Meta announces Oakley smart glasses
119 comments
·June 20, 2025sleepyguy
My elderly mother-in-law is slowly going blind. She relies on Meta glasses to read print on everything — from the back of a can to the mail. She also uses them to help locate items around the house, whether it’s something on the counter or in the living room.
I’ve tried the glasses myself, and I’m convinced that wearable eyewear like this will eventually replace the mobile phone. With ongoing advances in miniaturization, it’s only a matter of time before AR and AV are fully integrated into everyday wearables.
gwbas1c
> and I’m convinced that wearable eyewear like this will eventually replace the mobile phone
Once there is an actual usable in-glasses screen, I will agree.
A few years ago I tried someone's smartglasses with a screen. It basically had similar functionality to my first Fitbit: it would show texts, notifications, caller ID.
I really want one of those and went looking, but couldn't find it.
ge96
What style was it, nreal (bulky) or something like Frame (though lower end in quality)
SoftTalker
I don't think so. You still would have to wear glasses, which is annoying.
cshimmin
some of us have to wear glasses anyway :/
eloisant
Then they'll have to find a way to separate the "smart" frame from the prescription lenses, so you can change the glasses when your sight changes without having to buy smart frame each time - or the other way around, upgrade your frames without having to buy prescriptions lenses again.
dmarcos
And contact lenses and lasik are popular because many don’t want to wear glasses. I see head mounted displays useful in constrained scenarios (e.g construction site and tasks where you already wear safety glasses and need free hands). I have a harder time seeing a world where people ditch phones and start voluntarily wearing glasses which is often uncomfortable and inconvenient. Just finished 5 miles run on treadmill, went to sauna and did bouldering. There’s no room for glasses but can occasionally check my phone.
vinoveritas
[dead]
ian-g
I’m very glad your mother in law has use for them.
With that said, I don’t think these can replace phones until they’re quite a lot smaller and lighter. And to make it worse, you’d need at least two pairs - regular and sun. Possibly three if you’re someone who regularly uses safety glasses.
ge96
What would be the interface, talking? I know they have pinching and hand tracking, guess it's no different than people talking "to themselves" while wearing earbuds.
foobarian
They may not replace the current gamut of phone features. However; I question how much of current phone functionality is actually something users strongly need/want, vs. how much is pushed by big tech. It would be pretty great if a small core feature set done well in-glass turned out to be enough to kick off large scale adoption. Ultimately I think the input is probably going to be the hardest issue
nhecker
Photochromatic coatings -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photochromic_lens -- have existed for a while and are sold on safety glasses, at least according to a cursory look at a large online retailer's site.
That said, I'm not sure I'd want smart glasses. Being stuck on a computer for work, I try to take some time every day to be completely free of digital things. It's hard enough to do that with a smart phone in my pocket vying for my attention. I imagine it would be only harder with smart glasses over my eyeballs.
wiether
So how do you prevent Meta from gathering secrets displayed for even a tenth of a second on an employee' screen? You'll have to ask security to check everyone's glasses now?
wwweston
Meta isn’t the last company I’d trust with a wearable always on video input (among other data no doubt), but they’re in the bracket.
OkGoDoIt
Still no SDK though, what’s the point of smart glasses that only do what Meta lets them?
I’m personally more excited about the Mentra Live glasses, which are fully programmable with AugmentOS.
dkobia
This. The meta glasses have so much potential and it is absolutely frustrating as a developer to have no way to make use of it.
divan
Weird take: my biggest annoyance with Meta glasses after 1+ year of almost daily usage is that there is no way to switch from Meta AI to any other voice AI.
Bender
This is just my opinion but these look even worse that the 1940's+ military issued BC glasses. BC as in birth control. [1] At least it will be easy to spot the glassholes [2] for now at least.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GI_glasses
[2] - https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=glassholes
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garbawarb
Looks cool but I just hate the heaviness and feel of wearing acetate. If they ever make titanium smartglasses I'll be all over them.
kube-system
Titanium is about 3-4x the density, they're normally light only because less material can be used... which is probably problematic when used as an enclosure for electronics.
syntaxing
Titanium for electronics isn’t much of a problem (look at Apple Watch and a bunch of Apple product). The issue is that it’s a considerably more expensive material (every cents count when you scale to consumer electronics) and a bit harder to work with.
kube-system
We were talking about weight -- you don't hang those devices on your face.
Titanium glasses are lightweight because a very minimal amount of material is used. This is possible for regular glasses because you can make them with a ~1mm cross-section. When you want to put electronics inside of them, you need much more material.
LtdJorge
Even if it’s an order of magnitude more expensive, they would make money on the glasses. Oakley (and every brand controlled by the Luxotica monopoly) glasses have extreme margins. On the order of, could be sold for under $20 making a profit but are sold for $300+. I don’t think the titanium work and the electronics can offset that.
woleium
The material is not the majority of the expense. The cost comes from the difficulty encountered when working the metal using standard tooling. It is difficult to work, low tolerance and high failure rates made it impractical prior to modern (very expensive) machines.
