I recently penned an opinion piece where I suggested that Oakley’s latest AI-enabled sunglasses, the Meta Vanguard, might actually catch on. Having tested them over the past few weeks, I’m still of that opinion, but far from being filled with excitement at the new frontiers this will open for AI-enabled cyclists up and down the land, wearing the things made me feel a bit uneasy.
They are, from a technical standpoint, quite magnificent and offer things that the best cycling glasses cannot. The audio is great, the AI is responsive and actually useful if you’re into that sort of thing, and the camera is pretty decent considering you wouldn’t know it was there unless it was pointed out to you, all while being actually good at being a pair of sunglasses, something that the likes of the Engo 2 HUD glasses fell short of.
