to music there is sound bed people around you are going to hear what you're listening to now it's not such a huge deal if your music is low or you're in a louder environment people won't really hear and even if you do you're not really going to be able to discern what you're listening to but there is definitely some sound beding here I'm going to throw them on really quickly play full volume music and uh show you what that sounds like this is also full volume so it's very loud in my ears um not blowing out my eard drums but definitely loud also the bass isn't great I wouldn't say it's not existent but especially when you're listening to a hip-hop song or something with heavy bass you're not going to get much of it the sound quality isn't bad especially when it comes to mids but when it comes to the bass like I mentioned not really there it might be better than the previous one I don't remember the Bas specifically on the previous pair of stories but I know that it's probably worse than this and then the highs they're also not bad as well the volume also is is lacking because you can't really get much higher than what I was playing and at full volume even though they are loud in my ears if I was in a louder environment it would still be pretty difficult to hear the music because it's not like actually in my ears it's sort of coming in around my ears so when comparing the sound of these to something like a pair of Apple airpod Pros or any other kind of inear headphones they're not going to sound as good the sound quality isn't bad like I said but it's not as loud as you probably will want it in certain environments and it's not as clear or as Bassy as you might want it in most cases but I will say for taking phone calls or listening to music in certain environments when you don't have headphones it definitely gets a job done and speaking of phone calls these are actually really great for phone calls I can hear the other person really really well there is some sound bleed but it's not as bad as you would think especially outdoors and here let me show you guys an example of that talk as loudly as possible to see if there's any sound bed okay except like about normal things nothing hello what's up man how you been oh good good good okay Jordan can you hear that or no it's very far away sounding not really okay good so the gout thing like muffled like I yeah like I can hear you're on the phone but I can't hear what he's saying cool well thank you for letting me use you for my content see you later bye when it comes to controlling the music that you're listening to on your smart glasses it's actually very simple first of all you just swipe forward to raise the volume or swipe back to lower the volume you tap to play or tap to pause and all around the tap controls on the side of the glasses are really responsive I had no problems with whatsoever well I guess there was one thing I did try and raise the volume past the loudest amount that it could go multiple times while wearing these glasses because it just couldn't get loud enough for me and the sound that indicates that you're at the top of the volume range isn't that loud so I didn't really know that I was at the top of the range I just kept swiping and swiping and swiping and it wouldn't get any louder so that was the only one thing but it's a minor gripe now when it comes to the sound quality for the other person that you're on the phone with the mics actually do an incredible job of picking up your voice in fact better than most Bluetooth headsets and that's because there's actually five different microphon phones on these glasses you've got two right on the bridge of the nose which actually pick up your mouth really really well you've got one hidden in the rayb band logo I forget which side because it's so small and then you've got two more on the arms of the sunglasses and overall they do an excellent job of picking up your voice it sounds crisp and clear on the other side of the phone I love it it's an incredible pair of phone call making glasses not only that but when it comes to capturing audio on these glasses if it's for a video or even a phone call you get spatial audio because you have so many microphones all around the headset so it allows you to actually hear things around you both when you're listening to them in real life but also when you're playing back and recordings for example if I was filming something and I heard a dog barking behind me on the right side I'd hear it in the same place when I played back the video how's it going man talking about you though good to see you man yo it's honestly impressive the audio recording on these glasses is amazing thank you appreciate it cool if I put this part into yo good you man I'll see you guys later take care but now we get to the main reason that I bought these glasses and that's the video recording and there in lies one of my biggest problems and that's the fact that the lens is only on one side of the glasses so it's really difficult to frame anything whether it's video or photos I always found everything that I was filming was a little bit to the right and that's because obviously the lens was on the left at least I think it's on the left it is on the left now first off I do want to give meta a lot of credit for improving the camera on these smart glasses it is Light Years better than the previous camera it's a 12 megapixel Ultra wide and it actually takes pretty decent photos and videos obviously the quality is not groundbreaking it's not going to replace your phone anytime soon but it's serviceable it's way better than it was last time and it's not a square this time you get a vertical shot which is kind of annoying because if you want to take a horizontal shot you got to do this but I never did that and for most people that's not a problem because that's usually what you post in whether it's on Instagram or any other social media platform for me though as a content creator who puts out videos on YouTube horizontally it's not the best format in the world and it means that I have to crop in and usually when you crop in on this kind of content or this kind of media from these smart glasses you notice the problems and you notice the lack of fidelity why is that basketball hoop like that I don't get it man I don't get it so will this camera be replacing my phone's camera for vlogging when it comes to thrifting or other sorts of media that I film on my phone probably not but I will say these are perfect for capturing that moment that you don't have time to pull your phone out in or maybe you want to be involved in the moment and not worry about trying to frame everything correctly it generally films what you're seeing so for example you're at the beach with your kids or you're walking your dog and he does something ridiculous or whatever the case may be this will allow you to capture that moment instantly rather than having to whip out your phone and try and frame it correctly again the 12 megapixel ultrawide camera is not bad but it's not great and everything's going to be vertical so if you like vertical great and again the audio on these glasses is really great especially when it's coming from your own mouth so if you're recording video the audio is going to sound really good at least whenever you're talking but now let's get to privacy and the way that meta is tackling this problem because obviously smart glasses that are essentially spy glasses could be used for very nefarious things what they've done is actually increased the size of the LED in the frames not only that they've also made the LED pulse so it's a little bit more visible whenever you're indoors unfortunately though when it comes to Outdoors it is more difficult to see than not so if that's something that bothers you privacy at least for yourself I don't know why it would if you're wearing these smart glasses but it might because you're not the one getting filmed it doesn't matter it's not a perfect solution but it works and I'm glad that they