Smart glasses that are pretty dumb

Facebook’s hardware efforts over the years have been, to put it bluntly, weak. Sure, the company’s enjoying the recent runaway success of its unchallenged Oculus Quest 2 VR headset (from a brand it acquired for billions), but there are still skeletons littered in its product past. Remember its mediocre Portal video calling device? Or how about that time it partnered with HTC for the disastrous Facebook Phone? Facebook, it would seem, keeps losing the plot with hardware and as its latest stab at consumer goods proves, the evidence just keeps piling up.

Meet the Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses, the most recent, and likely ill-fated hardware endeavor from Mark Zuckerberg’s misinformation empire. Yes, Facebook actually partnered with Ray-Ban to make a pair of tech-infused glasses with the goal of enabling the same camera-on-your-face habits as Google Glass without making you look like the world’s biggest dork. They cost $300, pair with a brand new smartphone app called Facebook View, and are available for purchase now.

However, unlike Google Glass with its small screen and internet connectivity, there’s no promise of a futuristic, wearable computer here. Facebook’s newest bit of hardware comes with such a comically limited and shoddily executed feature set for the price that it’s hard to take it seriously as a product at all. This is just an expensive toy for influencers seemingly designed to make Facebook look “cool” again, built for a world where “Stories” are now widely known as ephemeral and easily forgotten snippets of our social media lives.

At least Ray-Ban did its job

These look like regular sunglasses, which is a plus.
Credit: danica d’souza / mashable

Before I get into all the things I think are silly and pointless about the Ray-Ban Stories, I will give credit where it’s due: Ray-Ban did the work here.

To put it simply, the Ray-Ban Stories glasses are pretty much just Ray-Ban frames with dual 5MP cameras built-in (one on each side where the sunglass lenses meet the stem), as well as speakers sitting near each ear. Theoretically, that latter feature means you can enjoy music or podcasts, or make phone calls with the onboard microphone. That microphone also enables the use of Facebook Assistant so you can issue voice commands for snapping photos, if you so desire.

A portion of the outer side of each stem is also touch sensitive, so you can tap it to control music playback (one to pause, two to skip ahead, etc.), or swipe forward or back along the stem to adjust volume. The last hardware features to note are a camera button on the top side of the right stem, a small LED next to the right camera lens (to signal active use), and a power switch on the inside of the left stem.

While the glasses look a little hefty at first, they’re actually pretty lightweight and I didn’t have any noteworthy comfort problems beyond my personal distaste for eyewear in general. (I wore glasses for years and hated it so much I eventually had lasers blasted into my eyes so I wouldn’t have to do it anymore. It’s great, you should check it out!)

The Stories smart glasses are available in three styles that should be familiar if you’ve ever shopped for regular Ray-Bans: Wayfarer, Round, and Meteor. You can also get the frames in a handful of different colors, like shiny or matte black, blue, olive, or brown. Last but obviously not least, there are green, grey, blue, and brown sunglass lens types as well as a clear one for when you’re not trying to block out the sun. And yes, prescription lenses are supported here, too, though Facebook noted that pricing will vary when you choose that option at the point of purchase.

The case is undeniably quality.
Credit: ian Moore / mashable

These Stories smart glasses look good simply because…they look just like normal Ray-Bans. It’s by far the smartest decision Facebook made when developing this product, as Ray-Ban brings a level of aesthetic respectability that something like Google Glass could never offer. Even if you raise the standard of comparison a bit by bringing in the considerably less embarrassing Snap Spectacles, which are Snapchat-centric smart glasses with bonus AR effects, Ray-Ban Stories still blow those out of the water. Snap’s ocular tech toy looks like a cheesy prop from a bad 1950s sci-fi TV show, while Facebook’s looks more like a grown-up pair of, well, sunglasses.

Ray-Ban also made a fairly stylish, leather charging case for the Stories glasses. There’s nothing fancy going on here, as it’s got the typical oval shape you’d expect from a glasses case, with a Ray-Ban logo on top and a USB-C port for charging on the back. It’s a good deal bulkier than a regular glasses case but it should still fit in your bag. No complaints there.

Alright, enough of that. Let’s get to the bad stuff.

Just pull out your phone instead

I swore I had a lower, more centered angle on this when I took the photo.

Credit: alex perry / mashable

I didn’t feel as cool as this guy walking around in the Ray-Ban Stories.

Credit: alex perry / mashable

Let’s revisit my earlier point about how Stories are just Ray-Bans with cameras built-in. I’m bringing it up again because that’s the chief selling point and the main reason why they cost $300, rather than the $200 or so it would cost to get a nice, regular pair of Ray-Bans. Spoiler alert: Those in-frame cameras don’t really do anything special that the smartphone in your hand can’t already do better. What’s more, phones give you a more exact viewfinder for framing shots thanks to a large, visible screen — you can’t beat that. Not without a heads-up display, anyway.

In fact, you need to use a phone to make the Stories function at all, as they hinge on the new Facebook View app, which is available on Android and iOS. Oh and yes, you will need an active Facebook account to set up the glasses.

