I just went hands-on with Meta's newest lineup of smart glasses, and one thing is immediately clear: the company is ready to move beyond borrowed brand power.
While the second-generation Ray-Ban Meta glasses started at $379, Meta’s latest collection drops the Ray-Ban (and Oakley) badges entirely. Instead, Meta collaborated directly with parent company EssilorLuxottica on a line officially called Meta Glasses and brought the starting price down to a more palatable $299.
The new collection doubles down on personalization, with highly adjustable frames, more style options, improved fit and an upgraded AI experience powered by Meta's latest LLM. It's a bold move that suggests Meta believes its smart glasses are now the product people recognize, not the logo stamped on the side.
That said, there's a hilarious twist: my favorite pair in the lineup is the very distinctly branded Kylie edition co-designed with none other than the "Rise and Shine"-singing, Knicks courtside-sitting icon herself, Kylie Jenner.
The entire collection is available now Meta.com, LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, Best Buy, and Amazon. Let’s get into everything you can expect.
Meta Glasses: Styles and fit
The new main collection features three distinct styles: Adventurer (a timeless rectangular shape,) Fury (a thicker statement-making frame) and Meta Glasses by Kylie (chic oval frames, detailed more below.)
They come in a massive palette of colors including Classic Black, Classic Tortoise, Racing Green, Linen, Merlot, Mahogany, and Sandstone. Combined with sun, Transitions®, polarized, and clear lens options, there are 26 distinct styles available at launch.
But how a pair of glasses feel is equally as important to how they look. Smart glasses typically suffer from being rigid, clunky and even unforgiving. Meta is addressing this head-on with a three-prong approach to comfort:
- Overextension Hinges: Designed to flex outward to accommodate wider head shapes without pinching.
- Adjustable Nose Pads: A massive win for comfort, weight distribution, and keeping the lenses off your cheeks.
- Adjustable Temple Tips: Armed with an internal core wire (which is actually visible inside the transparent colorways) that lets you mold the ear stems for a secure-but-comfortable fit.
Meta Glasses by Kylie
In addition to Fury and Adventurer, Meta revealed a new collaboration with Kylie Jenner. Offered in classic black and tortoise frames, I think these are the most "non-smart glasses looking" smart glasses ever made.
It’s a slim, trendy, oval cat-eye style complete with a distinct gem accent on the left eye. Meta and EssilorLuxottica clearly thought about the lifestyle details here. It features metal nose pads specifically chosen to protect makeup from smudging, and it ships with a sleek, fold-flat case that includes a mirror.
On the tech side, the collab gets its own custom "awake chime" and a dedicated Kylie-inspired AI voice, complete with a subtle hint of her signature vocal fry and a few custom "Kylie-isms."
Muse Spark: Smarter, More Contextual AI
What is Muse Spark?
Muse Spark is an advanced, natively multimodal reasoning artificial intelligence model developed by Meta Superintelligence Labs. It's built for actual, natural conversation and hyper-local context. It doesn't just answer isolated questions; it remembers the flow of your conversation.
Under the hood, these frames pack the exact same reliable platform of cameras, microphones, battery, and processing chip as the Ray-Ban Meta Glasses Gen 2. But the software ushers in the next phase of Meta AI powered by the Muse Spark LLM.
Meta Glasses are the first to launch with Muse Spark from Day 1, though the software update is also rolling out to existing Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta glasses. As part of my demo, I tried two interactions powered by Muse Spark:
- Live Translation: Muse Spark adds support for 14 new languages including Chinese (Mandarin,) Hindi, Korean, Japanese and Arabic. In my demos translating live speech and text, the execution was mostly seamless and effective.
- Social-Infused Insights: The AI now pulls local recommendations based on what real people are actually talking about on Threads and Facebook. In other words, social chatter will be factored into your location-based queries.
Pedestrian Navigation goes audio-only
Another major software port coming to this collection is pedestrian turn-by-turn navigation, a feature originally seen on Meta Display glasses.
Since these frames lack a screen or heads-up display, you won't get visual overlays superimposed on the world. Instead, Meta is utilizing its excellent open-ear audio platform to give you precise, ambient audio directions as you walk through the city.
Be sure to let me know if the comments if you’re interested in hearing from the Tom's Guide team when we test out this audio-only navigation experience on Meta Glasses.
A massive win for prescription wearers
In a huge move for those with a prescription, Meta announced the Rx Lens Swap program alongside Meta Glasses.
Meta Glasses are fully prescription-compatible, but now you can take your frames to your preferred local optician after the point of purchase to add your custom lenses without voiding the factory warranty.
Meta Glasses Outlook
Ditching the Ray-Ban and Oakley branding is a bold move, especially when Google is leaning heavily into high-end fashion collabs with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster for its own upcoming smart glasses.
But I believe Meta has established itself enough in this space that it doesn’t need to rely on logo leverage anymore. Mainstream users will probably still call these "the Meta Ray-Bans" out of habit, but this launch proves Meta can scale style beyond a single partner's catalog and make its smart glasses more wallet-friendly.
That said, I'm slightly worried Meta might have made these frames a little too discreet. It makes me wonder if it will actually hurt their reach. Half the reason the original Ray-Ban Metas took off was because people would stop you in the street to ask if they’re the camera glasses. With the new collection looking like a great pair of everyday frames, Meta might lose that word-of-mouth viral spark, even if my face already feels a whole lot better wearing them.
