is a senior reporter and author of the Optimizer newsletter.She has more than 13 years of experience reporting on wearables, health tech, and more. Before coming to The Verge, she worked for Gizmodo and PC Magazine.
When the Oakley Meta HSTN arrived earlier this year, it wasn’t what I thought Oakley-branded smart glasses would be. Sure, they had Oakley’s famous PRIZM lenses, but where was the wraparound design? Where were the athlete-focused features like stronger water and sweat resistance? Confusingly, it felt like the HSTN glasses were just Ray-Ban Meta glasses by another name. But that’s because Meta had the real athlete-focused glasses in its back pocket. Today, the company unveiled the new $499 Oakley Meta Vanguard — and it has everything outdoorsy athletes could want and then some.
“When we started building HSTN, it was an easier process of developing because most of the things we wanted for low-impact sports, like skating, don’t require a lot of technology in the eyewear from a performance standpoint,” says Oakley global president Caio Amato. Conversely, Amato says, the Vanguards were envisiond as a “revolution” not just for elite sports stars, but weekend warriors and everyday athletes.
Jabroni mode unlocked.
Putting on the Vanguards, I felt myself morph into Coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights. They’re the quintessential wraparound Oakleys beloved by sports coaches, hardcore outdoors enthusiasts, and Patagonia-clad dads. At 66g, they’re slightly more hefty than the regular Ray-Ban Meta glasses, but still feel lightweight and secure enough for more intense activity. That’s partly because the Vanguards will ship with three swappable nosepads to ensure a good fit. The design has also been crafted with hats and cycling helmets in mind, which is why the control buttons are placed underneath the arms instead of above.
Switching the camera to the nosebridge was a huge technological challenge, says Oakley Global President Caio Amato. Photo: Colt Bradley / The Verge
Speaking of buttons, there’s also a new Action Button that acts as a shortcut for the various camera modes. Yes, you read that right: modes. The Vanguards have a 12MP, 122-degree camera placed smack-dab in the nose bridge, with a recording indicator light placed right above it. You can now record in 1080p with 30 frames per second for five minutes, 1080p at 60fps for three minutes, 3K at 30fps for three minutes, and 720p at 120fps in a new slo-mo mode. There’s also a new hyperlapse mode that lets you stitch together and compress in a sort of highlight reel. (Hyperlapse and slo-mo will come in a software update to all of Meta’s glasses later this fall.) There’s also adjustable stabilization, so you can customize based on the intensity of the activity you’re doing. Athletes can also program the glasses to start recording at certain milestones — like when they’re nearing a race’s finish line, for instance. It’s basically like putting a GoPro on your face without a silly little face-mount.
The camera, Amato says, was the biggest challenge in developing the Vanguards. The desire was to capture a first-person point of view, but “from an engineering and design standpoint, it change[d] everything completely from where Ray-Ban Meta were before.” For example, to get that first-person perspective, Amato says the camera required a much wider field of view, stronger stabilization, and 3K quality.
The Vanguards have also been tweaked to cater to outdoor performance. The lenses are swappable, and a low-light option will be available later this year. Amato says the different colors are optimized for certain activities. For example, if you’re into fishing, you may want the blue lenses as they neutralize blue hues more.
The speakers are 6db louder. That might not seem like much, but having pushed the volume, I assure you, they can get quite loud. Amato says that the speakers were tested on bicycles going up to 30mph with crowds present, as well as at road races, so that runners could have confidence their tunes wouldn’t be drowned out on race day. Unlike the regular Ray-Ban glasses, these also have an impressive IP67 water- and sweat-resistance rating. Meaning if you fall out of a kayak, you don’t have to worry about the glasses getting wrecked. Battery life also has an estimated max of nine hours, and six hours of continuous music playback — enough for most people to finish a marathon. With a case, you get a total of 36 hours and can also charge roughly 50 percent in 20 minutes.
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