Thursday, 18 September, 2025 UTC
Summary
Gen 2 of the displayless Ray-Ban Meta glasses brings them up to parity with the Oakley Meta HSTN glasses.
The first generation Ray-Ban Meta glasses shipped after Connect 2023, and the recently-launched Oakley Meta HSTN glasses have higher resolution and longer battery life.
Oakley Meta HSTN Glasses Now Shipping
The regular Oakley Meta HSTN glasses are now shipping and available in stores. Starting at $400, they have longer battery life than Ray-Ban Meta and record 3K video.
UploadVRDavid Heaney
Now, at Connect 2025, Meta has opened preorders for Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2. As with Oakley HSTN, Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 can record 3K video, and has up to eight hours of battery in typical use.
That compares to 1080p and four hours for the first generation Ray-Ban Meta glasses.
Other than this, Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 functions the same way as the original. They're screenless smart glasses with a camera, microphones, and speakers. You can use them to capture photos and videos, listen to music/podcasts/audiobooks, make and receive calls, share your first-person view on WhatsApp & Messenger video calls, translate speech, scan QR codes, and query Meta AI, the company's LLM-based assistant that can see via the camera when you ask about something in view. It'll also read out some phone notifications, if you want.
Ray-Ban Meta Glasses Now Translate Speech & Meta AI Is Now Available In Europe
Ray-Ban Meta glasses can now translate speech between English, French, Italian, and Spanish, and multimodal Meta AI is finally rolling out to Europe.
UploadVRDavid Heaney
Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 is available right now, priced from $380.
The first generation will remain available as a more affordable option, for now, priced from $300.