LorenDB
Come on, why would you make smart glasses with a clear shell and then hide the electronics behind an inner shielding layer? I want all the circuits on display.
duped
Light can affect the operation of many electronics, it's just easier to not worry about it and enclose the entire thing. Some models of RPI had this problem.
sodokuwizard
ah yes to satisfy that world famous market of giga electronics nerds in oakleys
longtimelistnr
Well i know this is sarcastic but have you seen the preferred design language of the Oakley founder? Exposed circuitry is righttt up his alley.
luxuryballs
it sounds like he got in trouble for exposing his circuitry in public
luxuryballs
I was looking at the Ray-Ban version of these for a few minutes before I realized there’s no HUD… I wouldn’t even consider a dev kit for one of these unless I had some kind of ability to add a dragon ball scouter widget to show the power level on the lens…
excalibur
If that's what you want, you can find some pretty good deals on Google Glass on ebay.
Workaccount2
A side note, but it is very unfortunate luck that the pendulum of fashionable eye-wear has swung back towards 80's/90's style thin frame/no frame glasses.
You really need young people to carry tech like this, and needing them to wear millennial fashion from 10 years ago so camera and compute fit will just make it that much harder.
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amazingamazing
won't buy these, or any others smart glasses until there's a way to replace the battery. I'm annoy'd enough that it's difficult to do with bluetooth headphones... with my quest 3 at least there's an option to plug it into an external battery, given the traditional use cases.
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tomhow
Stub for oftopicness
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DHPersonal
The difference between the stylish product shot and the goofy candid is stunning. The glasses look ridiculous on Zuckerberg.
badlucklottery
I think part of the issue is that Zuckerberg is a smaller dude and they're pretty big sunglasses so he has a bit of that "Look! I'm wearing dad's glasses!" thing going on.
gardenhedge
So that's half of men and most women ruled out?
jebarker
Ridiculous seems strong. They’re not my style but I see people making far more surprising fashion choices everyday
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xnx
Official source: https://about.fb.com/news/2025/06/introducing-oakley-meta-gl...
Not sure why theverge gets linked so much here.
diggan
Usually I prefer second-hand sources over press-releases, as press-releses tend to be a bit too much navel-gazing and pats on the back.
demosthanos
In general I agree, but The Verge in particular tends to just say exactly what the press release says with less detail. If we're going to do a non-press-release source it should be because they're offering context and information that the company would not willingly choose to provide themselves.
add-sub-mul-div
Right, journalism adds commentary and context. People may often think it's bad, or not like or agree with what they read, and conflate that with thinking journalism is bad or forgetting what it fundamentally is and why it's important that it exists. A straight up ad from Facebook would not be better than this.
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deafpolygon
Whaaaat the heck is going on in the reflections on Mark Z’s glasses?
foxygen
His wife holding a phone?
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demosthanos
Somehow we've actually managed to regress from 2013's Google Glass.
Always-on microphone and camera sold by one of the world's sketchiest privacy invaders? Check.
Display that actually takes advantage of the glasses form factor? Nope. Sounds like this could just as easily be the Humane pin.
awongh
Crazy how much more acceptable this is only 12 years later.
People were so angry in 2013.
toast0
Google glass was a display that was up and to the right of where you want to be looking.
I don't know about everyone, but I found it pretty hard to use. Caveat, I didn't get them fit to me, I was supervising an intern working on a speculative Glass project, and they were fit to him.
AR would be neat, but voice interfaces are acheivable at an approachable cost. I'm not one to talk to a computer, and I wear prescription lenses, so these glasses don't appeal to me, but I can see there's a market there, not sure how big or if Meta can capture it.
demosthanos
Right, I'm not claiming Glass was good, but it at least attempted to use the glasses form factor for something.
georgeecollins
Well it shows you what was the real problem with glass, it looked dorky. I wish people cared about privacy but in general they don't.
kotaKat
It's one of those times you just want to "OK Glass" the person around you that says "Hey, Meta" with their privacy-invading cameras.
Handy-Man
It's not always on. How do you skeptics always manage to get things wrong to get your point across?
demosthanos
If you can ask "Hey Meta, ..." while holding a golf club and unable to touch a button (which the promo video [0] shows you can) then the mic is always on. It may not always be beaming data to Meta, but that's a matter of trust, which I don't have much of for Meta given their history.
The camera may or may not be always on, but it can be turned on by software activated by the always-on mic (again, demonstrated by the promo video), so it would be best to treat it as though it is.
[0] https://about.fb.com/news/2025/06/introducing-oakley-meta-gl...
meepmorp
how can it respond to voice prompts if it's not listening?
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Official announcement: https://www.meta.com/en-gb/blog/oakley-meta-ai-glasses-sport...