Ray-Ban Stories

The glasses lack AR features and are more like a point-and-shoot camera with speakers and lenses attached instead of real smart glasses. The pictures aren’t as good as what you’d get from a smartphone while the speakers don’t match what you’d expect from a set of AirPods. That’s a lot of sacrifices to get a camera on your face.

The glasses are smartly designed and can be worn discreetly. That said, it’s clear Facebook made plenty of sacrifices to achieve such an aggressive form factor; the glasses honestly don’t do anything particularly well — photo and video quality is pretty lackluster, the in-frame speakers perform poorly outdoors and calls aren’t the most pleasant experience. For $299, that might make the first-generation a tough sell for some, but all that said, I think Facebook mostly made the right compromises for a product that they’ve repeatedly indicated is meant to be a stepping stone on the road towards an augmented reality future.

Their smart features are limited for now. Maybe that comforts you or disappoints you. Or both. But Facebook's true AR visions are going to take a while longer. If you're really interested in mixed reality for a few hundred dollars, the Oculus Quest 2 is already dabbling in it. These Ray-Bans may eventually evolve to meet the Quest someday, too.

While the company says the glasses will only collect basic information to be functional — things like the battery level, your Facebook login and Wi-Fi details — who knows how that'll change as its future smart glasses become more fully featured. Perhaps that's why there's no Facebook branding on the Ray-Ban Stories case and frames: It's probably better if people forget these are also Facebook-powered products.

They’ve kept the distinctive style of Ray-Ban while adding the type of technology that people are expecting. The effort the development team put in to making the cameras blend in with the design of the glasses was time well spent. The directed audio was also an elegant solution. Overall, I really liked Ray-Ban Stories and would definitely consider buying a pair.