Meta today unveiled its first smart glasses sold under its own brand rather than Ray-Ban or Oakley, undercutting its existing lineup on price as it works to expand its lead in the category before Apple enters the market. The new Adventurer and Fury models are priced at $299, $80 less than the second-generation Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer that launched last year. A third model, the Starfire, was designed in collaboration with Kylie Jenner and costs $399. EssilorLuxottica, the parent company of Ray-Ban and Oakley, is manufacturing the glasses despite Meta designing them in-house and putting its own name on them, with EssilorLuxottica's logo appearing on the temple arms and packaging alongside Meta's. The Adventurer has a rectangular Wayfarer-like shape available in standard and large sizes, while the Fury shares that silhouette but is thicker. The Starfire takes a slimmer oval shape and includes a small gemstone on the right lens near the camera, a metal nose pad designed to resist makeup residue, and the option to set an AI-generated version of Jenner's voice for the assistant and onboarding prompts. The Starfire's case includes a handwritten note from Jenner and a built-in mirror. Across all three styles, Meta added a three-way adjustable nose pad, adjustable temple tips, and overextension hinges so the arms flare out slightly for wider head shapes. The companies are offering 26 color and lens combinations between the Adventurer and Fury alone, including tortoise, black, and green finishes, plus transition, polarized, and clear lens options, and the glasses support prescription lenses with a power range of -12 to +2.25. The new glasses carry over the same 12-megapixel camera, 3K video capture, five-microphone array, and eight-hour battery life as the existing Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 glasses, with the included case adding about 40 hours of additional charge. Meta is also offering a separate Meta Glasses Charging Stand compatible with the new models as well as the Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta HSTN lines. The glasses ship with Meta's Muse Spark AI model, which the company says improves response quality and adds 14 new languages to live translation support, including Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, and Hindi, bringing the total to 20. A new "Dynamic Photo" feature captures a burst of images and selects the best shot, and pedestrian turn-by-turn navigation is coming to the camera-equipped lineup after debuting on Meta's display glasses. According to Bloomberg, Meta also hinted that it's considering a version of its glasses without a camera, focusing on an audio-only experience for phone calls, media playback and interacting with its AI tools. A camera-free option could both lower the price point and enable new styles, it said, given the need to include fewer components. The company also addressed Apple directly, calling the iPhone maker "formidable" in the space ahead of its own glasses debut. "I think you need to take anything they do seriously," Meta's Alex Himel said, adding, "they're good at hardware, they're good at design. There's a number of places where we won't necessarily be able to build the same quality consumer experience when paired with the phone, and so I think they're taking advantage of that." Apple is widely expected to release its first smart glasses in 2027, designed in-house rather than through a partner brand. Apple's glasses will likely rely on a camera, microphones, and Siri for AI-driven features without an integrated display, putting them in direct competition with Meta's camera-equipped lineup rather than higher-end display models like Meta's Ray-Ban Display glasses. Meta said it explored facial recognition tools for identifying people the wearer knows but has not put the feature into active development while it works through privacy and societal concerns. The Adventurer, Fury, and Starfire glasses are available starting today through Meta and EssilorLuxottica retail partners including LensCrafters.Tag: MetaThis article, "Meta Launches Its Own $299 Smart Glasses Ahead of Apple's Debut" first appeared on MacRumors.comDiscuss this article in our forums
