Ray-Ban Stories: These are Facebook’s first mass-market smart glasses

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Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses, from Facebook and EssilorLuxottica.

Here is the mobile app to edit and share photos and videos captured by glasses.

As previously mentioned, Facebook partnered with EssilorLuxottica to produce Ray-Ban Stories, one of the first potentially viable attempts at mass-market smart glasses. They are similar in some ways to early iterations of Snapchat glasses, but with a sleeker aesthetic that looks in line with other Ray-Ban glasses.

The glasses have two front cameras, each with 5 megapixels. Users can take a photo with a tap or with a “Hey Facebook” voice command. Then people in the room can tell that photos or videos have been taken, a white LED will light up on the front of the bezels. Videos can be up to 30 seconds long.

The photos and videos taken with the glasses are sent to a new smartphone app called Facebook View, which offers essential editing and sharing features. In addition to capturing photos and videos, the glasses allow you to answer calls or listen to music and podcasts or with built-in speakers and microphones.

Ray-Ban Stories are equipped with a Snapdragon processor, but have no displays in the lenses. So these aren’t augmented reality (AR) glasses at all.

The glasses, which according to Facebook weigh around five grams more than other typical Ray-Ban glasses, are available in five colors and three different frame styles and there are multiple lens options including prescription, clear, transitional, polarized and Sunglasses. Facebook and Ray-Ban say the glasses will have around a day of battery life when it comes to just walking and taking photos, but listening to the streaming audio will cut that time down to just three hours. The glasses come with an AirPods-style charging case that lets you extend it up to three days without a power outlet.

These are not AR glasses

Given Mark Zuckerberg’s past statements about the importance of AR for Facebook’s future, the internet is abuzz with speculation about what this means for the social network’s AR strategy.

Our opinion: not much. These aren’t true AR glasses by definition, and the handy AR wearables in this natural-looking form factor are still just a few years away from being technologically achievable. There is nothing in this API announcement that will help developers work with Facebook to lay the foundation for future AR experiences.

Compare that to Snap (whose non-mass-market AR glasses can actually be used by content creators to develop new types of mixed reality content) or Apple (whose ever-expanding APIs like ARKit and RealityKit for iPhone and iPads will eventually be translatable to wearable devices).

So no, the stories aren’t really an AR story. This is just a story of smart glasses. But that doesn’t mean smart glasses won’t “be a thing” in the foreseeable future. The overwhelming success of AirPods, Fitbit wrist devices, and other products suggests wearables may be just the beginning.

The smart glasses from Facebook and Ray-Ban are on sale today in most retail and e-commerce outlets that already sell other Ray-Ban glasses and start at $ 299. Stories are available in Australia, Canada, Ireland , Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Update: We previously wrote that the glasses weigh five grams, but Facebook’s actual statement stated that the glasses weigh five grams more than typical Ray-Ban glasses. We have corrected the error above.

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