decided to make the LED more visible obviously when it comes to video recording LED pulses to let people know that you're filming them and when it comes to taking a picture it flickers so I am very happy that they make it as obvious as possible that you're wearing smart glasses and that you might be taking a picture of them or something in that area so it's not as creepy as it could be however it's still creepy you got cameras in your glasses that's pretty weird and unfortunately the people that will be most affected by these glasses are not the people wearing the glasses it's the people in the pictures that don't realize that they're in the pictures so the only thing I can say if you're trying to maintain your privacy around someone wearing these glasses is just make sure you look for the LED or see if someone's wearing Rayband stories and then try and like I don't know Dodge them a little bit so with these new glasses meta introduced a brand new app which is actually a lot better than the previous meta app as you probably would have expected first of all importing photos and videos is significantly easier than it was in the past and in a lot of cases it happens automatically at least if you set up those settings and it also allows you to check some important things like the battery life of your glasses or also change the settings of your glasses but the main reason you'll be using this app is to download your photos and videos and again other than the random freezing which there only happened to be one other time of course it happens when I'm filming it's a pretty decent app and it does make it very easy to transfer the photos and videos from your glasses to your phone especially if you have an iPhone I can't speak to the Android version of the app but it's been super easy for me to download everything and upload it it's been amazing another feature that I really love is the fact that you can actually live stream directly from your glasses to your Instagram or Facebook account which is honestly a really great feature especially for IRL streamers unless you're trying to film yourself in which case you kind of have to take the glasses off and do this so powering the brand new Rayband meta wave fares you've got a Snapdragon ar2 gen 1 processor and it does a pretty good job of running all the tasks that you need to run on your smart glasses meta also increased the onboard storage on these smart glasses by eight times to 32 gbes which is pretty solid and holds a lot of photos and videos especially when you film them on this headset I don't know why I keep calling this a headset I think it's cuz I just filmed the meta Quest review which by the way if you guys haven't checked that out make sure to click the link at the top of the screen but I don't know smart Tech it's on your face headset that's what I call it the one thing that I've had a little bit of an issue with was battery life and the fact that it's pretty short now for my own personal usage where I was taking a lot of photos and videos with these glass I found that I got around 3 to 3 and 1 half hours of battery life which is not bad when I was only using these as regular sunglasses and occasionally using them for their sound capabilities or phone calls or something like that they did last all day but that was occasional usage at the end of the day though unlike a phone when the battery dies on these guys there's still a functional pair of glasses or sunglasses and the good news is even though the battery life on these guys might not be the best in the world they do give you a case which charges its battery like an airpod case and actually allows you to get up to eight full charges according to meta now I did charge this halfway through having these glasses just because I wanted to Juice It Up cuz I was going on a trip that day but that was just purely for peace of mind I don't think I needed to charge this I don't think it was anywhere close to dead I just wanted to have it charged so realistically I would be surprised if this thing goes a week now what's cool about this charging case is that Rayband and meta decided to redesign it so it looks just like a standard rayb band case you drop the glasses right in here like this and there's actually an indicator LED on the front of the case that tells you whether the glasses are charging or charged so it goes orange to show that they're charging and green to show that they're charged and it really does charge up the glasses very very quickly I found that after like 45 minutes of having them in the case they were good to go obviously the case charges through a USBC port at the bottom one thing I will say is that the package didn't come with the USBC cable so I had to use my own USBC cable which was kind of frustrating usually when you buy a new tech it comes with a way to charge it but uh when it came to the metway feris they did not give you that option so keep that in mind buy an extra USBC cable if you don't have one because that's the only way to charge these guys and uh they don't give you any other options definitely a weird thing not to include it's a USBC cable I'm sure they were trying to save money but still come on want it's the only way to charge the glasses unlike the previous meta smart glasses the way that these rayb bands charge is through the bridge of the nose and that does kind of bother me a little bit because in my head I'm thinking the oils from my face over time might build up and stop the contact between the glasses and the case itself obviously you could just wipe off the glasses and you should be okay but that's where they charge now versus on the previous version where they used to charge right where the arm connected to the rest of the sunglasses now in terms of pricing the Rayband meta W fares start at $22.99 which is $130 more expensive than a standard pair of w fars however you are getting a lot of features like video capabilities music capabilities phone call making capabilities there's a lot going on in these smart glasses and I think it does justify the price now the sunglasses that I got because they came with polarized lenses were $30 more I paid $3.29 for these glasses which is a lot of money for a pair of sunglasses but at the end of the day again you're getting the smart features and that's the main reason that you're grabbing these you're not just grabbing these CU they're good sunglasses because in my opinion Ray bands in general are just good sunglasses so if you're looking for good sunglasses get Rayband so getting down to it should you buy the brand new Rayband meta smart glasses as well in my opinion it's up to you if you're willing to drop the money on these glasses you get not only a good pair of glasses or sunglasses you also get a pair of glasses that allow you to take videos or photos or listen to music or even make phone calls they're pretty impressive and the quality of these new smart glasses versus the previous Rayband stories is just night and day it's so much better obviously I would have preferred if you were able to switch the aspect ratio of the video from vertical to horizontal but unfortunately you don't have that option but overall they're amazing I really like them a lot I'm going to keep this pair I'm not going to return it and uh while I definitely think it's more of a luxury item than anything else I don't think you need these if you have a phone you're fine but uh if you want a pair of sunglasses that does a lot of stuff in addition to being a pair of sunglasses then go with these but hey those are just my thoughts on the brand new Rayband meta W fares I'd love to know your thoughts in the comment section down below so make sure to let me know but as always thank you all so much for watching make sure to subscribe if you haven't yet and I'll see you all in the next one

Channel: Tech Fowler

Views: 201,051

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Id: 0sCIRomVNVU

Length: 15min 51sec (951 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 28 2023