The View app itself isn’t much to write home about. It’s mainly a gallery of your photo and video captures with basic editing tools as well as a share button that, at least on iOS, brings up the generic OS-wide sharing interface for beaming things to iMessage contacts, recently used apps, etc. There’s also an option to automatically send all captures to the phone’s photo gallery, which is nice. When the app detects a new capture, it doesn’t show up right away. Instead, a button appears on the bottom right corner of the app’s home screen that will deposit all outstanding captures at once. This only takes 10 to 15 seconds.

You can add some goofy shake or zoom effects to photos that take advantage of the dual cameras’ depth and produce short montages out of videos, but other than that, the editing suite is entirely too slight. For as absurd as the Snap Spectacles are, at least you can add AR effects to videos captured with those glasses. In all, there just isn’t a single outstanding camera feature in the Ray-Ban Stories View app.

The View app’s interface is very basic.
Credit: screenshot: facebook

At least taking photos is easy and they do look decent. Long pressing the camera button or saying “Hey Facebook, take a photo” will both do the trick. All the photos I took with these glasses came out looking vibrant and sharp enough, and the dual-camera arrangement means you get a nice amount of depth. There’s definitely a distinctive look to these shots that’s slightly more akin to what the human eye sees than what a regular smartphone camera would see. I don’t think it’s inherently better, mind you, but I can’t knock its uniqueness.

It’s just that you get so much more out of the average phone camera. Even recent mid-level phones like the Pixel 4a (12.2MP, $350) or iPhone SE (12MP, $400) have two-digit megapixel counts in their main rear lenses, and that’s not to mention other basic features the Ray-Ban Stories camera array lacks, like any kind of flash mechanism or night mode. That’s right: You’re SOL (pardon my French) if you use these in low light. Again, a reminder that these glasses cost $300.

Before you protest — yes, people do wear sunglasses at night and indoors. Famous, influential people like Vogue editor Anna Wintour and Kanye West often wear sunglasses in the dark, which we know is very cool. Facebook clearly made its Stories sunglasses by default because, well, sunglasses are cool and Facebook would more than likely love to be seen as cool, which it currently is not. What’s definitely not cool is a $300 camera strapped to your face that can’t do low light shots of any kind. It’s just silly, like so many of Facebook’s other hardware decisions.

I also found it a little tough to compose shots because again, instead of a viewfinder, you just have your eyes to rely on. So occasionally the subjects of my shots would be off-center when that wasn’t my intention. Cropping can easily fix this, but still, I had to point it out.

I suppose there is some value to P.O.V. videos that you can’t easily produce with a phone, but there’s a very serious limitation at play here that makes Ray-Ban Stories stories nearly useless. You’re going to want to sit down for this one: Videos that you record with a short press of the camera button can be a maximum of 30 seconds long. I get that the point is to make short, shareable content, but 30 seconds is way too stringent of a time limit. You know a good way to make short videos? By editing them down from longer ones. It’s how every piece of filmed entertainment in history was made (and also all of those TikToks).

Hold onto your AirPods

By far the most inexcusably meaningless feature Facebook included with the Ray-Ban Stories is the ability to listen to music or podcasts via Bluetooth. Like I said, once the glasses are paired to a phone, they act like any other Bluetooth audio device, transmitting phone audio through speakers in the smart glasses’ stems.

Frankly, the audio quality through these speakers is so tinny and weak that it negates any usefulness they might have. I tried listening to Outkast’s gorgeous, perfect album ATLiens in honor of its 25th anniversary and the bass was so nonexistent that I felt like I had personally disrespected Big Boi and Andre 3000. This might be a matter of me having bad hearing, but I also had to turn the volume up quite a bit to hear the music enough to actually enjoy it.

The face of a man trying and failing to enjoy some Outkast.
Credit: danica d’souza / mashable

This presents another issue, which is that these obviously aren’t earbuds and thus the sound is much more audible to people near you than a dedicated in or on-ear Bluetooth audio device would allow. I took the glasses off, set them on my bed, and walked seven or eight feet away with the volume slightly above halfway, and I could still hear some noise, even if I couldn’t precisely discern it. It’s the kind of thing that would definitely annoy someone sitting next to you on a park bench or in a subway car.

That’s also the reason why I wouldn’t ever bother to make a phone call in public with the Ray-Ban Stories. My business needs to stay my business.

Honestly, don’t even bother

Beyond its myriad failed hardware efforts, there are a lot of reasons not to like or trust Facebook as an institution. At any point in the last five years, it could’ve compromised your personal information, convinced your loved ones to eat horse paste, or pestered you with posts you don’t want to see from people you weren’t even friends with in high school. Even if you can ignore all of that ickiness, the Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses fail plenty on their own merits like other Facebook products that’ve come before them.

The photos look nice, but so do photos from the phone you already have. Videos are just too short. You can’t do some of the fun things like add AR effects to said photos or videos like you could on older, similar products such as the Snap Spectacles. Listening to music is a nightmare. And taking photos with a pair of sunglasses — even one that lights up to let bystanders know you’re doing so — still makes me feel like a creep. On top of all that, they cost $300. Facebook, that’s several swings and several misses.

Andre and Big Boi, if you’re reading this, please know that I’m sorry.