It’s never ideal being the second-most anything in the world, but there are worse places to be, too. The same applies to the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses Gen 2, which were the second-most exciting thing that Meta announced at Meta Connect this month. The first, if popular opinion is any indication, is Meta’s Ray-Ban Display that, as you may already have gathered, has a screen in it.
But even if the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 (starting at $379) are the second-most exciting pair of smart glasses to come out of Connect, they can still be the first-most something, and in my estimation, they are. These are the best pair of Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses you can buy without a screen. Period.
Ray-Ban Meta AI Glasses Gen 2 Ray-Ban Meta AI Glasses Gen 2 aren't exciting but they're better then the original. 3 Pros 3K video recording
Longer battery life Cons Meta AI is still the same/messy
Still photos didn't get an upgrade
No speakers upgrade
What’s new in Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses Gen 2?
I’ve already covered this a few times, so I’ll keep it brief; the biggest updates in the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 are battery life and video. The size (aside from 2 grams of additional weight in Gen 2) is the same, there are all the same features as the original, and the speakers and mics are all carried over.
The battery life, though, is now rated for double, which in this case equates to about 8 hours of general use. The charging case also gets a bump from 32 hours to 48 hours. The battery increase in the smart glasses is thanks to what Meta is calling “ultra-narrow steelcan” batteries—the same ones it’s putting in the Meta Ray-Ban Display, its smart glasses with a screen in them. On the video side of things, it’s upping the max resolution of recording to 3K and also introducing a 60 fps option, though that will only be available if you’re recording in 1080p. Unfortunately, for anyone who is more interested in still photos, the sensors are the same this generation. It’s 12 megapixels with a max resolution of 3,024 x 4,032.
That may not sound like a lot, but you can’t really understate the importance of battery life and videos in a pair of smart glasses—those are pretty important to any device that would dare encroach on phone territory. Even more important, though, is how videos look, and whether battery life is actually as advertised. On that front, Meta mostly delivers.
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